The BJP’s sweeping victory in three out of five assembly elections in 2023 comes just a few months before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and will certainly have a major impact on national politics. The BJP retained power in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa in 2022. On the other hand, the rout of the Congress at the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab is a telling comment on the Grand Old Party. More recently, the BJP’s double engine government coming to power in Madhya Pradesh, wresting Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress, winning eight seats in Telangana and doubling its vote share to 13.9 per cent in 2023, from 6.92 per cent in 2018, speaks volumes about the Modi juggernaut and its invincibility.
In the midst of all this, let no one forget the outstanding 156 seats the BJP won in Gujarat in early 2023, thanks entirely to Prime Minister Modi’s inimitable charisma. The AAP managed only a measly five seats in Gujarat despite bombastic claims that it would win at least 90 seats. As for the Congress, it was reduced to an embarrassing 17 seats.
True, the Congress won the Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana elections. Still, the humiliating rout of the party in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 where it won only two seats, followed by a resounding defeat in the Hindi heartland of Madhya Pradesh in 2023, endorses the fact that the momentum displayed in the run-up to Karnataka polls has completely fizzled out. The Congress is once again on a ventilator, gasping for breath.
The Congress by and large retained its vote share in Chhattisgarh. It got a 42.23 per cent vote share in 2023 versus 43.04 per cent in 2018, down 0.81 per cent. However, it saw a steep fall in the number of seats won, from 68 in 2018 to only 35 in 2023. Contrast this with the BJP which got a solid vote share of 46.27 per cent, with 54 seats. Remember, the BJP had only a 32.97 per cent vote share with 15 seats in 2018. A tremendous 13.3 per cent surge in BJP’s vote share speaks volumes about the disenchantment that the electorate had with the erstwhile Congress government of Bhupesh Baghel. Clearly, failed promises failed the Congress.
With a 31 per cent tribal population, the BJP swept tribal seats winning 14/14 seats in the tribal stronghold of the Sarguja region. From restoring the legacy of tribal leader Birsa Munda to setting up Ekal Vidyalayas where tribal students are largely given free education, to using his full might to ensure Droupadi Murmu was elected as India’s first tribal President, Prime Minister Modi has empowered tribals like never before. The Chhattisgarh results bear that out—a tribal, Vishnu Deo Sai named as Chhattisgarh chief minister, further endorses that.
Speaking of Rajasthan, Rahul Gandhi and his acolytes celebrating the wafer-thin difference between BJP and Congress party’s vote shares is hypocrisy at its best. Even in 2018, the vote-share difference was marginal, with the BJP at 38.08 per cent and the Congress at 39.03 per cent. That is simply the nature of Rajasthan politics.
But the catch in the story is this – In 2023, despite the Congress’ vote share rising marginally to 39.53 per cent, the number of seats won by the party fell dramatically from 100 to 69. On the other hand, the BJP saw a good 3.61 per cent jump in vote share to 41.69 per cent and the number of seats won rose to a solid 115, from 73 in 2018. Clearly, the BJP’s ability to translate vote share into winnable votes is exemplary and the Grand Old Party has failed on this front, repeatedly.
For instance, the vote-share difference between the Congress and BJP in the Uttarakhand 2022 polls was only 6.4 per cent (BJP at 44.3 per cent and Congress at 37.9 per cent), but while the BJP romped home to victory with 47 seats, Rahul Gandhi’s incompetent Congress was left with a measly 19 seats. Be it social engineering or caste calculus, the ‘Labharthi Model’ of good governance was made hugely successful by PM Modi or the organisational heft of the BJP. It is a party that is increasingly becoming unbeatable not only due to the unrelenting popularity of Modi but also because of its humble karyakartas on the ground who believe in the party’s ideology and work selflessly to promote it. The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combination is invincible as it combines the best of both, mass connect with strategic genius.
Now coming to Madhya Pradesh, the Congress saw a marginal fall in vote share from 40.89 per cent to 40.45 per cent but the fall in seats was massive. From a tally of 114 in 2018, the party saw its tally fall to just 69 seats. In sharp contrast, despite an 18-year-long run at the helm and perceived anti-incumbency, the BJP’s double-engine government delivered a stunning result with 163 seats versus 109 in 2018. The vote share too rose by a solid 7.6 per cent, from 41.02 per cent to 48.62 per cent.
Madhya Pradesh is the best example of how the Modi magic has repeatedly turned anti-incumbency into a pro-incumbency tsunami. Ditto was the case in the Gujarat assembly elections where the BJP’s vote share went up to a rock-solid 52.5 per cent with 156 seats. The Congress with a 27.28 per cent vote share was reduced to an embarrassing 17 seats, despite the BJP being in power for 15 long years. As for AAP, it managed just five seats in Gujarat.
Be it Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan or Chhattisgarh, the AAP is just all noise, much like an empty vessel, with 99 per cent of its candidates losing deposits in all these states and securing less than the NOTA vote share. Despite its tall claims, the AAP has no pan-India footprint and has become the new epitome of corruption. Arvind Kejriwal is a spent force. He started with a bang but has ended with a meek whimper.
Not just the Congress or AAP, but even supposedly big regional players like the Samajwadi Party (SP) have had to eat humble crow in front of the BJP. SP lost UP assembly elections twice in a row in 2017 and 2022. In 2022, despite increasing its vote share to 32.06 per cent from 21.82 per cent in 2017, it failed to translate the higher vote share into winnable seats. In sharp contrast, the BJP, despite defections of senior BJP leaders to the SP, won a solid 255 seats, increasing its vote share from 39.67 per cent to 41.29 per cent, once again a vindication of the double engine government of the BJP and the undeniable strength of the Modi juggernaut.
In fact, for the first time in 37 years, a sitting government/party in power came back to power twice in a row in 2022 in UP and that party was the BJP.
The 2023 assembly election results largely reflect the continuing, rock-solid appeal of the BJP and its mascot, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Anti-incumbency clearly doesn’t seem to be a word in the BJP’s dictionary. The excellent work done by the Modi government during the Covid pandemic in terms of the world’s largest and fastest vaccination drive and directly transferring money into the accounts of say, women and farmers, have swung the mood in favour of the saffron party.
The BJP’s hold over the Hindu vote is intact, helped by the Ram temple in Ayodhya, to be inaugurated in January 2024. The development of the Kashi Vishwanath and Ujjain Mahakal corridors have helped in a large measure too. The spate of state-of-the-art four-lane, six-lane and eight-lane highways that have come up in the last 9.5 years has unleashed an infrastructure boom. PM Modi launched the ambitious Rs 100 lakh crore Gati Shakti Master Plan to provide multi-modal connectivity to more than 1200 industrial clusters, including two defence corridors across the country in October 2021. “We are laying a foundation for the next 25 years” is what Modi had said during the launch of Gati Shakti, showcasing he is a leader with a long-term vision, who is truly committed to India’s Amrit Kaal resurgence.
The voters clearly know this and understand this, despite Modi’s naysayers doing their best to peddle falsehoods to the contrary. In fact, PM Modi has mastered the art of blending socio-economic development with the resurrection of India’s cultural legacy and its Hindu roots.
Modi wears his Hindutva proudly on his sleeves, unapologetically and yet he is truly secular. More than 30 per cent of key welfare schemes have minorities, especially Muslims as beneficiaries. Despite Muslims accounting for 20 per cent of UP’s population, the fact that BJP’s double-engine government won a thumping mandate, both in the 2017 and 2022 assembly elections, twice in a row, is a testimony to Modi’s universal appeal, cutting through religious divisions.
Populism and cosmetic changes won’t work
Voters start assessing the performance of the ruling party from day one in power and as the verdict in Punjab shows, poll-eve sops by the Congress failed in Punjab. Also, infighting never helps. A change of guard just months before the Punjab elections did not pay dividends. Removed as chief minister, Captain Amarinder Singh formed his own party and wooed his loyalists away. As the state’s first Dalit chief minister, the Congress had imagined a trump card in Charanjit Singh Channi, but he failed to stop the anti-Congress tide despite a series of populist announcements and the Congress was trounced in Punjab.
In Uttar Pradesh, both the Samajwadi Party and the Congress raked up the emotive issue of revival of the old pension scheme (OPS) for thousands of government employees, but in vain. So while the OPS rhetoric won the Congress Himachal, it was not a poll issue in Uttar Pradesh. This shows why the BJP is unbeatable. The saffron party approaches each state election with both macro and micro-level precision as issues in every state are different. The same issue cannot be used to win elections in two different states, which is what the Congress does.
Also, while the BJP won Gujarat handsomely despite changing the sitting chief minister (Vijay Rupani) and virtually the entire cabinet, barely a year ahead of Gujarat assembly elections, that is something only the BJP can pull off because of a decisive central leadership under PM Modi which brooks no indiscipline. Even when ex-CM Biplab Deb was replaced by Manik Saha in Tripura, there was no rebellion within the BJP, or even when Sarbananda Sonowal was replaced by Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam. Whereas due to a lazy and inept Rahul Gandhi, the fight between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot was allowed to fester, till it turned into a point of no return.
The Congress tried an experiment in Punjab and failed because the national leadership of the party under the Gandhis is marked by confusion and lethargy. Priyanka’s reliance on Navjot Singh Sidhu and Rahul’s reliance on Channi backfired in Punjab and stoked more infighting in the state unit. The demand for accountability by Congressis from the Gandhis is zero and that is the biggest reason for the party being reduced to just a three-state party, with negligible presence in India’s Hindi heartland.
The 2023 assembly election results confirm what is already common knowledge: as far as the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are concerned, the BJP remains firmly in pole position. This advantage is principally driven by Modi’s enduringly resilient popularity. According to Morning Consult, which tracks the weekly approval ratings of more than 20 democratically elected world leaders, 78 per cent of Indians surveyed in late November 2023 approved of Modi’s job performance. The latest tally is 76 per cent in Modi’s favour with someone like say, even Joe Biden at the tail-end with only a 37 per cent approval rating. Modi’s net approval (calculated as the share of respondents who approve of his performance minus those who disapprove) is a stunning 60 per cent plus despite being in power for over nine years. It is even more remarkable that Modi’s approval has been consistent since August 2019.
Domestic opinion polls confirm that Modi’s popularity remains intact and that this continues to fuel the BJP’s dominance. Post the assembly election results of 2023, if a survey was held now, the BJP-led NDA would easily surpass its 2019 tally, as in 2019, the BJP lost MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, whereas this time, it has won all three and that too with a brute majority.
Elections are a popular demonstration of the will of the electorate. As the road to 2024 begins, the issues worth watching are the challenge of Opposition coordination, the battle for OBCs and the race for welfarism. Opposition unity is a myth and the best example of that is the fact that all top non-Congress leaders refused to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, on flimsy pretexts.
The Congress was not willing to concede even six seats to the SP in the Madhya Pradesh elections held recently. As for the Trinamool Congress (TMC), it is willing to cooperate with the Congress but is unwilling to concede even one out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal in the upcoming 2024 General Elections. Basically, there is no consensus on seat sharing among the major allies of the INDI alliance, making a mockery of Opposition unity.
Don’t forget, in the 2021 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, the DMK allowed the Congress to contest on only 25 out of the 234 seats. Even if alliance members agree to let bygones be bygones, coalition arithmetic does not automatically generate coalition chemistry. Take the example of Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. There, the two foremost regional parties—the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), long at loggerheads, joined forces to keep the BJP out of power. Notwithstanding this grand coalition, the BJP alliance earned 51 per cent of the votes and bagged 62 out of 80 seats, while the BSP-SP alliance won 39 per cent of the vote share but just 15 seats. On paper, the Opposition alliance had arithmetic in its favour; the SP and BSP jointly earned 42 per cent of the vote in 2014—the same share as the BJP. But, in 2019, arithmetic on paper was not a substitute for the lack of chemistry in place.
As for the issue of OBCs, BJP wins hands down on that front. 35 per cent of Modi’s cabinet, 37 per cent of BJP’s MLAs and 40 per cent of MLCs are OBCs. Modi is India’s first OBC PM. Congress, on the other hand, has not paid lip service to the cause of the OBCs. The third factor to consider is the battle over the allegiance of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the largest single voter bloc in India, likely accounting for more than 40 per cent of the population. The electoral transformation of the BJP under Modi owes its success, in large measure, to the party’s ability to attract OBCs into its fold—snatching key voters away from the Congress party and from the so-called Mandal parties in northern India, which mobilised on the basis of empowering backward castes.
Four Hindi belt parties, like the Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar and the Samajwadi Party of Uttar Pradesh, shot to popularity thanks to their ability to cater to large segments of the OBC vote—until Modi’s arrival, that is. According to data collected by the Lokniti Programme for Comparative Democracy at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP captured only 22 per cent of the OBC vote. In 2014, under Modi (who happens to hail from the OBC community), the BJP made large inroads. In particular, the BJP became the champion of jatis (sub-castes) located among the lower rungs of the OBC community. These deprived groups, referred to as Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) or lower OBCs, did not reap the benefits promised by the Mandal mobilisation, with most of the visible benefits accruing to a handful of dominant jatis, under erstwhile regimes.
The BJP wooed the OBCs and EBCs and delivered on every promise. While the BJP captured 30 per cent of the OBC vote, it earned 43 per cent of the EBC vote in 2014. In 2019, it increased its gains among both groups, winning 41 per cent of the OBC vote and 48 per cent of the EBC vote. The share of the backward vote flowing to the Congress and once-dominant regional parties declined precipitously in turn. The men behind BJP’s brilliant social engineering are obviously the Modi-Shah duo.
Speaking of the welfare push, it has been driven by the Modi government’s embrace of direct benefit transfers (DBT), which have funnelled government benefits directly into household bank accounts while cutting out leaky intermediaries. Over a staggering Rs 29 lakh crore has been disbursed to target beneficiaries via DBT in the last nine years.
In the recently concluded assembly elections, parties of all stripes made lavish promises of transfers, if brought to power. To entice voters in Telangana, the BRS promised Rs 100,000 to the families of low-income and Muslim brides. In Rajasthan, the Congress promised Rs 10,000 to every woman head of the household, including providing women with smartphones and free internet. A classic case of how the Congress fooled the electorate is Karnataka, where after promising 10 kg of free rice every month to BPL households, the incompetent Karnataka government failed to deliver and then dared to blame the Modi government for not fulfilling its promise.
The Opposition, in a bid not to be outflanked, while promising freebies, thought it had mastered the art of blunting the ‘Labharthi Model’ of PM Modi. But therein lies the catch. And the catch simply is this – While Modi’s Vikas-centric model is not merely about promises but about last-mile delivery of those promises, the Opposition’s promises have simply remained empty. For instance, the ‘Rythu Bandhu’ scheme of the BRS failed to improve the condition of farmers, as promised. Similarly, in Rajasthan, for the longest time, the Gehlot government refused to reduce VAT on petrol and diesel, even though the Modi government reduced excise duty on petrol and diesel in November 2021 and May 2022. Rajasthan repeatedly saw retail inflation at 9 per cent plus for months together, far higher than the all-India number. Hence, the public was not fooled by the empty promises made by Gehlot and the Congress ahead of the assembly elections and handed the Grand Old Party a humiliating defeat at the hustings.
A final factor that will steer the 2024 elections is not hard to pin down—India’s evolving role in the world. PM Modi has clearly broken the invisible barrier between two categories – the elites versus the masses. There is a resurgent Indian pride that comes from being part of an economy that overtook the UK last year, to become the world’s fifth-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP. Thanks to Modi, India’s G20 leadership was a resounding success, putting India firmly on the global map.
Despite Black Swan events like the Covid pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and more recently, a full-blown war between Israel and terror outfit Hamas, India for three years in a row, is the world’s fastest-growing economy, that simply refuses to slow down. For example, in FY22, India’s GDP grew at a mammoth 9.1 per cent while the world’s grew only at 5.2 per cent. Again, in FY23, India’s GDP grew by a solid 7.2 per cent when the world struggled with only a 3.1 per cent growth. In the first half of FY24, India’s GDP has again grown by a robust 7.7 per cent, while the full-year global growth forecast is only 2.9 per cent as per the International Monetary Fund.
As if on cue, on December 17, 2023, aimed at providing state-of-the-art infrastructure to various stakeholders engaged in the manufacturing and trading of diamonds, PM Modi inaugurated the world’s largest diamond bourse, the Surat Diamond Bourse, which will play a major role in promoting and developing trade and commerce related to the gems and jewellery industry. The Surat Diamond Bourse with 4500 diamond trading offices, based in Surat, Gujarat, spread across 35.54 acres with an availability of a jaw-dropping 67 lakh Sq ft, with nine towers of 15 floors each, is also the world’s largest office complex, ahead of the Pentagon.
Conceiving grand ideas and executing them with equal ease and finesse is Modi’s USP– this is what separates Modi from his erstwhile predecessors who neither had the ability to dream big, much less execute big ideas. Surely, India’s rapidly growing economic prowess will count when the voters make their presence feel at the hustings in 2024. Needless to add, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unstoppable and “Modi-ism” today stands for inclusivity and equity – the two factors that make ‘brand Modi’ invincible, often endearing him even to his most vitriolic opponents.
Sanju Verma is an Economist, National Spokesperson for BJP and Bestselling Author of “The Modi Gambit”. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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