If there is war in peace time, it is during elections. Once, rulers relied on planetary configurations to choose the time of attack as advised by court astrologers. Ironically, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Electoral pundits like tycoons, market mavens, ideologically-infected intellectuals and polluted posters play number games to whet the appetite of their target audiences at cocktail parties or on TV. As the countdown to the 2024 Lok Sabha election begins, predicting the rise, fall, eclipse and elimination of leaders is their hobby.
Writing the obituary of the Congress is the usual pastime. Narendra Modi has already declared victory, predicting 370 seats for the BJP. Right-wing opinion and phoney pollsters give the Congress less than 50 MPs. In the absence of a combative national party, it is left to the opposition’s regional rajas to halt the Modi juggernaut in their own fiefdoms or face extinction. Elections 2024 concerns not just Modi 3.0, but also the political permanence of the regional ideologies of Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, M K Stalin, Siddaramaiah and Revanth Reddy. Yadav scions Akhilesh and Tejashwi must prove they are worthy successors of their legendary paters who straddled their states like colossuses and played important roles in the making and unmaking of prime ministers.
The Congress is as likely to dent the BJP in a direct fight in North India as a bullfinch can hurt a hawk. A Lok Sabha majority will depend on the outcomes in UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, Jharkhand, Punjab and Delhi. These states account for 348 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BJP has 169, and INDIA and its ideological allies 126 seats. The remaining MPs are from smaller regional parties such as the BRS, the Left parties and others.
A look at the survival sweepstakes in the political casino of 2024.
Uttar Pradesh will decide the future of the 50-year-old ex-CM Akhilesh Yadav, whose father’s mammoth status once won the SP 36 Lok Sabha seats and almost 60 percent of the assembly benches. In 2012, Akhilesh scored in the state elections but has been on an all-round losing spree since. Ironically, he is the one who has emerged as the ‘A’ in Modi’s TINA factor. In 2019, he allied with Mayawati, who won just five assembly seats. Now he is joined at the hip with Rahul. Modi and Yogi are boasting of a 100 per cent sweep in the state’s 80 seats. Will Akhilesh’s popularity halt the saffron wave of Ram Mandir euphoria? With Mayawati’s isolation and suspect politics, will he cross into the double-digit domain from five MPs and help the Congress add to its kitty?
Bihar, with 40 seats, will mark a new turn in the fortunes of its dynasties. Tejashwi Yadav, the 34-year-old former deputy CM, could either ride into the sunset or ascend the throne as the fitting heir of father Lalu Yadav, who lorded over Bihar for over a decade. Currently, his Rashtriya Janata Dal is zero in the Lok Sabha and its ally, the Congress, won just one seat in 2019, with the remaining 39 seats going to the BJP-Nitish Kumar combo. Since Nitish has lost his credibility as a yo-yo yokel, the junior Yadav has a chance to grab that space and become a national player. His clout will be tested this time in influencing Modi’s numbers. Will Yadav open an account on his own since Lalu is ailing?
Maharashtra, with 48 seats, will decide the future relevance of Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, both local power players with national reach. They have been dominating Maharashtra politics for decades, but recently lost their parties to defections. This election will decide whether they can retain their cadre and organisational support. In 2019, Pawar—whose party has a new moniker—won just four seats against the BJP-Sena alliance. The Shiv Sena got 18 seats; most of its MPs have crossed the slippery floor of opportunistic optimism to the alternative Shiv Sena of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Pawar, too, is bereft of nearly all his MLAs and MPs. The charisma of both leaders will be taxed. Will their traditional voter base grant them the catbird seat? Will Pawar Senior and Thackeray Junior reclaim their past glory or become footnotes in the pages of time?
West Bengal is a prestige battle for Mamata Banerjee and Modi. In 2019, the BJP inflicted decisive damage on the TMC by winning 18 seats and, later, 77 in the assembly. Modi has set a target of 35 seats to achieve his target of 370. For the past two years, West Bengal has been a war zone. The feisty Mamata has vowed to throw the BJP, which she calls ‘zamindars’, out of West Bengal. Can she? Her personal survival and the TMC’s future are precariously linked with the numbers they chalk up. Her defeat will allow the saffron standard to flutter in the political skies at the next state polls. A victory means she remains Bengal’s uncrowned sovereign.
Tamil Nadu is on the cusp of a Dravidian catharsis, its identity under siege by a combative BJP. With AIADMK vanishing faster than expected, M K Stalin, 71, is facing the worst challenge to his pertinence and political skills. Of TN’s 39 MPs, DMK has 23 and the Congress eight. The BJP has targeted 15 seats. Since it is betting on polarised politics to disrupt caste equations and restore Sanatan pride, Stalin’s arsenal needs a new Dravidastra to win.
Kerala has never elected a BJP MP, thanks to resistance from two secular formations: the CPI(M)-led LDF and the Congress-led UDF. Both have been taking turns to keep the BJP out. For the first time, they are facing a formidable challenge from the BJP. The Congress tally of 15 MPs out of 20 is credited to its leviathan-like local leaders. The cornered Left depends on the 78-year-old Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s red redoubtability. Will the sun sink over Vijayan’s hopes and the gods open the gateway of their own country to the BJP?
All eyes are on the ability of the local leadership in Karnataka, Jharkhand, Punjab and Delhi to halt the saffron tsunami. Both Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar are hoping to chop the BJP numbers down from 25 to less than 15, and increase Congress’s digits from zero to 10. AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann have spurred on their workers to reduce the BJP to zero in Delhi and Punjab.
The Congress alone doesn’t determine the arithmetic of the 17th Lok Sabha and the political contours of a New India. The May results will decide the end or revival of regional leaders and caste politics. Vocal for Local, or Local for Vocal Modi, will be the reigning rhetoric in states that hold the keys to Indraprastha. At stake are the tempestuous legacies of titans’ terrains, dynastic determination and ideological stability. Ironically, it is not Modi’s victory, but the defeat of his challengers that will decide the path Indian politics will take in the coming decades.
prabhu chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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