Ankit

Opposition is fighting to limit Modi, not defeat him. And survive nuclear winter

Oppn believes revelations about electoral bonds & idea of BJP’s ‘washing machine’ is a campaign pitch with some oomph. But most Oppn leaders still look at the picture more soberly.

As the combatants ready their manifestos for the 2024 campaign, the first set of opinion polls is with us. I understand the scepticism about news TV channels and the ‘so what else would you expect from these guys’ view among those who support the BJP’s rivals, but some data is better than data-free analysis.

Left to us journalists and pundits who predict poll outcomes after talking at a few dhabas and with three taxi drivers, we could conveniently give victory to our own favourites and then go to sleep happily. If the results are different, there are always the EVMs to blame.

The fact is, you do not even need any pollsters to tell you the BJP is way ahead in this contest. Even as the Opposition’s ambitious INDIA bloc has struggled to maintain cohesion, the BJP has set about repairing and rebuilding the NDA. The passion of the partisan aside, much of the talk within the opposition parties is about where they could limit Narendra Modi, rather than having him voted out of power.

That’s the state of play at this point in time, although the Opposition believes the revelations about the electoral bonds have put some wind in its sails. And the idea of the BJP’s ‘washing machine’ is a campaign pitch with some oomph. Is it powerful enough to turn the Opposition’s fortunes? Most opposition leaders would still look at the picture more soberly. It is about how to ‘limit’ Modi to a ‘reasonable’ number.

An insight into the Opposition’s thinking came in a conversation with the leader of one opposition party across the aisle on an IndiGo flight early in January. The third-generation dynast has inherited a party with a solid caste-based vote bank, albeit in a limited geography. I asked how he looked at the prospects, and whether he believed his caste vote bank would survive Modi’s pull.

The caste vote bank may be generally safe, he said, but when people go out to vote in the Lok Sabha elections, they will see only one choice. “How do you convince them there’s an alternative?” he asked. His party (and the Opposition), he said, was struggling to find an issue that brings a critical mass of people out into the streets. For example, if you raise the Agnipath scheme, only those affected will come to protest. The rest of the voters will be indifferent.

“What’s the solution, then? Has your three-generation politics come to an end?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “let’s see it like we are in a nuclear winter. All we can do is survive until it thaws. In politics, that would mean preserving your caste vote bank, winning at least a few seats and conserving your resources. Live long enough until times change.”

Prescient, I thought, and very wise, too. Except, just days after this conversation, he left the INDIA bloc and joined the NDA. He probably chose this as a way of dealing with his nuclear winter. At least when and if things change, he will still be in the ring, and up on his feet to weigh new options.

With self-preservation or surviving to fight another day being the topmost thought on the minds of the opposition parties, each one faces different challenges. For some, like Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, their state governments would be destabilised by any addition to the BJP’s 2019 tally of seats.

The currently embattled Aam Aadmi Party would look to make a bigger statement in Delhi than the wipeout of 2019. For the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharad Pawar’s NCP faction, a relative success is essential for survival. For Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Lalu/Tejashwi Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a 2019-like performance will make their dream of returning to power in their states that much more improbable.

These parties also have limited avenues for funds. Where they aren’t in power, the taps have remained dry for years and the savings are running out. Those that still rule a state and can ‘persuade’ moneyed people to pay have the ‘agencies’ on their tail. This would scare their prospective donors even more.

All this is about one-state parties. Or maybe one-and-a-half states in the case of AAP. For the Congress, the challenge is of a different order. Of late, it has struggled to maintain cohesion. Between 2014 and 2019, its only achievement was maintaining that rock-solid vote percentage of just about 20 percent. But this does not make enough seats for it to even cross the threshold in the Lok Sabha to get the formal leader of the Opposition status. What is the number it should target to convince its supporters and adversaries that it is a genuine challenger for the future?

The hundred-seat mark would be an interesting thought and can alter Indian politics. But is it realistic? I understand if the Congress officially contests any suggestion other than the idea that it is leading INDIA to a majority, but its leaders are experienced, having tasted victory and defeat. They’d believe that any substantive improvement, any number past 80 seats, would put it on a great footing. This is especially so with the Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand elections to follow soon after.

The results on 4 June will set the momentum for elections in these important states. The BJP faces challenges in each of the three. A Congress tally of 80-plus now would give its allies in Jharkhand and Maharashtra strength. If it fails to reach even that mark, however, it risks losing its pre-eminence as the natural leader in an opposition alliance. A third disaster in a row would mean an upheaval within the party and definitely persuade the other rivals of the BJP to look for alternatives. Some may also decide to take the cue from my fellow traveller to escape the nuclear winter.

Why, then, is the BJP looking so frantic? Why is Modi campaigning as if trying to win power for the first time in 2014? Why this flurry of raids and arrests of opposition leaders, even a serving chief minister? Why does the party look so worried if it is indeed in such a good place in this campaign?

Good questions, and we will explore some answers. The first is that it is simply the nature of the Modi-Shah BJP. For them, every election is to be fought like their life depends on it.

The second, as we wrote in a National Interest four Saturdays ago, is that Modi is now campaigning not just for 2024, but for 2029. What works better for him in that quest than to destroy the Opposition as comprehensively as possible, leaving the survivors to contemplate their future? The Opposition, especially the Congress, is right to fear a one-man/one-party/one-ideology domination of the kind not seen in India yet. And if they don’t like it, they have to convince enough of the voters that this isn’t good for Indian democracy. There isn’t much time left.

EID MUBARAK

Modi’s not just campaigning for 3.0, he’s laying the groundwork for 4.0. Age is no bar!

Leaders with ‘mileage’ believe they can overcome age and vintage. Think Xi, Biden, Trump, going ahead Erdoğan & Putin and now, we have sufficient evidence to say, Narendra Modi.

If I said to you that the frenetic pace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s travels, inaugurations, foundation-stone laying and speech-making in distant places marks the launch of the campaign for the general elections, you’d most certainly ask me, ‘So what’s the big deal? Don’t we all know the campaign is on? After all, the elections are just weeks away.’

Good question. Except the campaign we are talking about is not for 2024. That, the Modi-Shah BJP takes as signed, sealed, locked in its vault. The campaign we are talking about is for 2029. And that is not only because we already have the evidence of public statements by two BJP stalwarts.

First, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in Darbhanga that voters should take a pledge to elect Narendra Modi not just for a third, but also a fourth term for India to end poverty. Then, Home Minister and BJP playmaker Amit Shah said at a media conclave that the Opposition should now be making plans only for 2034 onwards.

Add the two and it means Narendra Modi will be in the contest for an unprecedented, consecutive fourth term in 2029. In case you are among those who still harbour the illusion that there is a 75-year retirement age in the BJP, see the fielding of Hema Malini in Mathura for a third term at 75.

If you ask BJP people, they will ask you, ‘Who ever told you there was an age limit?’ Nevertheless, her nomination at 75 is as clear an indication as you can get that there is no 75-year cut-off. And if she can contest at 75, who’d grudge Modi at 79 (as he will be in 2029). He would still be about two years younger than Joe Biden today, and two years older than Donald Trump. If one of them can be the US President at that vintage, why not Modi?

In any case, when did age limits work in politics? Even the Chinese Communists, who had instituted strict age limits to make their leadership younger, have rewritten the rules for Xi Jinping. This tempts me to bring back to you that incredibly brilliant line Dharmendra’s character, one of a trio of double-crossing crooks, spoke in the film Johnny Gaddaar (2007) when one of his younger comrades expressed surprise that he did “such vile things” even at his age. “It isn’t about age,” he said, “it’s the mileage”.

The leaders with “mileage” believe they can go on forever. Think Xi, Biden, Trump, going ahead Erdoğan and Putin and now, we have sufficient evidence to say, Modi. You will see a Narendra Modi campaign for a fourth term in 2029, for sure.

Even more than the words of Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, we find evidence in how and where Modi is campaigning for now, and what he’s saying. The time and energy he’s investing in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, for example.

All the sceptics, even DMK leaders when they speak on the sidelines, admit that while the BJP may not win any seats by itself, its vote percentage will go up substantially, some estimates taking it to 15-17 per cent. It may not get you even one seat this time but once you reach that range, and the momentum is with you, you are in the game in 2029.

The history of family-run parties in India tells us that by the time the third generation takes over, they lose much power. You can start from the Congress (Nehru-Gandhis) and list all the rest. Will the DMK under Udhayanidhi be an exception?

If the BJP only looks at the way things have gone for the rest, they will see a wide space opening out for them in Tamil Nadu. Especially with the other claimant to Dravidianism, the AIADMK, already divided and on the ropes.

Believers in the DMK argue that it isn’t just about a dynasty, but ideology, which they believe will survive any individuals. In real life, it has never worked in Indian politics as yet. Forget ideology, even religion has not been able to arrest a dynasty-led decline.

You can check out the Shiromani Akali Dal, India’s only fully religion-based party (its head is mandated by its constitution to be a baptised Sikh) from what it was before it became a dynastic party, to where it is now under its second generation. That’s why we see Modi’s campaign in Tamil Nadu now as a pitch for 2029 when he sees the BJP as at least the second leading party.

Kerala brings other opportunities for him. Track the consistent outreach from the BJP to the state’s Christians, whose committed vote is essential for Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) politics. There are old suspicions between the Christians and the Muslims, the other UDF vote bank.

If even some of the Christians move to the BJP, the Muslims will move to the Left as they see the Congress/UDF in decline. The BJP will then have plenty of space. It is in anticipation of this that he is campaigning now and also recruiting leaders who would’ve been expected to be in the Congress. Like the son and daughter respectively, of two former Congress chief ministers: A.K. Antony and K. Karunakaran. This is his campaign in Kerala for 2029.

If you take a closer look at the BJP’s flurry of alliance-making, a long-term pattern is clear. Today, the BJP is carefully choosing allies already in decline, with a poor negotiating position, whose decline can then be hastened as it moves into their space.

We can give you an entire list to show a clear pattern with no exceptions. In Assam, the BJP won the 2016 elections in alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF). In the subsequent Bodoland Tribal Council election, however, it dumped the BPF and found another tribal ally in the United People’s Party Liberal (UPP-L) led by Pramod Boro. A much-weakened BPF returned to the fold in 2022, while the AGP was also now a pale shadow of itself.

A similar pattern followed in Bihar. The BJP used Chirag Paswan to weaken Nitish Kumar (he only put up candidates against the JD(U) in the state elections and called himself Modi ji’s Hanuman) and was now trying to break away the JD(U)’s MPs, leaving Nitish no choice other than defecting back. By 2029, you can imagine what the state of the JD(U) will be. If anything, it will already emerge much weaker this summer.

This is exactly how the alliance-making is panning out in Andhra (a weaker TDP, likely to weaken under the third generation in 2029) and in Haryana, where Dushyant Chautala’s JJP is nearly finished. And even in Maharashtra, where one old ally, the Shiv Sena, is dismembered, while the new acquisition, the breakaway NCP, has no future without the BJP.

If you add it all up, you will know why we say that the Modi-BJP campaign for 2029 is already on. What can the Opposition do? Watch this space in the coming weeks.

CAA comes not with a bang, but with a whimper. Without NRC, it will fade into academic debate!

For BJP, CAA was strategic move that did not quite work out because those it would benefit could’ve been accommodated under existing laws, and new entrants would remain excluded.

The Modi government’s notification of the rules of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), it seemed, had failed in the immediate purpose of its timing: overshadowing the Supreme Court order on anonymous electoral bonds. The bonds story had fuel to last.

attacked the law as an invitation to millions of poor and unemployable “illegal immigrants and ghuspethiyas (infiltrators)” from Pakistan and Bangladesh. This sparked protests outside his house by hundreds of Pakistani Hindus currently living in inhuman conditions in illegal bastis in the capital.

An even more important role was played by the US State Department in bringing the story back into the headlines, at least below the fold as we would say in old newspapering parlance. Spokesman Matthew Miller said at his usual briefing that the US was concerned by the law, stood by equity for all faiths, and was making a close study of it.

At which point I shall make a humble request to him and his principals at the State Department: If after the deepest study you do indeed figure out what you find wrong with this, please do also let us know in India. Or, as Kishore Kumar sang in Majrooh Sultanpuri’s words for Dev Anand in his 1965 classic Teen Deviyaan: agar tumhi samajh sako mujhe bhi samjhana.

Forgive my lapsing into the old Hindi film nostalgia. The fact, however, is that on the closest study, I find it difficult to decide whether the CAA, as it reads now with its rules, is good, bad, a bit of both, or inconsequential. Let’s try and examine this from the point of view of its likely — or intended — beneficiaries, victims, and the ones with principled arguments.

• The most likely beneficiaries are mostly Hindus, some Sikhs, Christians and probably a few Buddhists in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Precise figures are hard to come by, though unlike India lately, Pakistan had a census in 2023. Let us say, for ease of understanding, that the number is about two crore, more than 95 percent of them Hindu. Presuming that most or any of them feel dreadfully persecuted and want to come to India, won’t they be jumping in joy at the CAA?

The answer, unfortunately, is no. They are 10 years too late. The law would have benefited them only if they had come to India by the end of 2014. Because 31 December, 2014 is the cut-off for its application.

• This is a bummer, but surely those who came before 2014 will now benefit? Yes, but they can also ask a question: If India, especially under the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, really felt so strongly about them, why did it not give them citizenship in all these 10 years? The Government of India has the sovereign power to accord citizenship to anybody. It doesn’t need any special law for any community. Surely, no new law was needed to give Indian citizenship to singer Adnan Sami, which was done with some fanfare on camera by then minister of state for home affairs Kiren Rijiju.

Why make us, the poorest and most miserable Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh, live in subhuman conditions as illegal immigrants for all these years? Were we then made to wait 10 extra years for a more opportune moment in the BJP’s politics?

• With the likely beneficiaries out of the way, we come to those fearful of it. Why is there no Shaheen Bagh-style stirring now? It is because the cause for action in 2019 doesn’t exist now. Then, the CAA was following a widely proclaimed chronology that would have seen a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in its wake. The fear of the NRC was buried, even ridiculed by Prime Minister Modi himself in his speech at Ramlila Maidan on 22 December, 2019. There was obviously a realisation that the party had gone too far. This was an absolute no-no when the prime minister was taking such pride in receiving the highest national awards from the key Islamic countries and understood the value of his new relationships in the Arab Middle East, outflanking Pakistan. Since then, no BJP leader has resurrected it. If there is no NRC, no Muslim in India has to fear anything.

• The only part of the country where the law makes a difference is Assam. Successive amendments to Indian citizenship law have maintained the Assam exception. That’s in deference to the anti-illegal immigration (later renamed anti-foreigner) mass movement in the state from 1979 onwards. The native Assamese speakers of the Brahmaputra Valley and tribal areas believe that tens of millions of Bangladeshis illegally settled in their state, upsetting the demographic balance. The RSS has campaigned for more than four decades in the state to convince the Assamese Hindus that they should make a distinction between Bengali Muslims and Hindus. That was successful, but never fully.

The difference in Assam is that an NRC process had already been carried out there. Assam got caught in a twin trap. First, the NRC caught too many Hindus as aliens. Despite the rise of the BJP/RSS, a large enough number of Assamese, especially the students, still won’t make an exception for Bengali Hindus. That is the reason Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is now trying to douse the fresh unrest by arguing that the idea that millions or lakhs of Bengali Hindus will now be naturalised is ridiculous. If at all, it will be “50-80,000 people (Hindus)” in the Barak Valley, he says. If these are all the people this politically disruptive law might benefit, you might ask why it was even needed.

It would be reasonable to conclude that for the BJP, it was a strategic move that did not quite work out because those it would benefit could easily have been accommodated under the existing laws, and new entrants would remain excluded. The hope of nationwide polarisation and street unrest vapourised with the PM himself taking the NRC out of the game.

The Muslim community has also displayed a shrewd, underdog’s maturity in not reacting to the latest development. Principled, constitutional arguments on whether the state can define citizenship based on faith will continue to be made in the Supreme Court. Whatever the verdict, it will be academic and make no substantive difference.

There will be some noise and ceremonial handing over of citizenship certificates. Beyond that, the CAA story lies defeated by the haste and political miscalculation behind it. It can only revive if one or both of the following happen: fresh talk of a nationwide NRC and/or the cut-off date being shifted forward from 31 December, 2014. Can it happen? I’d suggest watching this space in the run-up to 2029.

For BJP, Kejriwal is an idea whose time has come to be destroyed!

The ‘idea’ Kejriwal's politics grew around was a no-holds-barred fight against corruption. That is the reason Modi govt has now tarred him and his entire party with the same paint.

In her first response on the arrest of her chief minister and party leader, Atishi, a key minister in the Delhi government, said that Arvind Kejriwal isn’t merely an individual. He is, instead, an idea.

It follows that she means his arrest, or temporary removal from the scene, won’t mean a crippling blow to his politics, party or government.

That’s a good and interesting point. Let us take it at face value to begin with. We will know in the next few days what it means for his party and the two governments it runs, in Delhi and Punjab. The more important discussion, however, is about the implications this will have for national politics.

Theoretically, if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is able to withstand this blow and persevere till Kejriwal is eventually released, it could emerge stronger. Kejriwal could then return as a leader with his charisma burnished by time spent in the BJP’s prison.

If your basic credibility remains intact, and if your ‘base’ is immune to corruption charges against you, some time in a rival government’s jail never hurt an Indian politician. On the other hand, if your government flounders in your absence, your party lapses into disarray and is crippled further by defections — which the BJP will be working quite assiduously to bring about — it will send your politics into terminal decline. That’s the juncture at which the party now stands.

If Kejriwal is today an idea, the ‘idea’ he and his politics grew around was a no-holds-barred fight against corruption. That is the reason the Modi government has now tarred him and his entire party and government with the same brush: corruption.

It isn’t the individuals they are after. It is the idea once synonymous with Kejriwal. That everybody in public life and debate — politicians, corporates, media, judges, everybody — is corrupt and complicit. Or, as the India Against Corruption (IAC) war cries went: sab chor hain (everybody is a thief) and sab mile hue hain (they are all complicit). It followed that the only one truly fighting them all was Kejriwal.

That’s how he became an idea, which the Modi government now wants to destroy with corruption charges: “Look, look now, who has been talking all these years.”

Over the past decade, the BJP witnessed that idea of Kejriwal gain ground. It won Punjab and got some votes in Goa, but more importantly, won five seats even in Gujarat.

It polled about 13 percent of the vote in the Modi-Shah BJP’s pocket borough, showed some growth in municipal elections and set alarm bells ringing. This BJP may run its politics on the grievances of the past, but it doesn’t fight today’s battles today. Like any true superpower, it fights the day after tomorrow’s battles today, and ideally far from its own territory. The 2022 state elections showed AAP growing in the most valued part of the BJP’s territory, its heartland of heartlands. That is when the die was cast and AAP was marked out as the rival of the day after tomorrow, to be finished now.

If the BJP succeeds and the idea of Kejriwal now declines, it will reaffirm a larger trend in national politics. That all the efforts made by popular, powerful and ambitious leaders to expand their political geographies have failed.

Over the past three years, we have seen Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) invest time, energy and money in Goa, Tripura and Meghalaya in the hope of acquiring a national footprint, and fail.

If the TMC’s failure was spectacular, former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) replacing the T (Telangana) in his party’s name with B (Bharat) turned out to be a ridiculous disaster. None of the other state parties can even dream of growing beyond their ethnic boundaries. The Left, once the only other pan-state power, is grateful enough to hold on to just one state.

The AAP became the only party that succeeded in expanding its presence, and rose to be the only party in the country other than the BJP and the Congress to rule in more than one state. This is precisely why the BJP has decided to cut it to size. It is fighting a threat for a distant future today.

To understand the significance of the political shift caused by Kejriwal’s arrest, check out the political party to have risen to his and his party’s defence with the greatest alacrity. It is the Congress, the party Kejriwal and his 2010-14 campaign destroyed through its anti-corruption movement, routinely demanding the arrest of its topmost ministers.

Why, then, is the Congress the party most vocal and active in his defence, and not merrily rolling in schadenfreude? Two other factors matter besides the partial alliance in Delhi and Gujarat.

The first is that the Congress, like any other anti-BJP party, knows that what is happening to AAP today could happen to it tomorrow. Its chief ministers in Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh are watching this very closely. They are particularly interested in seeing what kind of fight their own party, especially its legal talent, is able to put up.

The second factor is that the Congress now knows that it is the only force — however weakened it might be — that stands between the BJP and India’s evolution into a single-party Republic. Because once it is out of the way, the BJP could sort out the other regional powers en passant: co-opting some, demolishing others. The Congress knows it will be its turn next.

The key takeaway is that the assault on AAP has made India a nation of two political forces, the BJP and the Congress. Never mind the power differential between them.

It is safe now to say that in the years to come, at least till 2029, the Congress will be the BJP’s only national rival, however weak it is. Despite its serial defeats, it retains (at least it did until 2019) its vote share of nearly 20 per cent. As long as one out of five Indians votes for you despite your many failings, waffling leadership and near-zero hope of victory and a return to power, you stay in the game. If that 20 percent even becomes 25, the game changes.

“Good point,” you might say if you were from the Congress, and even steal a moment to smile. Then the reality check. The first thing to do is to protect yourself from similar assaults from the BJP in the months to come. And for that, as the BJP is doing, fight your battles of the day after tomorrow today. That is why the Congress has risen so spiritedly to AAP’s defence. It is fighting for its own survival, to still be in the ring and up for a fight, with the inevitability of a two-party system in the country.

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