There is little to indicate that prime minister Narendra Modi is any less popular, let alone facing an anti-incumbency sentiment
IN what could certainly have put some wind back in the sails of Congress, the opinion polls in Karnataka have given the party an edge over the BJP. The poll, conducted by CVoter, projected between 115 and 127 seats for the Congress in the 224-member assembly, with the BJP a distant second at somewhere between 68 and 80 seats. Zee News Opinion Poll, on the other hand, is favourably disposed towards the BJP. But even that doesnt give a cake walk to the BJP, something that should be cause for concern for a party that is perceived to command a majority of support in the country.
A lot rides on the outcome of the polls in Karnataka, more so, as it would set the stage for the 2024 general elections. Around ten assembly elections are scheduled to be held before the national polls. Among them, the elections in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telengana will be very consequential. The BJP will hope to win all of them. Should the party suffer reverses in the majority of these states, this may not bode well for its 2024 chances. But despite the reverses, it could still carry the day as happened in 2019 when the saffron party secured a landslide in general elections despite losing state polls in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan.
The elections in these major states represent the last chance for the opposition, especially Congress, to hurtle back into the reckoning. For now, the Congress can take heart from the victory in Himachal.
As things stand, the opposition has failed to stitch together a formal alliance – albeit, there has been a rising chorus from many leaders to form a united front. The unity of the opposition has been inherently hamstrung by the difficulty to rally people around a principal leader or a party. Since 2014, Congress has lost its pole position in India’s politics. And its leader Rahul Gandhi has struggled to match up to prime minister Narendra Modi’s overarching political appeal.
Under Rahul’s leadership, Congress has lost successive elections, which has further undermined faith in him. This has made the other opposition parties wary of making him the face of opposition unity. Besides, several regional leaders who are powerful in their respective states nurse their personal ambitions. As a result, they wouldn’t want to subsume themselves under Congress, let alone Rahul or any other major opposition leader. An alliance would also oblige powerful regional parties to agree to seat-sharing in their states with the other less popular parties. So, there are many hurdles on the path to unity in the opposition, and it won’t be easy to surmount them.
Will Rahul’s conviction by the Gujarat High Court and his subsequent disqualification help Congress? Or for that matter, would Gandhi scion’s 4000 kilometre foot march reinvigorate the party’s support base? Much would depend on how Rahul builds on it. Up until now, he has squandered all opportunities that came his way.
To be sure, post-yatra Rahul seems to have developed some gravitas. And if this is his umpteenth relaunch – to borrow the BJP’s description of the Congress leader’s renewed periodic plunge into politics – then this is the most promising one so far. And if he fails yet again, it may well push him as well as the Congress party towards oblivion.
The objective gauge of Rahul’s progress or otherwise will be the outcome of the upcoming Assembly polls. A victory in some major states can also reinstate Congress as a viable national entity that can hold its own in front of the BJP juggernaut. This can, in turn, earn Rahul the stature to command some respect from the opposition, even if he is not able to lead them.
But for now, such a prospect remains a long shot. There is little to indicate that prime minister Narendra Modi is any less popular, let alone facing an anti-incumbency sentiment. His name and persona seem now entrenched in the national psyche. He is seen as a leader whose continuation in power people now take for granted. If notebandi, farmers’ protests, Chinese incursions, the COVID-19 pandemic and its widespread depredations couldn’t dent his image, nothing else can.
At the same time, politics is a dynamic process. Though public sentiment could be manipulated and distracted to a large extent through the control of information flow, it can also change due to factors not controlled by a rigged information order. For example, the economic factor, with unemployment, inflation, etc forcing a critical mass of people to turn away from the government. Or just a sense of fatigue with the current leaders, a certain disaffection with the prevailing state of affairs, which is described as anti-incumbency, and which, so far, Modi government has not allowed to set in. There is a widespread perception that the current political officeholders still face no anti-incumbency. As of now, the situation looks set to go in favour of the BJP only. That is, unless the opposition does something spectacularly different and a set of other factors coalesce in their favour, something that currently looks improbable.
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
- The author is the Political Editor at Kashmir Observer
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