The Sequel is an Even Bigger Hit


For once, the exit polls got the big picture right. Modi won, and the BJP got an absolute majority. There were surprises too. Like the BJP getting an even bigger absolute majority than last time. The BJP’s vote share rose from 31% last time to 41% this time despite a massive ganging up of all parties in pre-poll alliances. Rahul Gandhi lost in Amethi. Fortress Bengal was breached big time.

See the maps below of who won where in 2014 and 2019. Whatever the BJP lost this time in Andhra/Telengana, it more than made up via the gains it made in the North East, West Bengal and Odisha.
Mihir Swarup Sharma writes of the origin of the Congress’ “Idea of India”. At independence, especially after all the bloodshed of Partition, Nehru decided:

“India is a bundle of contradictions, of competing group assertions, and it is the duty of the Indian state is to play an arbiter between them, to cover up and manage these centripetal and divisive forces through inclusion, representation and occasional preferential treatment.”
Indira Gandhi took that last part and converted it into a vote bank. And the backlash against that “appeasement” took decades to come, but it came in 2014 with a vengeance… with an even bigger sequel in 2019:
“Modi's idea of India's future was that it should be strong, rich and Hindu, and that all three things would have to happen together or none of them would happen at all. And this, in a nutshell, is the dominant conception in national politics today.”

And therein lies the problem for the Opposition. What is it that they believe in, for India? Over the last 5 years, that word they hid behind for lack of any ideology, “secularism”, has been removed from the political vocabulary. And with that fig leaf gone, the Opposition is naked, without any ideology whatsoever.

Ok, so no ideology. How about governance? The BJD in Odisha is the only party consistently on the Opposition that can govern well. The rest are the likes of the incompetent Congress (can you name one state they govern well?), and the goons of Mamata, Mayawati and Akhilesh.

So what does the Opposition have to offer then? Conspiracy theories (EVM’s are hacked) and the-world-is-ending hysteria (Modi is destroying the RBI, the Election Commission and every institution they can think of).

Maybe the Opposition needs to decide on something positive they stand for, not just rail against what they are against.

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