Pratap Bhanu Mehta on 2024 Lok Sabha election results: Suffocating shadow has lifted, balance restored

It has to be said, this is a tribute to the dogged persistence of the Opposition that has battled the full might of being targeted by the government, a hostile media, and deep scepticism going into the election. Full marks to Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav for proving sceptics (this columnist included) dead wrong, for crafting an alliance and being able to transfer their votes.

The election was, in part, fought on the theme of danger to democracy, institutional degradation, and risk to the Constitution. A more balanced polity also allows the possibility of institutional regeneration. Independent institutions and civil society also feel more empowered if they live in a context of greater political competition. It makes it harder to manufacture a false social consensus that disempowers individuals. The mere prospect that power might change hands is an antidote to the servility that had set in India’s elites and independent institutions. It will make it harder to brush aside Parliament. But the fact that the BJP has lost half the seats in UP also opens up the possibility of more contestation and dissension within the party. The party itself will now have to become more of a negotiated entity. Whether Mr Modi is capable of that negotiation is an open question. This election opens up the possibility of a return to the trends that we saw between 1989 and 2014, where the polity will require coalition building and consensus.

The election is a reconfiguration of the social imagination of Indian politics. The BJP had upended conventional wisdom over the last decade by reconceiving the social imagination of Indian politics. The first was the consolidation of a Hindutva identity that, in part, tried to widen its social base to include OBCs and Dalits. It also used fragmented contests to make the minority vote irrelevant. But these strategies have now run its course. There is some evidence that the Dalits have moved away from the BJP and, more improbably, moving to the INDIA alliance. The minorities have finally found enough resoluteness in the Congress and the SP.

The second was the tapping into a vernacular politics of cultural resentment in the Hindi heartland, transforming it into a cultural block. This was aligned with an ability to radicalise a greater percentage of Hindus. Radicalising a third of the Hindu society, if we want to use a shorthand, might be possible. And that was often enough for political gains with a weak and divided Opposition. But permanently radicalising a majority of Hindus is much harder. The Prime Minister, constantly tapping into the theme of resentment and hate, tried just that. It was so successful that even the BJP’s critics thought of the Hindi heartland as an impregnable block, trying to stoke North-South divisions as a substitute. The blockbuster story of this election is the puncturing of this myth. But the big lesson is that politics is not over-determined by social identity, it is now available for being reconfigured in different contexts.

There is also the vexed issue of the Indian economy. The mandate is not a full-scale repudiation of the BJP’s economic performance. The generalised anger was missing. But it does point to the fact that welfare coalitions have their limits. The Congress found out a decade ago that after it had done welfare and gains in infrastructure it got stuck. The BJP tried the same on an accelerated basis, with a greater ability to take political credit. But welfare coalitions run their course after a term or two in the absence of a fundamental structural transformation of the economy, which is still eluding the Indian political system. This will make any government vulnerable.

Finally, the election also punctures the myth of the BJP as a party with a difference. Its open structural corruption, complete disregard for institutional propriety, and the coarseness of its public discourse opened up a yawning gap between the Prime Minister’s wanting to claim the mantle of virtue for the BJP and its concrete vices. Prime Minister Modi is still popular. But what people saw in this campaign was not a leader, but an increasingly self-aggrandising figure, a prisoner of his own delusions of divinity. And as always, it is that self-love that was also the cause of his vulnerability.

In this kind of election, the results, and policy implications, are hard to interpret both for the ruling party and the Opposition. Mr Modi has been partially humbled. But the social infrastructure of communalism and vigilantism he has enabled will not disappear easily. It may acquire an autonomous life of its own. This election is proof that concentration of power is no panacea for India. But will the new political configuration allow the production of the kind of policy consensus that can create the conditions for national regeneration? This is an open question. But for now, this is a moment to savour the sweet elixir of freedom that greater political competition brings.

The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express