India, with 968 million eligible voters, is currently holding the largest exercise of democratic rights in the world. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — the world’s largest political party — is widely expected to win.
The BJP has come to dominate India’s electoral landscape for several reasons: It focused relentlessly on building its organizational strength, promoted meritocracy within its ranks, widened its voter base and competently delivered benefits to the poor.
Socially conservative, but economically centrist, the BJP was formally established in 1980, although its roots lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a party that emerged in the 1950s to offer a Hindu nationalistic, laissez-faire alternative to that era’s prevailing socialist mindset. The BJP has been in power for about 19 of the 77 years since Indian independence: three years from 1977, 13 days in 1996, one year in 1998, five years from 1999 and 10 years since 2014. Thus, it has retained the DNA of a challenger, despite winning 292 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 seats in the 2019 elections, when the Indian National Congress, the second-largest party, won only 51.
Illustration: Yusha
After making a dent in parliament in the late 1960s, the BJP formed the first-ever non-Congress government in the late 1970s, following former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi’s suspension of civil liberties. Owing to broad sociological developments in the late 1980s, regional caste-based parties started gaining ground. With Congress having jeopardized its standing by repeatedly adopting erratic political positions, the BJP’s religious messaging helped it unite Hindu society, resulting in the first non-Congress government ever to last a full term.
The past decade saw a similar pattern. In 2014, the vacuum created by complacency within Congress and succession-related challenges in regional parties enabled the BJP to become the first party to win an outright majority in the Lok Sabha since 1984. Thereafter, it gradually built a near-hegemonic position.
In a country dominated by political dynasties, the BJP stands out for its commitment to meritocracy. In this year’s parliamentary election cycle, it replaced about one-quarter of its current MPs with new candidates, demonstrating a detailed knowledge of electoral dynamics and a capacity for tough decisionmaking. This regular churn keeps everyone on their toes and protects the party against capture by narrow groups.
While the BJP was primarily supported by upper-middle-class, urban, privileged Hindus 30 years ago, it has since built a broader political base. In 2019, it won 37.6 percent of the rural vote, 32.9 percent of the semi-rural vote, 36 percent of the lower-income vote and 33 to 48 percent of the vote from various lower castes. Those results reflect the groundwork laid by the party’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an organization founded in 1925 to advance a vision of India as a “Hindu nation,” and which combines a volunteer paramilitary wing with grassroots economic rehabilitation and social work.
Yet, despite its explicitly Hindu-nationalist agenda and muzzling of the Muslim community, the BJP has also increased its share of the vote among religious minorities. While only 4 percent of Muslims voted for it in 2009, that figure rose to 9 percent in 2014 and to 19 percent in 2019, compared to 30 percent for Congress that year, with the rest going to fragmented regional parties.
India’s direct benefits program is by far the most tangible source of the BJP’s mass appeal. Last year, the government distributed US$60 billion to more than 900 million people, through 4.9 billion transactions involving 315 government schemes and 54 ministries. That is a marked change from 40 years ago, when then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi complained that only 15 percent of Indian government spending on welfare programs reached the intended beneficiaries.
Few commentators appreciate the conscious efforts that BJP leaders make to stay abreast of developments on the ground. In 2014, the party instituted its Sahyog policy, whereby a rotation of serving ministers make themselves available at party headquarters, so that staffers can engage with them directly. About 200 people participate in these meetings every day, offering direct feedback and eliminating distortions that arise from multiple organizational layers.
The BJP also offers a strong aspirational narrative. Modi’s government has fostered a can-do spirit with widespread infrastructure investments that include the construction of 75 new airports in the past decade, last year’s G20 summit — which was showcased across India — and a US$5 trillion GDP target. India is now far more prominent on the world stage; this has captured the national imagination.
The BJP’s campaign operation leaves no stone unturned. Canvassers are assigned lists of individual voters to target, convert and mobilize. In each district, 18 to 20 media vans blare out the party’s message, even in small villages of only 2,000 people. The party’s “know your customer” database would put many multinational companies to shame.
Modi amplifies the BJP’s strengths. He is the most charismatic prime minister in recent memory, and he has a firm grip on the issues. These attributes have made him one of the world’s most popular leaders, with an approval rating of 78 percent, polling by Morning Consult showed. Parliamentary seats are won in his name. In the 2019 election, members who switched from rival parties to the BJP won 56.52 percent of the time, compared to 14.9 percent for those who switched to other parties.
Many of the BJP’s strengths are also sources of criticism: Its nationalist ideology gives it blind spots, its challenger mentality has rough edges, Modi’s popularity can lead to hubris and its cadres can become a source of organizational rigidity. The BJP would need to guard against the pathologies of incumbency, lest it starts looking like Congress, once a great political party whose relevance is currently being questioned by many. As the BJP thinks about its legacy, it should internalize an old Indian proverb: “Forts decay from the inside.”
Gaurav Dalmia is Chairman of Dalmia Group Holdings, a leading Indian investment company.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) on Thursday last week urged democratic nations to boycott China’s military parade on Wednesday next week. The parade, a grand display of Beijing’s military hardware, is meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. While China has invited world leaders to attend, many have declined. A Kyodo News report on Sunday said that Japan has asked European and Asian leaders who have yet to respond to the invitation to refrain from attending. Tokyo is seeking to prevent Beijing from spreading its distorted interpretation of wartime history, the report
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China yesterday, where he is to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. As this coincides with the 50 percent US tariff levied on Indian products, some Western news media have suggested that Modi is moving away from the US, and into the arms of China and Russia. Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation fellow Sana Hashmi in a Taipei Times article published yesterday titled “Myths around Modi’s China visit” said that those analyses have misrepresented India’s strategic calculations, and attempted to view
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on Thursday last week, flanked by Chinese flags, synchronized schoolchildren and armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, he was not just celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” he was making a calculated declaration: Tibet is China. It always has been. Case closed. Except it has not. The case remains wide open — not just in the hearts of Tibetans, but in history records. For decades, Beijing has insisted that Tibet has “always been part of China.” It is a phrase
RSS