Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rivals are finally reaching a consensus on seat-sharing a few weeks before the Election Commission is set to announce the polling dates for the elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament.
In the eight months since the formation of the I.N.D.I.A. coalition in June 2023, the parties wasted precious time bickering over who gets to be the top dog and protecting what they see as personal fiefdoms instead of projecting a strong and united front to the undecided voters and presenting an alternative vision for the society and the economy.
The recently visible rhythm may be coming in too late to impact the election results significantly.
At one point, many estimates pegged the strength of I.N.D.I.A coalition of more than 200 sitting members in a Parliament of 543 seats. That was good enough to challenge Modi but the estimates have only gotten worse since.
The results of a survey released in early February showed that the opposition bloc may win about 166 Lok Sabha seats.
What's worse, since then, many influential leaders like Ashok Chavan (Maharashtra) and Geeta Koda (Jharkhand) left the Congress, as well as potential allies like the Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh as well as Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), switched camps to the NDA.
Some reports say Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary, a senior Member of Parliament from Congress, may join the Left to protest a possible alliance between his party and Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.
So far, the alliance is final in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Goa, Haryana, Goa and Gujarat. However, a similar agreement is still due in several important states like Maharashtra with 48 Lok Sabha seats, Bihar (40), and West Bengal (42).
There's no agreement yet even in Tamil Nadu, where the Congress shares a much stronger bond with the regional heavyweight, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by MK Stalin.
Winning seats in electoral politics needs both math and art. Modi's rivals need to improve in both.
Today's political landscape is similar to the one in the months before the Lok Sabha election in 2004. The odds appeared to be highly in favour of the incumbent BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, which was high on the recent victories in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh, just like they are today.
So much so that the BJP leaders advanced the election in 2004 to ride the wave — what they saw as a wave — and made a few mistakes along the way.
They lost the election to a Congress-led coalition because the party misread the voter sentiment and took allies for granted, to name a few — which they are yet to repeat in 2024.
On the other hand, these are the same mistakes that the opposition parties, particularly the Congress, at least until now, have made in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Before the elections, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP lost some prominent allies like the DMK and ignored potential allies like the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Asom Gana Parishad and the Haryana Vikas Party.
The result:
The BJP fell short of its rival coalition by 40 seats. Only 20 of its 182 members of Parliament (before the polls) got re-elected in 2004.
The BJP also believed the economic turnaround would offset the anti-incumbency. But, in 2004, the economic recovery was still young. But the BJP went to town with the 'India Shining' campaign to take credit for the few quarters of economic boom.
On the other hand, the Modi-led BJP is not fighting to win. It's fighting for glory. Its target is to bag 400 seats of the 543 in the Lok Sabha.
Much like in 2004, the current government under Modi has released data showing extreme poverty in the country is down to less than 5% of the population, household incomes have increased, and the gap between rural and urban economies has narrowed.
The Modi administration attributes the improvements to the efficacy of central government schemes, from subsidies and income transfer to large-scale infrastructure projects, which have had a significant impact on rural livelihoods.
Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, is harping on the same issues like crony capitalism and religious polarisation during his Bharat Jodo yatra.
He has raked up these issues in the past, but they did not earn him any electoral dividends. They didn't work in 2019 or in the recently-concluded state assembly elections.
What has worked for the Opposition is intelligent and well-timed alliances like the ones forged during state elections in Bihar in 2015, Jharkhand in 2019 and Tamil Nadu in 2021. The latest one is the Chandigarh mayor polls where INDIA coalition defeated BJP.
Forging alliances is only the first step. Taking the message to the masses is a bigger task and takes longer to sink in.
When the BJP lost in 2004, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh blamed the lack of ideology for its loss. The RSS argued that the BJP relied too much on Vajpayee's personality and the government's track record.
The Opposition is making a similar blunder — not working on a presentable, alternative vision to the voter — and instead, members of the bloc have wasted time flexing muscles in front of friends.
First Published: Feb 28, 2024 8:27 AM IST
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