I watched with amusement and an indescribable schadenfreude the palpable discomfiture of the BJP spokesperson as he tried to valiantly rationalise the expected debacle of his get together within the Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir meeting election outcomes. Doing it isn’t simple. I ought to know. I’ve been there a thousand instances earlier than. However this was until about 9.30 am on October 8, 2024. Shortly afterwards, the unthinkable occurred in Haryana. In a outstanding reversal of counting traits, the BJP abruptly accelerated forward of its archrival Congress. The celebrated Indian voter, as soon as once more embarrassed all exit ballot psephologists, and gave a knock out punch to the grand outdated get together in Haryana. Jammu and Kashmir voted the Nationwide Convention-Congress in, after a 10-year electoral hiatus. As a substitute of a double whammy for the BJP, it ended up even steven. However the Congress efficiently accomplished its kamikaze mission.
The October 8 election verdict might have supplied the reinvigorated opposition, led by an unusually resolute Congress, the second booster shot after a decided fightback within the Lok Sabha elections. However it turned out to be a mirage. Will the BJP see a possible crack, a cleavage that might result in its potential resurrection after a dreary run? That’s the billion-dollar query. We now have now entered right into a most fascinating part of Indian politics after a 10-year stranglehold by a seemingly invincible Narendra Modi. The voter is turning into more and more unpredictable.
A couple of broad-strokes will greatest clarify (the granular evaluation of the numbers will likely be in a number of pie-charts in each information medium anyway) how India, all the time a tough conundrum, has stunned itself.
For one, PM Modi have to be hopelessly nonplussed; his two huge trump playing cards, the Ram temple building and the abrogation of Artwork 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, which have been everlasting fixtures within the BJP manifesto for many years, have made negligible impression on the get together’s political fortunes. BJP misplaced the Faizabad seat (Ayodhya is positioned on this constituency), which has 78 per cent Hindu inhabitants, and was humbled throughout Uttar Pradesh by the INDIA bloc. Non secular polarisation, its political enterprise mannequin, had did not ship. The J&Okay outcomes are additional proof of its over-reliance on the majoritarian programme.
If post-2019, there had certainly been a honest, inclusive outreach in direction of social assimilation of disparate teams, why did the BJP discipline solely 19 candidates from 47 constituencies within the Kashmir Valley? Why did it not win a single seat? Why was its vote-share a laughable single-digit determine? However maybe essentially the most unmistakable rejection of its Kashmir politics is the putting underperformance in Jammu, which it had clearly thought of its wealthy cache, a assured sure-shot sweep. Regardless of the gerrymandering that led to a rise of 43 seats in Jammu, the BJP received solely 28 seats. In 2014, it had received 25. If the Congress had proven an avaricious urge for food, the BJP would have confronted a wipeout in Jammu too. The disillusionment with the politically motivated and swiftly rescinded Article 370 and the lack of statehood that adopted had damage sentiments chopping throughout non secular traces, moreover the absence of an financial windfall which was assured. There couldn’t be a extra beautiful rebuke from the individuals of J&Okay to the BJP’s gameplan to acceptable for itself a majoritarian-nationalist get together stature. No matter occurred to the Insaaniyat, Jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat trope of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee which was cursorily deserted? The arduous reality is that Kashmir grew to become a political laboratory to place India’s largest minority inhabitants as fifth columnists throughout India. The J&Okay outcome implies that the stratagem backfired. Former Governor and subsequent insurgent Satya Pal Malik might be having the final snicker.
Secondly, in politics, momentum is a vital play. Publish-June 4, 2024, Rahul Gandhi is the agenda-setter, and he’s doing that with cool aplomb. The opposition appeared galvanised. The tailwinds have been serving to; Arvind Kejriwal’s launch from jail added to the opposition arsenal. The NC-INC alliance in J&Okay, the professed solidarity between the squabbling Congress bigwigs in Haryana, and the comparatively tactful understanding rising within the MVA alliance in Maharashtra, appeared to carry lots of promise. However Congress dedicated hara-kiri; a déjà vu harking back to Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh of a few yr in the past. Political conceitedness is its bugbear, and in dropping Haryana (prefer it did Punjab to AAP earlier), the Congress despatched out a woeful message that its political comeback was nonetheless an incomplete mission.
The close to collapse of JJP and PDP, each opportunistic allies of the BJP, in these elections reveals {that a} dalliance with the saffron get together is akin to a kiss of demise. There’s a lesson there for the Congress: For the most important election of the season developing in Maharashtra in November, 2024, it would assist if the get together backs Uddhav Thackeray because the chief ministerial candidate. Petty egos, native leaders getting grasping, or a myopic understanding of the ramification of that election, could possibly be disastrous for the INDIA bloc. They’ve an opportunity, however like Haryana, they may supply it magnanimously to the BJP on a silver platter.
Thirdly, the gorilla within the room is the diminishing political model of Modi, Haryana however. After falling woefully wanting the pompous 400 quantity within the Lok Sabha, Modi appears a woebegone shadow of his earlier hearth and brimstone avatar. The NDA 3.0 underneath better public scrutiny appears frangible; its financial file is iffy, its governance shambolic, regardless of the braggadocio. The crowds have thinned and received bored by the execrable verbiage. However Modi and the BJP are robust losers; and as Haryana reveals, the BJP’s starvation for energy is its USP. The Congress is pleased to development on Twitter.
However for the second, the gutsy wrestler Vinesh Phogat is symbolic of the facility of the general public voice. Damage and humiliated, shamed and focused, she hung in. Her electoral success is Olympian.
The author is a former Congress spokesperson
