In India, The Modi Figure

By this week next year at the latest, voters in India will elect a new popular house, Lok Sabha. Recently recognised as the world’s most-populous country overtaking the record China held since very long, India is an important power in which its peer groups and superpowers take deep and extended interest.

The past three years have witnessed intense activity among the major powers at a time when three superpowers are hyperactively engaged in gathering support for their respective strategies. Russia has bounced back as a superpower— a status it lost for more than a decade after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. 

Hence intense international attention is on India’s 14th prime minister since 2014, Narendra Damodardas Modi, now in his second term. Chief minister of the Gujarat state from 2001 until he donned the premier’s mantle nearly nine years ago, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as of today are likely to obtain majority for the third consecutive time. That is what studies and expert opinions there suggest.

Electoral success

By far the most successful prime minister of India since Congress (I) leader Indira Gandhi declared the infamous Emergency rule in 1975, Modi has emerged as enormously energetic organiser and mass mobiliser.

He tries doing things his way and does not fail to draw maximum mileage from what he initiates and what his predecessors did not or could achieve. No, India is yet to attain a big leap forward befitting the great promises made since its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and his son Rajiv Gandhi together with nearly a dozen others in between, mostly in the 1990s and after. 

Modi led BJP to two consecutive electoral victories, winning a clear majority on both occasions — something only the Congress had recorded previously. In the first post-Emergency general elections in 1977, the hurriedly cobbled Janata Party won a landslide majority but could not withstand the inherent contradictions within its ever squabbling factions.

For the Janata Party was an alliance group of sorts or, say, a coalition partnership under a single banner. Various parties had decided to fall in line under a single party with the sole purpose of preventing the Congress from returning to power at any cost. 

The Janata Party was able to even lure senior leaders of Indira Gandhi’s party to its fold and, in the process, created a massive impression upon voters that the Congress was a sinking ship and hence the change in camp by many politicians who federal or state ministers in Asia’s oldest political party that they lately decided to desert without proper adieu.

The crushing manner in which Indira Gandhi clamped Emergency rule without any convincing rhyme or reasons, except her dictatorial ambition to prolong her stay in power, had repelled voters from the Congress (I).

Yet the Congress struck back because of the over-ambitious leaders pooled together from the hitherto independent parties, who tried keeping their individual party identities afloat. This prevented a coherent policy from being developed under 81-year-old Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who had split from the Congress in the late 1960s within less than three years the Desai-led government collapsed due to intra-organisational contradictions. Feeling the ruling party’s internal strife, Indira Gandhi fuelled Deputy Prime Minister Charan Singh’s ambitions “to become a prime minister once in his lifetime”. 

Once hailed as the “champion of peasants”, Singh could not hold the fort for even four months. He could not even table a vote of confidence in parliament, as he could not muster the required majority in parliament. He had banked on Congress party support without realising that Indira Gandhi’s scheme was to split the Janata Party and bring down the Desai government. The inevitable happened: snap polls. 

Indira went on claiming that only the Congress had the experience to govern the union with all its challenges, domestic and foreign. A myth was created from the ashes of the Janata Party’s disastrous fall from a landslide majority obtained amidst such nationwide euphoria. BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee shattered the myth that only the Congress could offer a stable government. He completed a full term and more by managing a coalition partnership with smaller parties. 

Samajwadi Party founder and a three-time former chief minister of the country’s most-populous state Mulayam Singh Yadav endorsed in the Lok Sabha Modi for a second term in office. He showered praise on the BJP leader: “I wish that you should become the Prime Minister again. I have experienced that whenever I met you, you got my work done instantly.

I want to congratulate the PM that he tries to take everyone along.” The veteran politician Yadav was grateful to Modi’s response to his suggestions and help concerning a number of issues. A former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, Yadav created a furore in not only his Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) headed by his son Akhilesh Yadav but also surprised other opposition parties.  

Unprecedented

Modi two years ago made an unprecedented declaration that he would not head the government after attaining the age 75, which means 2025. None of his predecessors in independent India made a such a public pledge to opt out of power, and no did ever step down on own volition. With the general elections only a year away and the opposition parties weak and disorganised, many Indian analysts expect Modi to lead his party for winning parliamentary majority for the third straight next year. If the BJP wins parliamentary majority in the next elections too, it will have to find a suitable replacement to Modi. Speculation will be rife as to who the party instals as a new premier. Home Minister Amit Shah, known for his organisational prowess, eyes the job. 

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is hopeful of donning the prized mantle. Likewise, Yogi Adityanath, who is in his second term as Uttar Pradesh chief minister, is also a strong contender for the top job. But then Modi’s discretion will be adhered by the party seniors.  Regarded as incorruptible, the Yogi Adityanath, born Ajay Mohan Singh Bisht in June 1972, might clinch the issue of succeeding Modi, with the outgoing leader’s soft corner for the chief minister, who also was member of Loka Sabha, the union parliament, previously.  

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)