Modi Govt @ 8 | Opposition's tale of missed opportunities

Ninety-six full moons have passed since that stifling surly afternoon of May 14, 2014. It was a historic day that left some gobsmacked, and many exultant.

After nearly three decades India had a political party in the Bharatiya Janata Party (the lynchpin of its coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance) that had received an absolute majority in Parliament to dictate India’s future trajectory.

The incumbent, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was demolished into smithereens. The party that had literally constructed a modern India, despite its many foibles, was down to a woeful 44 seats in a house meant for 543 — a lowly 9 percent. It once held nearly 75 percent.

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The BJP, which once had two seats, was now commanding 55 percent of the big booty. The verdict was unambiguous. India wanted change; decisive, crystal-clear, and stratospheric. The country of 138 crore people was impatient. The India Story needed a twist in its dramatic script. Narendra Modi gave it that jaw-dropping, wide-eyed stunning consequential moment.

Fast forward to 2022. In the interregnum, the BJP consolidated its gains in 2019, while the Congress floundered once again, its stagnation causing an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. The Congress, once electorally marginalised, struggles to resuscitate itself.

At the time of writing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Japan attending the much-hyped Quad summit singing paeans about India’s rising world power status, while Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is in London articulating apprehensions about India’s perceptible democratic deconsolidation.

The other opposition leaders seem to be in hibernation, particularly the Uttar Pradesh satraps, who will perhaps surface after another five years. Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee and Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray have demonstrated chutzpah; they are willing to engage in fisticuffs with the BJP that has made mud-wrestling the new norm in Indian politics. You have to get dirty to win. It is only the regional leaders from the south (KC Rao in Telangana, YSR Congress’ Jaganmohan Reddy, MK Stalin of the DMK) who appear to have the pugnacious predilections to take on the BJP, whom they genuinely believe is at core a Hindi heartland party with pretensions of pan-India legitimacy.

The truth is that despite sporadic bursts of kinetic enthusiasm from the Opposition, India appears to be languorously reconciled to the BJP’s domination of the political battlefield. Eight years after Modi’s triumphant entry into Lutyens’ Delhi, the BJP has only further entrenched itself. The Opposition has weakened, appearing fragmented, and directionless. What has really happened?

Politics is disproportionately influenced by perception; it is often spectacularly divorced from reality. The one who controls the narrative (traditional political pundits call it ‘agenda-setting’) usually crosses the finish line fastest, and with greater certitude. Modi has mastered this art while the Opposition has yet to even understand its preamble. That’s why Modi has weathered turbulent storms but appears unfazed, impregnable. Demonetisation, ham-handed execution of the GST, record unemployment, anaemic GDP growth, Pegasus snooping, communal animus, democratic deficit, allegedly over millions dead during the COVID-19 pandemic, farmer revolt, institutional debilitation, escalating inflation, Modi has artfully dodged them all.

In a bizarre twist, quintessentially disingenuous, he attributes every gargantuan failure to a past Congress fault-line. If the Congress was in power and the BJP was in Opposition, saffron flags would have been all over the country’s mainstream urban metropolises, and the remotest of rural dwellings calling for mid-term elections. Instead you hear the sorry lamentation from most opposition parties that they do not get enough ‘media coverage’.

It has not helped that the cornerstone of the opposition foundation, the Congress, has appeared anesthetised instead of flexing its muscles. The Opposition has lost the optics battle, giving Modi a free ticket for an unlimited ride in the amusement park. The intermittent victories of a few regional tigers is now at best like a commercial break while watching a seven-season sitcom.

My experience in politics has taught me that your rival rarely wins the election, it is you who lose it. A simple example will suffice. Take price rise, which is anathema to most governments, as they fear that public anger will translate into electoral drubbing. But because the Opposition lacks a leader who can mount a strategically co-ordinated protest across states by bringing disparate factions together, all you see is a smattering of remonstrance interspersed across the country lacking the energy needed to create a national consciousness. It soon fizzles out. Of course, there is no denying the smothering institutional capture that has occurred under the BJP, which has led to self-censorship and political intimidation of adversaries. But yet, the Opposition has frequently let the government off the hook. Modi is not sui generis, it is the Opposition that has made him into a superhero.

This summer India has experienced an unprecedented heat wave. But the BJP has barely broken a sweat. Therein lies a woebegone tale of missed opportunities.

Sanjay Jha is former National Spokesperson of the Congress, and author of The Great Unravelling: India After 2014. Twitter: @JhaSanjay.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.