The make-or-break anti-Modi gambit

SHORT-TERM political punditry is an extremely perilous proposition. Even the best of astrologers won’t hazard a guess about the next fortnight’s happenings. So, the sudden announcement of a five-day session of Parliament starting September 18 has put the entire political leadership — minus the Prime Minister and his inner circle — in a spin. There is all-round speculation about possible legislative business to bring in a “one nation, one election” law to club parliamentary and Assembly polls together or to have women’s reservation in Parliament or to fulfil the Sangh Parivar’s core agenda of enacting a uniform civil code.

Inevitably, the election will be all about Modi: a coalition seeking votes to remove him from office.

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The possibility of advancing the Lok Sabha polls is always talked about in an election year, particularly when the going gets tough for the incumbent. The BJP is not expected to do well in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram, which go to the polls in the coming three months. Hence, the assumption of a possible advancement of the Lok Sabha elections — due only in April 2024 — towards the end of 2023 is about cashing in on the euphoria of the moon landing, economic growth indicators and the grand G20 leaders’ meet.

However, a national election happening in three months or six months may not drastically alter the outcome for the ruling party and the Opposition because while the former is perennially in the election mode, the latter bickers till the last moment, depending solely on anti-incumbency to return to power. Sure, the temptation to hold a presidential-style election around PM Modi’s candidature before adverse results from various states queer the pitch cannot be overlooked. But the Opposition insists that all this speculation is only to manage the news cycle by trying to divert the discourse from INDIA’s meeting in Mumbai and the fresh allegations of stock manipulation against the Adani group.

Another issue that has got completely eclipsed in the meantime is the possibility of Chinese President Xi Jinping skipping the G20 meeting. Modi warmly hosting Xi and the latter’s smiling presence at the G20 meeting without resolving the border issue would have been political harakiri for the BJP, particularly in the context of Rahul Gandhi raising concerns over Chinese border incursions during his recent Ladakh visit. Then came the map controversy, which too was lapped up by the Opposition. After India’s “strong protest” over China’s new map and the condescending “calm down” response by Beijing, Xi’s visit had almost become untenable. So, politically there cannot be a more welcome news for the government than Xi skipping the G20 meet.

Then, it would be terribly out of form for a host to be less than polite to a visiting head of state. And historically, India is yet to live down the 1962 debacle or the continuing hostility that keeps getting expressed in border tensions and the Chinese claims over Indian territory. Again for historical reasons, Russia remains an all-weather friend whose President’s absence will not change the relationship. Russian friendship notwithstanding, India’s alignment with the West gets more pronounced with every hostile Chinese action. The G20 meeting, thus, becomes another opportunity for India to proclaim its proximity to the West as a new reality and an established norm. However, for the ruling BJP, it is still a reality that is tempered with anxieties about a western regime-change agenda.

When the Opposition on Thursday unleashed an attack on the PM over his alleged proximity to Adani or accused the government of crony capitalism, the response, interestingly, was a finger pointed at the source of funding for the investigations against Adani — George Soros, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Ford Foundation, all accused some time or the other of furthering American interests or interfering with the opinion-moulding process in Third World countries. Foreign media and foreign-funded Indian news outlets have by and large been critical of Modi, helping the BJP claim that such exposes have all been a motivated political hit job by the West, aimed at regime change.

Whether the latest Adani expose has fired up the Opposition or not, the Centre appointing a committee headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind to examine the feasibility of simultaneous parliamentary and Assembly elections seems to have triggered some urgency in the INDIA camp. It is hoping to finalise the sharing of seats by September 30 — something unheard of even in the Congress, what to say about a conglomeration of disparate political parties fighting for the same political space. It won’t be an easy task for the Congress to play second fiddle to its new partners in its traditional strongholds, which it lost to these very allies.

For instance, the Congress had lost Delhi and Punjab to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). But a sense of purpose is clearly palpable among the Opposition parties, which can get transformed into political pragmatism. To take the same example of Delhi and Punjab, an AAP-Congress alliance in these two states and the union territory of Chandigarh could turn out to be a formidable combination for 21 Lok Sabha seats. The attempt by the Opposition alliance will be to have one-on-one fights with the BJP, ensuring that anti-incumbency votes do not get split.

The idea is to have a potential winner supported by all parties inimical to the Union Government take on the BJP candidate. It is logical to assume that the Opposition candidate will sail through, given that there is nationwide anger against the Centre. The political template that is being applied here is the anti-Centre or anti-PM wave created by the Janata Parivar against the Congress in 1977 and 1989. The success of this venture obviously depends on whether the nation is in the mood to dislodge PM Modi. So, inevitably the election will be all about Modi: an anti-Modi coalition seeking votes to remove him from office.

The inherent flaw in this Opposition strategy is that a personality-oriented campaign can boomerang (as it happened in the case of Indira Gandhi in 1971), particularly when Modi loves to play the cornered victim battling alone to save Hindutva.