Still reeling from the shock of its last electoral defeat and unable to battle an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party, a dispirited opposition got a shot in the arm last week.Three developments brought a modicum of cheer to the BJP’s rivals: the formation of a Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress government in Maharashtra, denying a second term to the BJP in the important Western state, the Trinamool Congress Party’s victory in three bypolls in West Bengal, and a reaffirmation by the latest GDP figures that the economy is floundering.
This turn of events has given hope to the opposition that all is not lost. It has proved that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are not invincible. That the two leaders can be beaten at their own game in the political arena, and that Modi is personally looking vulnerable on his government’s inability to revive the sagging economy.
However, it may be too early for celebrations yet. The opposition should remember how it had jubilantly written off the BJP after the Congress won the 2018 assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. But Modi lost no time in taking damage control measures on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections. The government quickly moved a Bill providing quotas in government jobs and educational institutions for the economically backward sections from upper castes, and rolled out a cash transfer scheme for small and marginal farmers to placate angry voters.
The Pulwama terror attack and Balakot air strikes further helped Modi establish himself as the sole contender for the country’s top post.But for the moment, the Congress has got something to smile about. Its decision to join a Shiv Sena-headed government, taken after a prolonged internal debate, has provided a breather to the party’s Maharashtra unit, which had lost a record number of important candidates to the BJP in the run-up to the assembly elections. The state leaders eventually succeeded in convincing senior Congress leaders in Delhi that the Maharashtra unit would be wiped out if the BJP came back to power. Having got a reprieve in Maharashtra, the Congress now believes the BJP can be contained in the states, if not nationally. All eyes are now on the outcome of the ongoing
Jharkhand assembly election, where the BJP is battling it out without its allies.
Like the Congress, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has also got a morale booster. The West Bengal chief minister has been fighting with her back to the wall after the BJP stunned her by picking up 18 seats in the last Lok Sabha election. The fact that the Trinamool Congress swept the three bye-elections, including the seat held by the BJP’s state president Dilip Ghosh, has energized and emboldened the party as it gets ready for next year’s crucial assembly polls. The Trinamool chief is clearly working to a plan as she has toned down her attacks on Modi, and is instead reaching out to the public, seeking its feedback and publicising the state government’s programmes.
At the same time, the economic slowdown has provided sufficient ammunition to the opposition to attack the Modi government. While the Congress is holding a massive rally in Delhi on December 14 to highlight the current dispensation’s handling of the economy, the government was cornered by the opposition in Parliament when confronted with facts and figures on growing job losses, agrarian distress and a slump in the manufacturing sector.
As former Union minister P Chidambaram pointed out in his first press conference after his release from Tihar jail, the Prime Minister has maintained a studied silence on this burning issue, leaving it instead to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to face the opposition offensive.
Undoubtedly, these developments have unsettled the BJP. The Modi government is struggling to revive the economy, failing which it would have to deal with serious repercussions. Having promised to usher in “acche din” and build a “New India”, Modi’s personal image is at stake here.
The bypoll results in West Bengal have shown that it will not be so easy for the BJP to dethrone Mamata Banerjee in the assembly polls as it had thought, after its excellent performance in the Lok Sabha elections. The saffron party, which has been making concerted efforts to expand its footprint in this Eastern state, finds itself handicapped without a credible state leadership.But losing a government in the richest state, housing the country’s financial capital, proved to be the proverbial unkindest cut for the BJP. It is still coming to terms with the fact that it misjudged Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The BJP was convinced that Thackeray will not snap ties with it, that Pawar will eventually come around to their side, and that the Congress will never join hands with the Shiv Sena.
This is the bad news.But the good news is that the next Lok Sabha election is not due till 2024. This gives the BJP sufficient time for course correction. And it has proved that it is quite adept at that.
Anita Katyal
The writer is a senior journalist.
This column will appear every fortnight