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THERE is no doubt that the 2024 general elections in India, concluded over a week ago, will be long remembered for bringing back Indian politics to normal, thanks to the tested electorates of the largest democracy in the world. Undoubtedly, this election delivered a shocking blow to Modi’s dominance and will likely curb his autocratic tendencies. Modi campaigned on a promise to win more than 400 sets, which would have given his coalition more than enough power to amend the constitution. Even though he won this contest, he has, for now, failed in his ambition to further consolidate his power. No doubt, Modi is still a popular politician, but the BJP has failed to deliver on an economic front for millions of Indians, from farmers to young university graduates.

It is too early to tell whether the elections will move the country away from the Hindutva or the Hindu supremacist ideology that the BJP has championed. But at last, for now, the Indian electorate is pushing back against his authoritarian and populist policies and re-entrenching democratic principles, such as secularism, which are the very basis of the constitution. The BJP’s loss in Faizabad, Ayodhya, is proof.

One could draw three conclusions from this year’s dramatic election outcomes. First, voters showed their total rejection of Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters overall had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy during the ten years of BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities in the economy and democracy. One well-respected Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.

He said that the issue was not GDP’s growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many million Indians suffered for a long decade. Today, half of all Indians between the ages of 20 and 25 are unemployed, with 10 per cent being the country’s unemployment rate. Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that would have badly hurt their livelihoods. He found everyone was talking about price rises, unemployment, the state of fast deteriorating public services, the plight of farmers, police brutalities, and the struggles of labour.

In the months before the election, Pavitra Suryanarayan, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, conducted research in three regions of India on public perceptions of Modi’s economic policy. She found that voters blamed Modi for three major economic policy mistakes: a failed attempt to replace cash payments with electronic transfers, a disastrous Covid response and a tax on goods and services that favoured the wealthy over small businesses. ‘These three economic calamities compounded into general dissatisfaction with economic mismanagement.’ It is now well accepted that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed.

The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis, breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of ‘scheduled castes’, the legal term for Dalits, the lower caste grouping in Hindu hierarchy. Further, the experts found that voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide, which would enable them to amend the constitution. Since the constitution contains protections designed to promote Dalit equality, including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system, that seemed like a serious threat to the community. Preliminary data shows that they voted accordingly to protect their interests.

Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992, when Modi was the chief minister. Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, but it also specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad, in which Ayodhya Temple is located. It is as direct an electoral rebuke to the BJP as one can imagine. The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small measure, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.

In addition, it is noteworthy that, in the past 10 years, the BJP has stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favour themselves, supported the independent Election Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. The opposition parties managed to find ways to compete under such unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP’s cash advantages. Direct voter outreach like the Yatra, spearheaded by Rahul Gandhi, helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.

But to be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, albeit with the BJP allies. The election results forced Modi to accept a coalition government, thus forcing him to listen to both the parliamentary opposition and the regional parties, whom he had specifically targeted. It is anticipated that Modi will have to curb the hardline Hindutva agenda, which he has pushed hard in the past decade. However, Modi’s political dilemma is unenviable. It seems inevitable that whatever his choices are, Modi is on a declining path, leading towards a gradual sunset of a charmed political career. There is, on the other hand, a consensus that the results have been a shot in the arm of Congress. Despite it not having secured a majority with its alliance, the results show that people-oriented politics is the path for it to pursue. The importance of two-way communication with the masses — listening to their woes and responding by formulating policies and programmes based on what people want — is the essence of democracy. This was the lesson that Rahul Gandhi brought home from his two major walkathons across India. On the other hand, Modi pursued exactly the opposite theory, ‘Mann ki baat’ (What my heart says).

We should, however, expect that Congress will also face pressure from its prominent partners within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance from its resurgent allies in the running of the opposition camp. It became clear when the alliance partners in the first meeting of the Trinamool Congress on June 5 appeared to indicate their intentions to form a ginger group within the bloc to push scouting for potential allies to overthrow the Modi coalition government. The Deccan Herald suggests that one of the issues that allies would be keenly watching is whether Congress will continue to be accommodative as it did in seat sharing during the Lok Sabha elections by restricting itself to contesting in only 328 seats. The worries about Congress attempting to flex its muscles in the upcoming state polls appear to come from the 99 seats it has won in the Lok Sabha.

There are elections to be held in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, and Delhi by early next year. It looks like winning 29 seats this time, Trinamool does not want to give too much space to the Congress in the nomination at the state level. Similarly, for Congress, another potential troublemaker will be the Aam Admi Party, as Delhi will be going into elections early next year. The AAP has already announced that there will be no alliance in Delhi. We can safely suggest that, just as in the case of the Lok Sabha elections, state assembly polls will also see a much more intense seat-sharing process.

Lately, the BJP, which had campaigned on India’s spectacular economic expansion, its growing international stature, and the party’s Hindu-first agenda, has acknowledged that unemployment was a big factor in the election. ‘Employment is a challenge that we also accept, and whatever can be done is being done,’ BJP spokesperson GK Agarwal said. On June 9, Modi and 71 ministers took the oath of office at India’s presidential palace in New Delhi. Sixty-one of them are from the BJP and the remaining from NDA coalition allies. Seven of them are women, and not even one is from the Muslim community, the largest minority group of 200 million people in India. The surprising drop in support for the BJP in the elections means Modi needs support from his regional allies to stay in power, and experts say he may have to adapt to a style of governance he is not used to.

Even if prime minister Modi retains power, this election has clearly borne out the power of India’s democracy. Despite the Modi government’s control over key levers of power in the nation for many years, augmented by its world-class political marketing programme, voters can be difficult to hold for long periods of time. We should not be surprised if this coalition falters in less than five years, precipitating midterm elections in 2027.Ìý

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Humayun Kabir ([email protected]) is a former senior official of the United Nations.