Politics is woven with extremes, a pastiche of memory and forgetfulness. In December 1988, winter was sweeping through North India. Warmed by Tamil Nadu’s tropical weather, Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister and Congress chief, was stumping for G K Moopanar, the party’s chief ministerial candidate—the assembly elections were on. Rajiv entered a small, ramshackle hut in a remote hamlet. Moopanar asked the old woman living there whether she recognised Rajiv. Promptly came the response: “Yes, he is Indira amman’s son. Who are you?”
Her answer captured the paradox of both individual and dynastic aristocracy in the Congress and other parties in India. Voters knew the prime minister, but not the regional leader. The outcome in Tamil Nadu proved the point. The Congress won only 26 out of the 234 assembly seats with less than 20 percent votes. But 2024 isn’t 1989. However, the mood in almost in all states reflects the same memory algorithm. From Itanagar in the East to Thiruvananthapuram in the South, voters immediately connect with the omnipresent Narendra Modi. But more than half of them aren’t plugged into the BJP or the local candidate of the world’s largest political party.
For the first time, the general elections are taking place without a national thematic charter. While the issues vary marginally from region to region, individual supremacy is the new normal. The medium, the message and the messenger are all rolled into one. At the national level, Modi carries the message as the messenger and the medium. His road shows, land-and-fly-again rallies, selective interactions with influencers and celebs are choreographed to convey his idea and ideology more than of the party he leads. In these interactions, adherents expound on his personality, demeanour and mental prowess rather than on his ideological insights. This strategy has paid him rich dividends, and perhaps may again for a record third time.
If imitation is a form of flattery, in politics it is a form of strategy. So many regional seneschals are photocopies of the Modi mould. The local electoral narrative doesn’t revolve around alternative models of governance, but on regional leaders. In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is the Trinamool Congress chief, chief minister and messenger; the vote is either for her or against her. In Karnataka, it is for D K Shivakumar. Tamil Nadu will plump for Chief Minister M K Stalin. Delhi will be for or against the incarcerated Arvind Kejriwal, and in Punjab the mandate will be for Bhagwant Mann.
The other ballot balladeers are Tejashwi Yadav in Bihar, Revanth Reddy in Andhra and Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala. Sadly and strangely, both Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi haven’t become alternative messengers with an alternative message. For all parties, the issues are incidental and accidental, to be raised only when absolutely necessary or to divert attention. The tone, tenor, tenacity and intensity of the political discourse vary from region to region.
In North India, culture, politics and religion are the hunting grounds for the divide-and-rule model. In almost 60 percent of the Lok Sabha seats, the contest is mainly between the traditional rivals BJP and Congress, with the exception of UP and Bihar. Barring UP, where Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is the key player, only Modi matters in the remaining states. Chief ministers are only symbolic second engines.
In all states, the BJP is playing the development card, but ultimately its campaign revolves around Hindutva and nationalism. The uniting thread is Modi’s decisiveness: scrapping Article 370, Ram mandir, keeping Pakistan on a leash, and minimising terror by highly publicised arrests. BJP CMs are stage cutouts on the prime minister’s rally platforms. On the other hand, Akhilesh, Tejashwi, Mann, Kejriwal, the Abdullahs and Mehbooba are offering themselves as local substitutes for Modi.
South India, with 130 seats, is the only battleground where Modi is pitted directly against powerful local chieftains. Hence he visits the Southern states more. His target of 370 seats for the BJP primarily depends on the electoral outcomes in these five states. The BJP hasn’t created a local leader with a state-wide following. Though K Annamalai, a former IPS officer, has captured media attention, he is yet to acquire reasonable acceptability on the ground. While there is a visible surge in Modi’s personal popularity, the lotus is yet to bloom in the consciousness of Tamils and Malayali voters.
The Rising Sun (DMK) and the Two Leaves (AIADMK) enjoy maximum recall value in TN. Stalin is the tallest Dravidian leader after the death of Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa. The BJP tried to put the DMK on the back foot by raising the Katchatheevu issue, which failed. In Kerala, the BJP made a similar attempt against the Congress and the Left by promoting The Kerala Story, a film projecting Muslim dominance in ‘god’s own country’. The BJP’s homegrown leaders are no match for Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, Andhra’s Jagan Reddy and the Siddaramaiah-Shivakumar combo. In South India, it is Modi vs the rest.
In West India, Gujarat and Maharashtra are dependent on Modi magic. Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde and his deputies Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar are being exposed as weak opponents to the combined strength of Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar and the Congress. The trio have more cadre power than the splintered NCP and Shiv Sena. But their speeches are bereft of real issues; the emphasis is more about parivarvad and corruption. The BJP has left it to Modi to demolish their popularity. Maharashtra will play an important role in deciding the winner.
East India is another palatine of this paradigm. While the BJP holds sway in the smaller states, Odisha will see a clash of the titans. Though Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik enjoys a cordial relationship with Modi, for the first time, the BJP has become a serious challenger to the BJD’s over-quarter-century supremacy. Of Odisha’s 21 seats, the BJP’s target is to win 15. Team Naveen is determined to prove that the Patnaik magic will prevail over Modi’s charisma. For the past five years, the BJP and its leaders have made more visits to West Bengal than to all other states put together. Meanwhile, Modi is connecting with Bengal with the Hindutva magnet and anti-corruption rhetoric.
It seems evident that Election 24 is not a campaign to make India a better place and strengthen its democratic foundations. It is a vicious war between individual leaders to enlarge their fiefdoms and politically eliminate adversaries who don’t conform to their ideology and idiom. The final outcome will decide whether India is a land where diversity unites it politically and culturally. It is the age of personalisation of ideology worldwide. Modi straddles India as its principal paragon and the regional rajas are sticking to the same script. Wait for the credits to roll when May ends.
prabhu chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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