Why india’s opposition is nearly irrelevant

Why india’s opposition is nearly irrelevant

TWO years ago voters in Delhi, the Indian capital, whistled a warning to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was less than a year since he had led his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in a sweeping general-election triumph. Yet suddenly, at the very seat of the national government, a puny (small and weak.) upstart party running a shoestring anti-corruption campaign had nabbed no fewer than 67 of the 70 seats in the city’s main legislature. The BJP had captured a paltry ((of an amount) very small or meager.) three. Could it be that Mr Modi’s vaunted (boasted) electoral juggernaut (a huge, powerful, and overwhelming force.) was not invincible after all?
This was certainly what the critics of the Hindu-nationalist BJP hoped. Yet in test after test since then, from obscure by-elections to the campaign for the state assembly in Uttar Pradesh, with a population of 220m, the party has surged relentlessly ahead. In addition to the national government, the BJP and its allies now control 17 out of India’s 31 state legislatures, together representing more than 60% of the country’s people. At a recent party rally in the eastern state of Odisha, Amit Shah, the BJP’s grizzled (metaphorically-experienced) master strategist, actually evoked the Jagannath Temple, a local landmark that inspired the word juggernaut, as he vowed the party would capture every state “from panchayat [village council] to parliament”.
Not surprisingly, it is now among the opposition that alarms are sounding. The latest bell, again in Delhi, rang on April 26th as results emerged of voting at another level of local government, the city’s three municipal “corporations”. The BJP won more than two-thirds of seats. The feisty (lively, determined, and courageous.) upstart of 2015, the Aam Aadmi or “common man” party (AAP), was left sputtering (बड़बड़ाना) that someone must have tampered (कपट प्रबंध करना/छेड़खानी करना/हस्तक्षेप करना) with the voting machines.
That is unlikely. The Election Commission of India, which is responsible for the gadgets, enjoys a reputation for probity (ईमानदारी) rare among the country’s public institutions. This is not to say that the BJP does not play rough in the contact sport that is Indian politics. On the contrary, Mr Modi’s party is tenacious and aggressive. Delhi’s AAP government, for instance, has found itself hamstrung (रुद्ध/प्रतिरोध किया हुआ) by varied forms of obstruction from the BJP-led central government, not to mention by scores of spurious (जाली/झूठा) lawsuits and repeated police raids and investigations. Many AAP supporters seem to have understood the message: like it or not, the underdog is not a party that can “get stuff done”.
Totting up the recent losses of India’s opposition, however, it is clear that they themselves must also bear much of the blame. At every turn they have been not just outmuscled, but outwitted by the BJP. Worse, all too often India’s opposition parties have scored own-goals, whether by way of corruption scandals, messy defections, internal squabbles or simply the failure to recognise that unless they join forces, the BJP will indeed run them over. “We’d been working on the assumption that Modi will be a shoo (a word said to frighten someone) -in in 2019,” says a foreign diplomat, “Now we’re wondering if he won’t be in 2024.”
Aside from the AAP, the party with the most egg on its face is Congress, the oldest and long the grandest of parties in India. For decades following independence in 1947 Congress, like the BJP today, dominated politics at every level. It remains the only party aside from the BJP with a nationwide presence; the two parties’ multiple rivals are all regional or local political forces. But after years of slow slippage (गिरावट) , Congress’s grasp seems in many parts of the country to have relaxed entirely. It currently controls just six state legislatures, only two of them in sizeable states. In recent elections it has frequently trailed a distant third or worse. With astonishing regularity Indian newspapers report stories of Congress grandees abandoning the party, all too often to join the BJP.
Over the past year alone Congress has lost control of six states, four of them—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa and Manipur—because local party leaders switched sides. In the last two, they abandoned Congress even though it had just won state elections: the rival BJP simply moved faster to form a government, luring defectors with promises of cabinet posts even as Congress’s leadership in Delhi dithered (be indecisive.) over how to dole out offices. In the mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh last year, 43 Congress deputies defected en masse(together) to join a new, BJP-allied party. In Assam, rebellious younger Congress leaders helped swing voters to the BJP, which they joined after complaints about the ageing local Congress boss fell on deaf ears.
Many have blamed Congress’s woes (great sorrow or distress) on the lingering (lasting for a long time or slow to end.) hold of the Gandhi dynasty. Its current figurehead, Rahul Gandhi (pictured, third from the right, with his mother, Sonia), is the son, grandson and great-grandson of previous prime ministers. Yet semi-feudal family politics afflicts many of India’s parties. A nasty (अप्रिय/खराब) spat (मनमुटाव/झगड़ा) in the reigning Yadav family weakened the previous ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, paving the way for the BJP’s crushing victory in the state assembly elections. The ruling party in the southern state of Tamil Nadu is currently embroiled in succession issues; the leadership of its main local rival is also a family affair.
A related opposition handicap is its emphasis on personality over principle. In some cases this has left parties floundering for relevance once their exalted ((of a person or their rank or status) at a high or powerful level.) leader dies. It has also opened some to the charge that they are mere vote-getting machines that do not stand for anything. The Trinamool Congress of West Bengal, a state ruled with an iron fist by the party’s founder, Mamata Banerjee, is based on an insubstantial mix of populism and Bengali pride. In the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, power has for decades alternated between two parties with very similar ideologies.
On all these scales the BJP stands out as different. True, it has built a cult (a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society.) of personality around Mr Modi. Along with other top leaders in the party who spent long apprenticeships as “volunteers” with Hindu nationalist groups before entering politics, however, the prime minister remains a celibate bachelor; there will not be a Modi dynasty. Like it or not, too, his party does stand for something: the BJP believes that for India to be strong it must abandon the elitist secular socialism of the Congress years and embrace a less inclusive, more “authentic” Hindu identity.
But above all, India’s ruling party enjoys unmatched discipline and organising power. A disappointed Aam Aadmi supporter in the prosperous Delhi district of Vasant Vihar says they didn’t put up a single flag or poster. By contrast neat, polite BJP workers went door-to-door, ringing his bell three times.