Forget 2024, Modi-Shah Duo Is Aiming For 2029

The week had barely begun, and the euphoria of India’s test victory at Vizag had not yet begun to abate, when news arrived that the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Jayant Chaudhary, the party of the Jats in Uttar Pradesh, could be ditching the I.N.D.I. Alliance and joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) once again.

This is a body blow for the Congress party, its senior alliance partner in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party (SP), and opposition unity, because an RLD-BJP alliance means that the opposition will be hard pressed to win even a handful of seats in the state.

As it is, the index of opposition unity had dropped significantly after the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) declared that it would be contesting the 2024 general elections on its own. But with the RLD’s shift, opposition chances have now sunk even further.

Moreover, coming as this move does, on the back of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s abrupt-albeit-not-unexpected departure from opposition ranks last month, and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s declaration that her party would be contesting all the seats in her state, the summum bonum is that the Congress-led coalition is finished in the north.

The obvious inference is that the BJP and its allies are expected to sweep the Indo-Gangetic plains once more. But is that all there is to this move? Or, is there a better, broader perspective from which one may appreciate it more fully? In fact, there is.

The RLD’s switch from the Congress to the BJP is merely emblematic of a larger political strategy being played out. In simple words, this is Narendra Modi and Amit Shah setting up an insurance election in 2024, to cover his party’s fortunes in the 2029 elections, in case there is a leadership change in the BJP.

We say this because there is a precedent: this is precisely what he did in Gujarat between the 2007 and 2012 assembly elections, as a precursor to his shift to Delhi.

Look at the parallels: 

In 2007, Modi had to suffer numerous insults during the course of an acrimonious campaign. Congress president Sonia Gandhi called him a ‘maut ka saudagar’, which means ‘merchant of death’. This was a period when the full heat of central agencies was on Modi and the BJP in Gujarat.

In spite of that, Modi led the BJP to a thumping victory. And once the mandate was in the bag, he set about cutting the Congress to size in the state. State bigwigs, district barons, and the rank and file of the Congress cadre were either neutralised, co-opted, or side-lined, using every trick in the book, and rendered ineffective.

It was a quiet, thorough, process, executed with elan. The results started to show only as the 2012 assembly elections approached, when Congress leader after leader was found incapable of doing the heavy lifting to stop the Modi juggernaut. And by the time the party’s central leadership woke to what had transpired, it was too late; Modi had laid the ground for BJP victories in places where it hadn’t traditionally fared well — like in the tribal belt.

This was Modi’s first insurance election, designed to ensure that the BJP’s electoral base in Gujarat wasn’t dented too much when Modi made the shift to Delhi. And the point was proved in the 2017 assembly elections, when the Congress played not one, not two, but three egregious, divisive caste cards, to try and derail the BJP.

The BJP won in 2017, but not after it suffered a few sleepless nights, some upsets, and a reminder from the electorate that the void left behind by Modi deserved to be filled more determinedly. 

To draw parallels, let us now review the milieu of the 2019 general elections. It was as vituperative as the 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections had been.

The Congress party’s distasteful rallying cry was ‘chowkidar chor hai’. And if, in 2007, their efforts had been to demonstrate Modi’s criminal culpability in the 2002 riots, in 2019, they sought to pin a similar culpability on Modi using the Rafale jet fighter deal.

Of course, nothing came of it. Rahul Gandhi was forced to apologise in the Supreme Court, and the BJP received an enhanced mandate. Since then, to now, Modi has set about repeating at the national level, what he did to the Congress in Gujarat between 2007 and 2012.

The Congress’ senior leadership has been reduced to a joke in the public eye. Their cadres have been reduced to nigh nonexistence in multiple states. Their assiduously crafted alliances are in tatters. This is why we say that a potential RLD-BJP tie-up is but a small part of a larger picture.

The fact that the Congress has been rendered wholly incapable of preventing the BJP from securing a third consecutive mandate is beside the point. The actual point is that Modi has once again set the stage for an insurance election in 2024, as he did in 2012, to ensure that his party’s chances remain bright even if there is a leadership change by 2029.

This is how a political party is supposed to function: looking one or two election cycles ahead, planning, grooming the next crop of leaders, consolidating its electoral base in areas where it is strong, expanding into areas where it is weak, forging coalitions, and negating fresh political threats which crop up. And this is the difference between the BJP and the Congress.

Modi is already setting the stage for the next generation of leadership, through a well-crafted insurance election, while the Congress is still stuck playing musical chairs with its first family and its courtiers.