Modi 3.0 not averse to doing a climbdown

Narendra Modi has entered the second year of his third term as the Prime Minister. His party possibly never dreamt of savouring such a long spell in power, except when Atal Bihari Vajpayee offered a glint of hope on becoming the BJP’s first PM. Modi has travelled much farther on the road laid out by Vajpayee. If he wins another term, the Vajpayee years might end up as a footnote in the party’s annals. Such is Modi’s overwhelming dominance over the BJP.

If Vajpayee was politically nurtured and tutored in Lutyens’ Delhi in the decades when the Congress held sway and pushed even Opposition leaders of the era, with exceptions, to unconsciously assimilate its modus operandi, Modi was barely familiar with the national capital except for his stints as a BJP functionary.

Gujarat was home to him in every sense and the Sangh Parivar was family. Even today as a self-anointed “vishwa guru”, he is wedded to the Sangh’s ideology whose imprint is stamped on the government’s actions and policies. Vajpayee softened the harsh edges of the Sangh’s precepts, while Modi refuses to compromise, regardless of the political cost.

The BJP hopes Modi will match, if not surpass, the records set by Jawaharlal Nehru as PM. Indeed, in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Modi worked hard to beat Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress’ record tally of 414 seats. But the slogan “Abki baar, 400 paar” was demolished when the BJP failed to chalk up its own majority, making Modi critically dependent on the NDA allies and external partners to shore up his numbers. For the first time after winning the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019, both on the BJP’s own strength, Modi looked shaky. The BJP’s performance in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal pulled it down.

However, as the Opposition, especially the Congress (with a vastly improved showing), rejoiced at the prospect of the BJP’s allies nipping at Modi’s heels, he turned out to be smarter than they imagined. In his first two tenures, the NDA existed only as a notional entity in a highly centralised power structure whose reins were controlled by Modi himself with Home Minister Amit Shah as his prime confidante. The allies had no agency.

Where Vajpayee, presiding over an unwieldy coalition, contended with demanding partners such as the Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu (who was then the CM of undivided Andhra Pradesh) and the AIADMK, and was deferential towards them, Modi charted a different path. Naidu, now Andhra CM, no longer rushes to Delhi on the smallest pretext with a want list.

There is speculation that Nitish Kumar, the Janata Dal (United) chief and Bihar CM who is an important constituent of the NDA, might act up closer to the state elections this year. But the BJP has its caste arithmetic and macro issues in place to target a range of Bihar voters, so it is likely that Nitish might swim with the BJP and not rock the boat just yet. Beset with anti-incumbency issues, he has to straighten out the problems in his backyard before getting adventurist.

A theory in circulation has it that Modi was “forced” by the erstwhile socialist parties in the NDA to foreground social justice in the government’s agenda and relegate Hindutva to the background. The theory presupposes that Hindu appeasement played through the anti-minorities card was the BJP’s only plank, its one-trick pony. While the BJP’s politics is largely predicated on pandering to Hindus, early on in its rise it realised that caste was a reality that cannot be wished away, that there were deep social and economic contradictions among Hindus which were manifest in voting patterns and that the under-empowered backward castes and Dalits had begun to assert aggressively for their place in the political order.

The realisation spurred the BJP to do the right balancing act between social justice and Hindutva. When it tilted towards one, it failed electorally as in UP and Maharashtra in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. If building the Ram temple, revoking the special status of J&K and implementing the contentious citizenship law dominated its campaign and flopped in UP and Maharashtra, the message was not lost on Modi as he was sworn in.

Having trashed the Opposition’s clamour for a caste census, Modi reversed his stand. On April 30, amid rising tensions with Pakistan, the Centre announced that caste enumeration data will be included along with the decadal census. While there may be a grain of truth in the speculation that Modi’s socialist partners in Bihar pushed him to make the announcement to keep their OBC constituency intact, the compulsion was equally the BJP’s which has expanded its support base in the eastern state to encompass the OBCs, including the Most Backward Castes.

Earlier, the Centre withdrew the UPSC’s advertisement for lateral recruitment to 45 key posts because the PM reportedly felt that the process of lateral entry must be aligned with reservations for OBCs, SCs and STs. The ad gave an impression that lateral entrants would be out of the ambit of quotas.

In Parliament, a change in the government’s approach to the Opposition was visible. Earlier, key Bills were steamrolled amid the Opposition’s protests; now, for instance, it put the draconian Broadcasting Bill on the backburner and gave taxpayers the option of using the old and new tax rates when calculating real estate sales instead of tying them to the change announced in the Budget.

Like in his earlier terms, Modi is primarily fixated on winning elections at every tier of the power structure. He made up for the Lok Sabha poll setback by swinging three states — Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi — the last being the cherry on the cake.

The electoral success might create an impression that the Opposition, especially the Congress, lies disemboweled today. Indeed, the aftermath of Operation Sindoor has exposed serious faultlines in the Congress, just when the BJP is going to town over its militant nationalistic agenda.

For Modi, the main challenges remain the east and the south — West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry go to the polls next year. Barring Puducherry, a union territory, the others have remained impregnable for the BJP so far, but Modi is not one to give up.

Radhika Ramaseshan is a senior journalist.

Comments