The road to Lok Sabha 2024: Why I.N.D.I.A is very much on course

The air of triumphalism in the BJP after its election victories in the Hindi/ Hindutva-heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh is quite simply misplaced. So is the despondency in swathes of the citizenry, who were counting on a stronger Congress showing in these elections.

Misplaced because the INDIA coalition is very much on course to win the Lok Sabha elections in May 2024, if the constituents remember what is really at stake — the danger is to not see the wood for the trees. State-level rivalries can cloud this judgement, and that is where the negotiations will require some sagacity.

For example, the Congress and the Left parties are ranged on the same side of the political fence nationally but will face off without concessions in Kerala. This should not impact the INDIA numbers, as the 20 seats in the state have historically been shared between the two parties and their allies, with the BJP drawing a blank.

In West Bengal, the Congress and the Left will likely form a common front. For historical reasons hard to ignore, the state CPI(M) unit will contest against the Trinamool Congress (TMC) rather than forge an understanding with it. Will the Congress adopt the same stance or agree on seat-sharing with the TMC? It’s a tightrope the Congress must negotiate. Regardless of the BJP’s bravado, it has been coming third or fourth in by-elections in West Bengal since the last state elections in 2021; on that evidence, the party may struggle to retain half the 18 seats it grabbed in 2019.

When the INDIA parties came together, the Congress had indicated it was prepared to yield ground to large regional players in states where they have a dominant presence. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the Samajwadi Party is that dominant presence, and they will demand the lion’s share of seats in the state. The seat-sharing formula will need tailoring and more specific articulation for different states where the Congress needs to defer to a dominant regional player.

Being in government in Delhi and Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will similarly make its own demands. But when Rahul Gandhi passed through Delhi during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, his approval rating, according to polling agency C-Voter, had risen to 55 per cent. This suggests that the ground realities may have shifted in the capital region, and consequently it may be in AAP’s interest too to moderate its expectations.

The BJP has a strong voter base in the capital region and holds all the seven seats in the current Lok Sabha, but a Congress-AAP pact has the potential to upstage them. In a multi-cornered contest in Punjab, the BJP can at best win one seat. Reports that Indian agencies allegedly stage-managed the assassination of a Sikh in Canada and made a failed bid to eliminate another in the US have not gone down well with the community — and chances are that voters in the state will let the BJP know what they think of these misadventures in the Lok Sabha polls.

In southern India, which accounts for 130 seats, the BJP may struggle to win 15. It is seen in this part of the country as an alien that wants to impose its Hindi/Hindutva culture, which raises the hackles of the people. The INDIA formation is capable of mopping up a hundred seats from this region.

The Modi regime will continue to hound Opposition leaders, throwing at them the full might of the State and its investigating agencies — the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), besides the Income Tax (IT) department and other Central government bodies. It will stop at nothing.

This vindictive pursuit of Opposition leaders has yielded nothing of note except a strong sense in the Opposition that they must close ranks to fight the onslaught. If anything, this relentless hounding has yielded a sense of solidarity in the INDIA camp and solidified their resolve to defeat the BJP.

Media pundits have, of course, been in overdrive highlighting the takeaways from the election results of 3 December. Where statistics tell another story, all kinds of convoluted readings have been trotted out. So, let’s examine the facts.

If the Election Commission of India’s projections are to be trusted, there hasn’t been much of an erosion in the percentage of votes garnered by the Congress in the three Hindi-speaking states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Indeed, the competition in Rajasthan was rather close. A CSDS-Lokniti survey says Rajasthani voters were more enamoured of the Modi government’s giveaways than what Ashok Gehlot had to offer.

In Chhattisgarh, where the Bhupesh Baghel government had acquired a well-earned reputation for delivery of services and was in fact upbeat about its prospects, the ECI numbers reveal that the Congress vote share has stagnated, and at least 80 per cent of the Janata Congress votes and 50 per cent of BSP votes — as compared to 2018 — switched to the BJP.

The Congress should be concerned that a section of women in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh — a majority of whom see the BJP as a party of male chauvinists and misogynists — transferred their allegiance nevertheless to tilt the scales. The BJP was able to convince women voters that welfare schemes and direct cash transfers are all largesse from the Central government. However, support for the BJP has reached a saturation point in these three states.

On 5 November, after the state elections had been announced and the ECI’s model code of conduct (MCC) had come into effect, Modi announced the extension of free food rations. The beneficiaries of this election-time largesse comprise 60 per cent of the population, and the announcement came at a time when food inflation stood at 9.2 per cent. At their doorsteps in all three states, a motley Hindutva army was deployed to repeatedly remind people that Modi provides free rations. ‘Will you bite the hand that feeds you?’ was the refrain.

Madhya Pradesh, though, is a little perplexing. Where did the 7.5 per cent additional votes for the BJP come from, given all the allegations of corruption and incompetence? The transfer of BSP and Samajwadi votes, relative to 2018, account for only a 2.5 per cent gain. Besides, as former chief minister Digvijaya Singh pointed out, the Congress was 21 per cent ahead of the BJP in postal ballots, but 9 per cent behind in the EVM (electronic voting machine) count.

That represents an astounding 30 per cent swing for the BJP between postal ballots and EVM votes. Postal ballots are there to see in black and white, whereas EVM votes are not easily verifiable and, therefore, evidentially unconvincing.

It’s only reasonable to assume that benefits will accrue to the BJP in states where it is in power. And to that extent, the loss of MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh is a setback for the Congress. In other words, the votes in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh will be exposed to diabolical tampering during the Lok Sabha elections. Maharashtra, too, will be susceptible.

The Congress-led UPA’s 2009 victory was founded on success in Maharashtra and a united Andhra Pradesh. Opinion surveys, if they are to be believed, reveal that people in Maharashtra were jolted by the toppling of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government and the backstabbing of Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar. The Supreme Court of India’s role in the defections that brought down the government could have a bearing on the upshot.

The Congress victory in Telangana, which was carved out of Andhra Pradesh, could have a domino effect on present-day Andhra Pradesh. Just as a Congress comeback in Karnataka has influenced a change in Telangana, a change of sentiment is possible in Andhra Pradesh as well.

Chances are the BJP, with Modi as its mascot, will mop up a hefty chunk of seats in Gujarat and a large number in Uttar Pradesh and probably MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh as well — totting up about 150 seats. But that’s where the juggernaut will grind to a halt. Where will the 122 more seats required for a Lok Sabha majority come from? Even if the BJD, YSR Congress and BRS are seduced to join the BJP bandwagon, they will not come anywhere close to this objective.

One common INDIA candidate in over 450 constituencies can certainly overcome the BJP.

Rahul Gandhi’s insistence on a caste census came perhaps too late to have an impact in the MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh elections, but the lesson of Indian politics is to not lose heart. The OBC vote is crucial. The census conducted by the state government in Bihar is likely to have made OBCs more aware of their leverage and made them appreciate the JD(U)-RJD government’s determined push to conduct the survey.

The Congress has to make a bigger impact among Dalits. The current Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is the party’s first Dalit president after Jagjivan Ram, under whom the party swept to victory in the 1971 Lok Sabha elections. The country’s persecuted Muslims, who account for about 14 per cent of the total population, have electoral salience beyond their absolute numbers, and are perhaps ready like never before to throw in their lot with an INDIA candidate.

There is also an apparent correlation between Rahul Gandhi’s approval rating after his yatra and the percentage of votes accruing to the Congress in the states he walked through. Where his rating, as surveyed by C-Voter, was above 50 per cent, the Congress has prevailed; barring Madhya Pradesh, of which he covered only a small portion. For instance:

• In Karnataka, his rating was 57.7 per cent — the Congress won

• In Telangana, it was 55.6 — the Congress won

• In Rajasthan, it was 40.8 per cent — the Congress lost

• In Maharashtra, where the yatra traversed the state’s eastern fringe, his rating was 52.2 per cent, and in Delhi, it was 55 per cent

These statistics make a case for another yatra — possibly through Gujarat, Maharashtra and the entire Hindi belt. It will also go a long way in setting a counter-narrative to the Hindutva fervour the BJP is drumming up in the run-up to Lok Sabha 2024 — think of all the brouhaha over the inauguration of the Ram temple.

The Opposition will have to find ways to counter the BJP’s divisive 80:20 narrative. It will have to find ways to talk effectively about issues that make a real difference to people’s lives — inflation, unemployment and inequality, for example. It has to find ways to make people see the difference between structured welfare and ad hoc election-season government largesse.

Less than half of India’s 46 per cent worker population has work, and this has been a constant feature of the Modi years. Among graduates under 25 years of age, unemployment is a staggering 42 per cent, and 25 per cent of all graduates are jobless. People are borrowing more, consuming less and liquidating their assets and savings to stay afloat.

The net financial savings of Indian households has plummeted to a 50-year low of 5.1 per cent; 16.3 per cent of children are undernourished. These facts, which tell the true story of where Indians really stand amidst all the myth-making about ‘Modi ki guarantee’, have to be in the frame when the INDIA parties make their common minimum programme and go to the voters.

With its direct transfers and free rations and suchlike, Modi’s BJP too has a welfarist game going, but it also has an embarrassingly long tail of Modi jumlas — tall promises that did not live up to their grand billing. It won’t be easy to cut through the shrill government advertising and the media cheerleading, but the Opposition needs to remind voters of what they were promised and what they really got.

Ashis Ray can be found on X @ashiscray