In 2004, I was lunching with the American Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation, Linnet Deily, in a lovely restaurant overlooking the lake in Geneva. It was just before the Indian election. At that time, it was considered that it would be virtually a walkover for the Vajpayee government. I told her that I had my doubts. The elections in the past year in different parts of the country had thrown up results in favour of the Congress and diverse regional parties. In the national elections, the UPA won and Manmohan Singh became prime minister. Linnet told me later that she marvelled at my prescience because I was the only one at that time who had expressed doubts about the NDA coming back to power. I had said the same to the then cabinet secretary, Kamal Pande, on a visit to Delhi. Diplomatically, he smiled.
Now that the general elections are not too distant, opinion surveys are in full swing. India Today, together with CVoter, has come out with its Mood of the Nation poll, which shows that Modi appears to occupy the pole position, with 52% naming him as the best candidate for PM and 63% indicating that his performance has been good or outstanding. Interestingly, an Outlook opinion poll in 2004 had placed Vajpayee in pole position, with 58% in his favour. According to the present poll, the BJP, on its own, could win 287 seats, while the INDIA bloc could secure 193 seats.
In 2004, India Today had predicted in its opinion poll shortly before the elections: 282 for BJP, 165 for the Congress-led alliance, and 96 for others. Of course, it is still too early to make predictions now as several months remain before the 2024 elections.
Both in 2004 and 2023, the prime minister was and is the focus of the BJP strategy. As Prabhu Chawla wrote in India Today on March 22, 2004, “Atal was both the message and the messiah. If the BJP brand managers have their way, an Atal visual and his name will have appeared more than 100 million times by the time the last vote is cast. His name will appear on almost every public vehicle and, from every road crossing, Vajpayee’s hands will reach out for a vote.”
For the last five years, the BJP’s strategy has also been to focus on building the image of Modi. No minister, no officer spoke of any achievement of the government without attributing it to Modi. His image appeared on every street corner, in all government advertisements, and even on Covid-19 vaccination certificates. Every social welfare measure was attributed to his munificence.
The other similarity is that, in 2004, the NDA launched a huge “India Shining” campaign, which resembles the development mantra that is favoured presently. In the last few years, the Central government has managed to appropriate a much larger share of national revenues and has increased public debt substantially, facilitating expansion and multiplication of Central schemes, not giving enough room to states to fashion development policies according to their specific needs. This is undoubtedly a regression from the basic principles of a federal democracy.
In a state like Kerala, for instance, the Jal Jeevan scheme has no takers because most households have wells from which they can draw water. Likewise, Kerala has long gotten rid of open defecation and toilets are of no great value. The lack of flexibility in such schemes makes them virtually redundant in some states. Federalism and decentralisation have clearly taken a back seat, both on the economic front and politically, despite the early proclamations of the formation of Team India. The Centre wants to be seen exclusively as the saviour of the people, with the states seriously hamstrung by limited vertical devolution of resources and strong curbs on their borrowing capacity.
The big difference between then and now is that several opposition parties have combined to form an alliance well before the election. So far, this alliance has been slow off the blocks. The recent meeting in Mumbai seems to have given it some momentum with the formation of a coordination committee that has the authority to make decisions if there are differences between parties over seat allocation. The presence of Sharad Pawar in the committee as a senior statesman will help resolve conflicts.
Instead of looking warily at each other, the opposition parties need to unite wholeheartedly to form an irresistible force. In state elections, panchayat elections, and even society elections, they should give up the practice of going hammer and tongs at each other as they presently do. Also, they need a simple, common agenda that appeals to the people as meaningful, doable and beneficial. The agenda should not be long, dreary and convoluted like the Congress manifesto of 2019.
There are areas which they can exploit, like corruption and highhandedness in the lower bureaucracy, unleashed by the excessive use of Central investigative and regulatory agencies, unemployment, inflation and the tilt towards the corporate sector in macro-level economic policy. Tribal warfare on communal lines has dismembered Manipur, bulldozers have razed the houses of the poor in some other states, and mutual animosity between communities is noticeably growing. The judiciary and the Constitution are seen to be under threat, laws which undercut democracy are being imposed, and there is a clear sense of alienation among some sections of society. And there is always the possibility of unanticipated events and advancement of the elections.
Indeed, the unexpected decision to convene a Parliament session in the third week of this month and the appointment of a committee headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind has led to speculation that not only will the elections be advanced but that state elections will be held simultaneously with the national elections, a sharp deviation from practices followed in other federal countries like the US, Canada and Australia.
Does the opposition realise they are running out of time? And perhaps also that the NDA has a huge financial advantage over them, which will give the former the wherewithal to fight both the Lok Sabha and state elections, with support from large sections of the media. Will INDIA’s strategy and agenda be further delayed? Will they be able to reach out to voters early enough?
(Views are personal)
K M Chandrasekhar
Former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir