Disclaimer : My political thoughts do not align with either the NDA or the I.N.D.I.A. alliance. This is just a political analysis of how things might turn out.
There are reports suggesting that the Special Session called by the Modi Government in mid-September has to do with the Government’s idea of having “early elections”. In multi-party democracies, it is acceptable for the Government to dissolve the legislature and ask the Head of the State to announce a fresh round of elections.
This practice is a part of the political playbook. The last time BJP used this tool was in 2004, when the Vajpayee led NDA, in an attempt to secure enough votes to hold onto power, preponed the elections. The result was that they lost power, paving the way for Congress-led UPA to form the Government.
If the Modi Government goes for this trick, in my understanding, it will be a political masterstroke. Understand the way contemporary political rhetoric is building up in India. All major national and regional parties that are not aligned to the BJP have formed what they call the “Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance” or I.N.D.I.A.
This bloc has met recently in Mumbai where they failed to build consensus on regional groups and seat sharing. However, they have established a 14-member coordinating council to overlook how the political narrative against the Modi Government should be built. This council will also be responsible for deciding the 400 seats that the bloc looks at challenging the BJP without reducing each other’s vote shares.
If the Modi Government announces election early on, i.e. before May 2024, the logic would be to rush the I.N.D.I.A bloc into hastened decision-making. In September 2023, with just the scheduled date of election nine months away, the I.N.D.I.A alliance failed to even agree on the colour and design of their logo, which of course is central to any political campaign.
The point here is to rush them into making decisions which might prove fatal for them. If the BJP can break the alliance before it gets going on the ground with a common agenda and a manifesto, BJP will make sure that these parties don’t stay united even for 2029. There may be further fragmentation in how alliances will be built. It is equivalent to what a common layman in India would refer to as “Divide and Rule”.
To the success of Chandrayaan-3, the launch of Aditya L1, add a successful G20 Summit and the decade old promise of rebuilding the Ayodhya temple, the BJP is sensing a phase of play before the scheduled date wherein the popularity of PM Modi can be a great opportunity to capitalise on.
This can be a masterstroke because if they successfully exploit the advantage of timing here, they can break apart the single most unified alliance they have seen in their reign of 9 years. If they break the I.N.D.I.A alliance, they would also challenge the political landscape of India. It is because no regional parties would want to ally with national parties by giving up their seats and their constituencies. So even if another attempt is made at unifying all the political forces divergent to the contemporary BJP, it would be further less dominated by Congress.
Congress, by the way, is still the primary challenge in the eyes of the BJP. The Modi-Shah BJP takes the political outreach of INC very seriously despite the fact that they have been able to reduce them to 44 and 52 in the 2014 and 2019 election respectively.
From a geopolitical perspective, it is important that India has a stable leadership at a time when the world is practically sleepwalking its way towards a global catastrophe. The suspicions and the mistrusts that impinge on today’s world are very high for an unstable government to exercise sovereignty effectively.
One thing which I feel will be the outcome if this happens is a greater polarisation in the masses. The Indian electorate today is polarised to a great extent and this will further amplify the polarisation.
Visit us at : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumedh-desai-a546b6184/
