Elections prove that there’s yet no political rival to Prime Minister Narendra Modi

PM Narendra Modi (File image: PTI)

A state that has always been a pollster’s nightmare lived up to its reputation again. As the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) crawled past the halfway mark to retain power yet again in what was a titanic tussle they left more than just the pollsters surprised.

A few months ago Bihar was to be a no contest election. Two of the three major players in the state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) were in alliance and most of the early opinion polls suggested a big win for them. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) under the 31-year-old Tejashwi Yadav was virtually on its own with only the emaciated Congress for company. In the end the Congress proved to be the weakest link in the chain that prevented what would have been a remarkable come-from-behind victory for the Yadav scion.

During the campaign it was increasingly becoming apparent that Yadav was becoming a big draw. Huge crowds greeted him and even the media was forced to sit up and take notice. In the end though it was so near yet so far for the RJD leader.

The biggest winner of the Bihar election was undoubtedly the BJP. Not only did it win 74 seats out of the 121 it was allotted, it is also ‘credited’ with ensuring that Kumar was cut to size, with the JD(U) winning just 43 seats (with a strike rate of around 30 percent). Kumar is now very much the junior partner in the NDA. While he may become the Chief Minister again, it is anyone's guess when the BJP will nudge him, maybe into the Union Cabinet, and have its own man in the CM's chair in Patna.

The saffron party may have dissociated itself from the accusation that it got the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) to contest separately (but only against the JD(U) candidates) but the sight of LJP candidates campaigning with Modi's pictures, LJP leader Chirag Paswan saying that he wanted the BJP to win the election and LJP not putting up candidates against the BJP appeared to give the game away.

Just as the BJP was the big winner, the Congress was the major loser. At least Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)’s Tejashwi Yadav mounted a gallant campaign and managed to re-establish the RJD as the single-largest party in the assembly with 75 seats. The Congress was the big let-down in the Maha Gathbandhan (MGB) winning just 19 of the 70 seats it contested. Even the Left parties saw a surge winning 17 of the 29 seats they contested.

In the by-elections held in other states it was the BJP all the way. It won all seats that went to the bypolls in Gujarat (eight), Karnataka (two) and Telangana (1), 19 of the 28 seats in Madhya Pradesh, and four of the five seats in Manipur. All this clearly shows that the Modi magic is showing no signs of waning.

The Opposition needs to seriously rework its strategy, if indeed it has one. Targeting the Prime Minister in state elections does not work. While he sways the voters in huge numbers even when he is not the candidate, the Opposition struggles when it makes him or his government on an issue. While Yadav did make basic issues such as employment the cornerstone of his campaign, in most states the acts of omission and commission of the central government still got a fair share of campaign time. To some extent that is inevitable. But somewhere the Opposition needs to figure out the secret behind Narendra Modi’s Teflon image where nothing seems to stick. His popularity seems undiminished howsoever lacklustre the government performs.

Maybe that secret is the Opposition itself. By inspiring little confidence in the people, they may themselves be the secret behind Modi's sky high popularity. They need to reinvent themselves. But from where do they start? Into the seventh year of his term Modi does not appear to have a rival as far as the eye can see. As the BJP starts to train its guns next on West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (elections due by May 2021) the Opposition will be having a sense of deja vu. They can only hope that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader MK Stalin and the Left can keep their hopes afloat for a while longer.

Sumanth Raman is a Chennai-based television anchor and political analyst. Views are personal.