The recent defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Bihar elections may appear to show that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity is waning but a Mint-InstaVaani poll says his approval rating still stands high at 74 percent, indicating that a major part of the momentum he built up during his landslide victory last year is intact.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan, Mint's Political Editor Anil Padmanabhan discussed the results of the poll, which showed that while the PM's had come off from 79 percent in August, it still stands north of 70 percent, 18 months into the government being in office.
"The momentum of 2014 continues," he argued, "but that's also because there is no national level challenger to him."
Padmanabhan attributed upsets in Bihar recently and in Delhi earlier this year to the PM facing formidable challengers in Nitish Kumar and Arvind Kejriwal at the state level. "Also, there is a difference between national assessments [of the prime minister] and local narratives [over which state elections are fought," he added.
Part of the reason why the PM continues to enjoy high approval ratings could be because of perception of "reduced degree of corruption" in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the PM, Padmanabhan said.
Still, he argued that the fall in approval ratings indicate that some of narrative with respect to Modi's appeal is changing, as it surely would, with him having gone from being a challenger to the political class to running the government.
"In 2014, the BJP was in the opposition at the Centre. Now it needs to have a narrative of the incumbent government," he said.
Among other things, the poll showed that 63 and 68 percent of people in metros and non-metros, respectively, were happy with the NDA government's progress on economic reforms. However, only 55 percent in metros and 69 percent in non-metros thought the government is on track to fulfil its promises of "acche din". Overall, 61 percent and 72 percent of those polled in metros and non-metros approved of the NDA government's performance.
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