There is hardly any doubt that democratic governance moves slowly as it is firmly based upon arriving at consensual agreement about issues and that is certainly a time-consuming and tedious process. India under Modi’s majoritarian governance apparently has had enough for the extremist policies his regime followed as has become clear by the level of opposition to his rule.
The Indian opposition has rallied in a broad-based alliance dubbed INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) that may counter Modi on every step in the run-up to next year’s election and also election exercise. While the new alliance holds a lot of promise especially for India’s tortured minorities as well as other downtrodden communities that have been crushed by the Hindutwa juggernaut, the fact is that large, ideologically diverse groupings can be notoriously unwieldy and it will take the combined political wisdom of the INDIA parties to send the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies home.
The meeting of the leaders marked a significant step forward in the relationship between the country’s main national and regional opposition parties who have previously struggled to unite due to power struggles, personality clashes and ideological differences. However, a consensus was reached earlier this year that unless they formed a united front, no single party stood a viable chance against Modi and his BJP government which will be seeking a third term in the election to be held in May 2024.
Included in the coalition are India’s largest national opposition, the Congress party, as well as powerful regional parties such as Trinamool Congress which governs the state of West Bengal under the popular chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, and the Aam Aadmi party which governs Delhi and Punjab and has gradually emerged as a national political grouping that may be in a position to challenge both the BJP and Congress.
The most significant development that occurred in this context was the stance taken by the Congress that, unlike in the past, Congress would not be asserting its dominance in the opposition alliance and was not interested in the prime ministerial post.
A full election strategy will be decided by the coalition at meetings due to be held over the next few months but its tagline will be “Jeetega Bharat”, meaning “India will win”. It certainly is a tall order and may push to the limit their combined political skills, social understanding and communication expertise as Hindutwa has been deeply embraced by the country’s xenophobic majority.
India, at the moment, is facing the horrid consequences of ideological polarisation that its leadership successfully avoided during the first half-a-century of its existence. Though the country is widely celebrated for its so-called adherence to democracy but for all intents it has become a lip-service with the majority perceptions having a field day.
INDIA is composed of a motley political crowd with centrist heavyweights such as Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party hauled up along with political groups belonging to the hard right such as a faction of the Shiv Sena and at least three different communist parties. There are also several regional parties on board including those representing South Indian states that have scant interest in affairs of the northern areas. Their common goal is to unseat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance next year and rebuild a more inclusive India. Significantly, the alliance is emphasising restoration of democratic and human values, many of which have been bulldozed by the BJP regime in its quest to build a Hindu state. In a resolution passed at their meeting the alliance parties declared their intention to protect secular democracy, economic sovereignty, social justice and federalism which they say have been menacingly undermined during the BJP’s stint in power.
The alliance’s pledge to stop violence against India’s minorities must also be soothing to the ears of that country’s Muslims, Christians and followers of other faiths. It is quite obvious that the BJP machine supported by its ideological guru RSS will not hesitate from employing any stratagem including exciting the chauvinistic Hindu middle class that considers itself to be an epitome of unprecedented success and views communal matters self-righteously showing hardly any respect to other communities and unwilling to take them into the national mainstream.
INDIA has also touched upon forming a Uniform Civil Code that essentially implies doing away with religious personal law as applicable to minorities and this perspective is surely the way matters are required to be viewed in India these days. However, the opposition is not very amenable to the idea of making up with Pakistan and it looks quite remote that relations between both the countries will improve in near future unless some kind of interlocution succeeds in bringing about a breakthrough. It is otherwise not easy to neutralise the toxicity that has been sowed by the BJP between Pakistan and India and the traditional bad boy of Indian political practice is Pakistan and they feel comfortable to whip it whenever they find it suitable.
BJP has succeeded in shifting blame of any untoward activity taking place in the country towards Pakistan and has so badly poisoned the public opinion that even the rational segments of India find it difficult to initiate any kind of confidence building measures between both the country. The BJP narrative has unfortunately been aided by short term policy decisions taken by gradually besieging elements of Pakistani decision making that considered keeping India as a pulsating risk to Pakistan and taking steps that exacerbated the situation between the neighbours. The process of reversing the effects of such rather mindless actions will take a considerably long time and extraordinary efforts and for the time being it does not look possible.
Though the unification decision sends a very strong signal to Modi and his party but even as a united front INDIA-parties face an uphill battle in taking on Modi, who still commands huge popularity across India, even among voters who do not consider themselves supporters of the BJP’s politics on a state level. This situation is clear to be witnessed as between the 26 parties, INDIA governs 11 states while the BJP governs 15 along with holding an overwhelming parliamentary majority after the 2019 election in which it won 303 seats out of 543.
Moreover, during his nine years in power, Modi has consolidated his power as prime minister, while the opposition parties have been the targets of raids and investigations by state agencies and several opposition leaders have been jailed systematically weakening the opposition. It is also pointed out that the former leader of the Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, who lost the last two elections to Modi, was in March disqualified from parliament and from running in next year’s election, and sentenced to two years in jail over a court case that critics alleged was politically motivated.
It is also observed that while opposition parties such as Congress and Trinamool Congress have been emboldened by state election results in which they beat the BJP, overall the BJP’s funds, resources and power far outstretch those of any other political party. It is often held that BJP is India’s richest political party with a declared income of 19.17 billion rupees and its biggest strength in a national election is the popularity of Modi, who has been able to sway even voters who may have chosen a different party in state polls.
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