What Are The 2024 General Elections About?

With four phases of polling completed in the ongoing general election, and campaign narratives getting more finely honed, it is time to ask ourselves what this election is about, as the focus shifts in conclusion towards the decisive Indo-Gangetic plains.

The prevailing atmosphere is speckled with some palpable ennui, since most analysts and voters are of the opinion that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi, will be returned along with their allies for a third consecutive term in office. But there exists enough uncertainty in large states like West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, and in a few rebellious pockets of the BJP’s traditional catchment areas, to offset this languor with some welcome pizzazz. 

Like in all elections, this time too, poll planks fall into two broad baskets – the emotional and the necessary. The emotional appeals can be subdivided into two categories – the uplifting and the ugly. The ugliness stems from a deepening frustration, that come what may, the opposition parties have simply not managed to get their act together, to stop the BJP’s juggernaut motion.

Consequently, that inability has forcibly manifested itself, in truly absurdist fashion, as a frequent, unappealing tendency to either make personal, disparaging attacks on Modi, or to run down his government’s achievements over the past decade. So much so that, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s veneer slipped out of control at a rally, when he dropped the suffix “ji” while taking the Prime Minister’s name (an absolute no-no in Indian politics), and tastelessly downgraded honorifics for Modi during his diatribe (in Hindi, the shift from ‘woh kya karenge’ to ‘woh ky karega’ means a great deal from the perspective of cultured discourse, since its English equivalent is the shift from ‘Thee’ to ‘You’).

Elsewhere, opposition politicians needlessly disparaged the Ram temple at Ayodhya on puerile architectural and astrological grounds. Whatever the merit of such remarks, what stood out was the bad timing; the temple’s design had been known to the public for years, and if there were indeed flaws, these should have been pointed out ages ago, and not deployed as an unmannered political tool during election season. All it did was to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

In psychological terms, this is a defensive mechanism at work, whereby, one’s own appalling inadequacies are sought to be papered over by sniping at the other side in base vituperation. Venting releases frustration, no doubt, but what wisdom or political profit is there in such projection of hate, save to underscore what they stand against?

And on the other side of the hill flowed a stream of uplifting emotion. Multiple Ministers of the Union Cabinet reiterated, to loud public applause, that a Modi-BJP-led India would actively pursue their avowed intentions to recover Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Star campaigners evoked tears of joy at rallies, when they spoke passionately about the ‘Amrit Kaal’ that beckons – an era of development and prosperity unprecedented in the history of this subcontinent.

You had Tamilians campaigning in the west and the north, Assamese campaigning everywhere, and Maharashtrians in Kerala.

This is the new India, materially rising at last, above those sordid, divisive identities crafted by dead white men; identities, which were nurtured for so long, so assiduously, by their loyal legatees for gory harvests. And people like it.

What, then, is the necessary? Governance, policies, investments, demonstrable fiscal prudence, basic welfare, infrastructure, sound economics, and, above all else, profit. This is always the pivot of an election, when emotive issues, so necessary for drawing the voters’ attention, are melded to the tangible. How a political party manages this is usually central to its electoral performance, since emotion doesn’t put food on a table.

The BJP’s approach has been a mix of showcasing achievements, especially in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, with a plethora of statistics – particularly on the scientific manner in which welfare is being provided directly to beneficiaries.

The latter part is invariably outdone by attention spans operating in inverse correlation (the longer the list being rattled off, the sooner people zone out!). But surprisingly, it gets the message across for one simple reason – if you can’t contest this data, then you have to accept it.

The Congress party chose to pair backbiting with a hare-brained scheme of mass, forced, wealth redistribution which would have put even ultra-left Communists like Pol Pot of Cambodia to shame.

Once again, it was their leader Rahul Gandhi to the fore, explaining how this marvellous plan would work (as only he can). Many asked a simple question in response: what happens when the wealth which has been redistributed runs out?

Naturally, there was no answer, and this latest edition of Piketty-itis too, was lost in the campaign din.

Failing on both fronts, and bereft of both leaders and ideas with a pan-national appeal, the opposition’s Pavlovian response has been to ratchet up their usual minority victimhood narrative. It’s their ‘run-to-mommy’ plank when all else fails, and this time, they have latched on to Modi’s take on the Congress’ wealth redistribution scheme: giving the plan an earthy spin, Modi pithily commented that it meant, in effect, that the Congress would take away mangalsutras from women and gift these to the Muslims.

All hell broke loose, and the opposition started screaming about fascist, communal, majoritarianism from the rooftops. But that was exactly what the BJP was waiting for: in response, they used former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s infamous remarks, about Muslims having the first right to the nation’s resources, as a way to highlight the ills of vote-banking through minority appeasement. It was a smart move, well planned three steps ahead; that’s how predictable the opposition had become, and how easily they could be played.

And once that die was cast, it became progressively easier for the BJP to make more voters aware of the ills of identity politics, using current opposition statements. This is called awakening ‘Shatrubodh’ – developing awareness about those dangers which abound in our midst, but which we have either overlooked, or not treated with sufficient caution hitherto.

There are still three rounds of elections remaining, yet it appears that a principal theme of this general election could be one which gains greater prominence over the coming five years: we may compromise with anything in life, except that which poses a threat to our way of life.