2023, the year gone by, in a sense belonged to the BJP-led government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite a few lows. As the country braces to face the Lok Sabha polls in April-May 2024, the prelude that was this year unpacked enough issues – which BJP counts as the government’s stellar achievements – to fill a good portion of the platter it will offer voters.
Modi All The Way
The year-long presidency of the G20 countries unleashed a blitzkrieg of publicity and propaganda to talk up India’s growing global status; the country’s ascendancy to being the world’s fifth largest economic power after the US, China, Japan and Germany—that left India with the vicarious pleasure of outpacing a former coloniser, the UK; the refusal to yield to Western pressure while condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine which President Vladimir Putin used to cock a snook at the US and its allies; the increased oil imports from Russia at a reduced price and India’s pitch to listen to the unheard voices of the Global South to ensure inclusive growth amid economic worries, all these factors enhanced BJP’s exercise to project Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “vishwa guru”.
The stand-out in this spectrum of global outreach was soaring into galactic space with the moon landing via the Chandrayaan-3 Mission on August 23. India was only the fourth country after the US, erstwhile Soviet Union and China to achieve a soft landing in the lunar south pole. There was more.
A week after the landing, on September 2, India touched another milestone with the launch of its maiden observation mission, Aditya-L1, destined for the sun from the ISRO space centre at Sriharikota. Such triumphs served as catalysts for fuelling the ambitions and aspirations of burgeoning space start-ups.
The Centre’s decisions to read down Article 370 which conferred special rights on Jammu and Kashmir and reset the region’s territorial boundaries were ratified by the Supreme Court that settled the debate on whether the moves were constitutional or not.
BJP Ends Year On A High
2023 was a mixed bag for political parties seeking to test the electoral waters. BJP suffered a reversal in Karnataka, which helped Congress get a boost in the south, and the outcome had a ripple effect on neighbouring Telangana where Congress came from behind to stun both BRS and BJP.
In politics a party is as effective or ineffective as the last election won or lost. Congress was wiped out in the elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram as BJP emerged victorious in the first three states, marking its near-hegemonic hold over the Hindi belt.
What Does 2024 Portend?
Clearly, BJP enters the Lok Sabha battle with a head start over the Opposition. The heartland victories boosted the party and the government’s preparations. The focal point is the Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra which serves as the main conduit for disseminating and propagating the Centre’s flagship social schemes the country over. The target audiences are the beneficiaries of the welfare programmes and those living below the poverty line in step with the BJP’s effort to sustain its image as a socially and economically inclusive entity.
The Ram temple’s consecration at Ayodhya on January 22 by PM Modi, in the presence of a large gathering mobilised by the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the original spearhead of the temple agitation) and Bajrang Dal, is expected to form the nucleus of the campaign directed at the “parivar’s” core constituency as well as an enlarged following of the neo-converts to Hindutva. The temple “movement” to reclaim the “original” site which, the VHP alleged, was appropriated by the Mughals to raise the Babri mosque on the debris of a Ram mandir, marked BJP’s national ascendancy to power and is counted among the country’s impactful mass “crusades”.
With the temple, the “Hindutva-nationalism” package will include the legally-upheld “breakthroughs” to “integrate” Kashmir with mainstream India and the promise to introduce a common civil code if elected to power. It isn’t as though there are no challenges staring BJP in the face. It has to work doubly hard to retain the maximum gains it notched in the heartland and the west in 2019. Barring the north-east and Assam in the main, Odisha and West Bengal do not offer much scope for augmenting seats while the south remains a daunting terrain except for Karnataka and possibly Telangana.
The Opposition bloc of INDIA constituents began on a promising note in 2023 as a front united to take on BJP in 2024. But soon, the contradictions, which appear irreconcilable at times, surfaced over seat-sharing and a common agenda, not to speak of leadership. A vastly weakened Congress cannot afford to dominate the coalition that includes powerful regional forces such as Trinamool Congress Party and DMK. Besides, the INDIA bloc lacks the heft that parties such as BJD, YSRCP and BRS could have brought to the alliance. The policy of maintaining equidistance from Congress and BJP – that in effect implies greater proximity to BJP – precluded their inclusion in the INDIA alliance.
Radhika Ramaseshan is a senior journalist and columnist. She was the political editor at The Telegraph. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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