This is why India is running out of patience with prime minister Modi
Though votes are still being counted, it can now be said with some certainty that India’s ruling party has suffered its worst election result since storming to office in 2014. On a day that could yet prove a turning point for India’s democracy, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was contesting five state elections across the country. He appears to have lost most, if not all, of them.
India goes to a general election in the spring in which Modi was expected to win, albeit not quite by the margin of 2014. His opponents have privately been painting a gloomy picture of their prospects, with many resigned to another Modi term. Yet on Tuesday afternoon, even allies of Modi were admitting that his victory lap had been stopped in its tracks.
“This is a clear message and it is the time for us to introspect,” said Sanjay Raut, a spokesperson for the far-right Shiv Sena party, which props up the BJP in Maharashtra state and the central government coalition.
The fact that Modi has such parties for bedfellows gets to the heart of why these results matter. Critics say that under the BJP-led government, Hindu nationalists have become increasingly emboldened and acts of violence against minorities more brazen. In the last four years, independent journalists have described feeling under threat, and the space where civil society operates squeezed in favour of direct action by the state.
At the same time, Modi has effectively positioned himself as a unifying figure who wants to bring Indians of all creeds along on a journey of empowerment for the country. He has launched a series of bold, flagship policy initiatives – although the jury is still out on most of them – and even excepting Tuesday’s results, retains a high level of personal popularity.
Whether under the Congress Party or BJP, the fate of India’s leadership will be decided next year, just at a time when Britain will be looking outwards for new trading partners. And while Modi has got on well with other authoritarian-minded leaders such as Donald Trump and Xi Jingping, Justin Trudeau himself described a diplomatic visit to Delhi as a “colossal disaster”.
Nonetheless, this vote was not a referendum on Modi but a show of dissatisfaction with the government’s performance on several key areas.
The BJP won power in 2014 by courting the votes of Hindus outside the main metropolises who felt disaffected with life under the Congress Party, which has ruled India for 49 of the 71 years since independence.
Yet in recent months, hundreds of thousands of farmers have marched through Delhi saying the central government has failed to protect them with fair minimum prices for their goods. At the same time, young people in rural areas accuse Modi of not providing the jobs boom they were promised.
A breakdown of the results from Tuesday’s three biggest states shows Congress consistently outperforming the BJP in rural areas. In Rajasthan, the parties performed similarly in cities but Congress took 90 rural seats, compared to the BJP’s 53. For Congress, the default party of liberals and secularists that has seemed rudderless in recent years, the results will be an injection of hope and a spur to talks with other opposition groups to form a cohesive group that can genuinely challenge Modi next year.
Analysts have also been praising the role of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader, who is often criticised as weak but campaigned effectively in all five of the states being contested. The party has previously ruled out putting him forward as a prime ministerial candidate, but could change its mind if he continues to impress the public.
State elections are not the same as general elections, and most people here still expect to see Modi emerge victorious in 2019. If he is to do so, he will need to heed the lessons from a day that many in the BJP would likely rather forget.
