Third time victory for PM Modi: A mandate for continuity

Opinion

By Dr R Neerunjun Gopee

For the third time consecutively, PM Modi has led his party BJP to victory in India’s general election that ended last weekend, with results being declared on Tuesday June 4 in the evening. It is only the second time ever that a sitting PM has won the general election in India, the previous candidate to achieve this being its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962.

A third mandate for BJP: ‘Indian democracy, despite being chaotic and noisy, functions effectively, despite the negative narratives and criticisms that are labelled against it by local naysayers and their acolytes in the global ecosystem that are not comfortable with the unstoppable rise of Bharat – with a projected GDP growth of 8.3% — ever since Modi assumed power ten years ago. And that is likely to continue as the NDA gets into gear.’ Pic – NDTV

Modi repeats at national level what he did in Gujarat in the state elections – there too winning three times as Chief Minister, acquiring a rich experience in governance and development which prepared him for assuming the wider responsibilities of leading the country, beginning in 2014.

An electoral win for the third time by a sitting PM is considered to be a historical feat, and rightly so! Modi 3.0 will lead Bharat again.

As usual, several media houses conducted exit polls on the eve of the results being declared, even including a ‘poll of polls’. All of them excitedly concluded to a ‘massive’ win for the outgoing BJP, almost approximating the ‘400 paar’ slogan that was the BJP’s war cry. But they forgot that slogans are just that: slogans – obviously meant to motivate cadres and set an ideal objective that may or may not in practice be attained: for that is abundantly clear from previous records.

In fact, this was so in 2004, when the psephologists – those who specialize in predicting poll results – anticipated a clear win for BJP led by PM Vajpayee. This did not materialize, for the exact opposite happened, despite the fact that under his watch the country had made significant economic progress. ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ was then being believed. But clearly the economic and developmental record of Vajpayee was not enough to convince the electorate.

I remembered this episode in Bharat’s recent history, and so I was more cautious in my assessment and did not subscribe to the euphoria that had invaded media rooms following the exit poll announcements, and I shared my view with some friends, who also felt likewise.

So we took the results in our stride as it were, keeping in view past realities and the current context and circumstances where all kinds of undercurrents and negative narratives were at play.

The final tally gave us reason to have tread more carefully.

Thus, in the Lok Sabha of 543, the BJP obtained 240 seats, with the main opposition party the Congress at 99 seats – not able to go beyond 100 for the third time in succession, as pointed out by the BJP spokesperson, Shehzad Poonawala. Both parties contracted pre-electoral alliances – respectively NDA (National Democratic Alliance) and INDIA, at 294 and 232 seats each, the remaining 17 seats reckoned as ‘Other’.

At the BJP’s headquarters in New Delhi on Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory for the NDA, saying that ‘today’s victory is the victory of the world’s largest democracy,’ which gives him a mandate for continuing to move forward with his agenda.

The two key allies of Modi in the NDA are the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led by Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh state with 16 seats and Janata Dal (United) -JDU, led by Nitish Kumar which won 12 seats in Bihar state. Smaller groups make up the rest of the seats.

It was an election of stupendous proportions both in terms of the sheer numbers and the logistics involved to conduct the process. There were almost 970 million voters out of a population of 1.4 billion, and votes were cast by more than 640 million people under the supervision of nearly 15 million personnel. Some stray incidents of violence took place, predictably in West Bengal which is notorious for its Marxist-Communist past and the destructive Naxalite movement which erupted in the late 1960s – and which I ‘lived through’ as a medical student in Calcutta at that time. Sadly, that violent streak has been carried over!

Despite the protest by the opposition for resorting to conventional voting by paper ballot, the Supreme Court of Bharat ruled in favour of electronic voting, using the Electronic Voting Machine or EVM – as happened too in the previous two general elections, efficiently and successfully.

The opposition entered three petitions in the Supreme Court prior to the completion of the election, alleging tampering with EVMs, and one of the members made allegations of influence peddling of the District Magistrates by the Home Minister Amit Shah.

In a press conference, the Election Commissioner strongly rebutted these allegations, and invited the member to come up with concrete evidence of the alleged influencing of District Magistrates. This would be duly analysed and he gave the guarantee that if proven the EC would take appropriate action.

But in fact, the opposition went further to threaten that if the results didn’t come up to their expectations, the ‘country would be set on fire’! In a panel discussion, one the most well-known analysts Suhel Seth, a brand specialist who is from West Bengal squarely condemned those who were planning to take to the streets. He challenged them to answer whether this is the kind of democracy they wanted to project for their country, instead of having recourse to due legal process for any genuine grievances that they might harbour post the election.

But interestingly, after the results were declared, Congress party President Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters: ‘This is public’s victory and a win for democracy’! – with no criticism of the EVM system, as the INDIA Alliance had bagged an honourable score.

This shows that Indian democracy, despite being chaotic and noisy, functions effectively, despite the negative narratives and criticisms that are labelled against it by local naysayers and their acolytes in the global ecosystem that are not comfortable with the unstoppable rise of Bharat – with a projected GDP growth of 8.3% — ever since Modi assumed power ten years ago. And that is likely to continue as the NDA gets into gear.

Now we have to bide our patience as we trust that NDA will fulfill its mandate.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 7 June 2024