Narendra Modi says he has been chosen to undertake the “difficult tasks” for the country.
Manmohan Singh says that the so-called “Modi wave” is a mere media creation.
Claims, counter-claims and polemics apart, the Indian electoral scene, with just two more voting phases left, seems poised for a photo finish. There is a strong possibility of no political party or pre-poll coalition reaching the magic number of 272, the number of seats required in the 543-member Lok Sabha for a simple majority. The likely fractured mandate would inevitably make the post-poll scenario most crucial.
It is not going to be a walk in the clouds for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
We will know on May 16 the results of India’s most closely fought general elections ever and which political party forms the next government. No one can say with certainty at this juncture as to who will be India’s next prime minister.
What one can say with certainty is that the BJP will emerge as the single largest party. One can also safely predict that the Congress will be the next biggest party.
The million-dollar question, which won’t be answered till May 16 is: How much will be the gap between the BJP and the Congress in terms of number of seats in the Lok Sabha?
Some elections surveys have given the BJP anywhere between 220 and 240 seats on its own and the Congress merely 80, much lower than the grand old party’s lowest-ever tally of 114 seats in the 1999 election. Pollsters and election surveys may well be far off the mark, as they usually are. The claims of the BJP and Modi that the BJP will get more than 300 seats on its own may well prove to be a mirage.
For that to happen a Modi wave or a Modi tsunami will not be enough and the party will require magic for registering such a landslide win. The reason is that the BJP has fielded just 385 candidates and to win more than 300 out of these requires superhuman efforts or supernatural powers.
Consider the figures of the last general elections in 2009. The BJP had contested 433 seats but managed to win only 116. The Congress, on the other hand, contested 440 seats and won 206.
But this time the Congress is down in the dumps; not because of the Modi charisma but because of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s own failures, fueled by corruption and decision paralysis.
There are three major stumbling blocks for Modi to become Indian prime minister: (i) Modi’s divisive personality and the Muslim factor; (ii) the Congress party’s late resurgence and a gritty fight-back despite heavy odds; and (iii) no sign of major regional parties getting blown off by the so-called Modi tsunami.
The first one has been a factor even before a single vote was polled. Modi is seen as an authoritarian figure who has ruled the western Indian state of Gujarat with an iron hand and will likely do so even at the Center should he become the prime minister. In a way, India needs precisely this kind of ruler for immediate economic, political and diplomatic dividend.
But the question is this. With his polarizing personality, he will expectedly draw anti-BJP votes from a majority of India’s 176 million Muslims who account for 14 percent of India’s population, but will he be able to polarize all the Hindu voters in his favor? The answer is a big ‘no’. Ominously for the BJP, the percentage of Muslims is sizeable in Assam (30.9 percent), West Bengal (25.2 percent), Kerala (24.7 percent), Uttar Pradesh (18.5 percent) and Bihar (16.5 percent).
On the second point, the Congress party has shown a remarkable resilience and picked up steam at the most crucial time. The party’s most recent internal assessment says that the Congress will get at least 140 seats.
If that were to happen, it would be bad news for Modi and the BJP. In that scenario, the chances of formation of a BJP-led government with its 28 allies (mainly comprising of fringe players) would become remote. Ironically, the Congress would be in the driver’s seat in such a scenario and may lend outside support to non-BJP, non-Congress Third Front or conversely form a Congress-led coalition government with inside or outside support of Third Front.
Important leaders like Prakash Karat, chief of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Prithviraj Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra and a senior Congress leader have already issued pregnant statements supporting a non-BJP coalition government.
On the third point, regional satraps like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati (Uttar Pradesh), Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), J. Jayalalithaa and M. Karunanidhi (Tamil Nadu) continue to hold sway in their respective states. This makes a Modi wave all the more difficult to happen.
No single political party has been able to win a simple majority in the Lok Sabha on its own since 1989. Regional parties have dominated the Indian political space for past quarter century and there is nothing to believe that this will change in this election.
The BJP’s best-ever tally was 182 seats in the 1999 election, which it got under the leadership of the party’s most charismatic leader and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It is to be seen whether Modi has become a taller leader than even Vajpayee or whether he is just a gasbag.
- The writer is a New Delhi-based independent journalist and a political commentator who tweets @Kishkindha.
