Is there a Modi wave and is this an election different from others? Usually we have fragmented general elections in India. Parties do well in some states and not in others. The Congress might even sweep a state and be reduced to nothing in the one next to it.
This has happened more often than it has not. In the last four decades, the sweep of one party, meaning the Congress, has been experienced only exceptionally. The general rule has been that the main parties do not have a consistency in their performance across states.
This time, there is a difference. If we track the large states in which the Bharatiya Janata Party has a presence, something striking is on display. Look at Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. In none of these states is the Congress winning more seats than the BJP according to the opinion polls. The one state in which the Congress did well only a few months ago, Karnataka, is also falling into the BJP’s hands in the Lok Sabha elections, according to more than one poll.
This can be construed in only one way: that there is something that has stirred in favour of Narendra Modi and against the Congress.
It has in the past also been true at some points that the Congress has lost to the Opposition in most — if not all — states, but this has generally been the case when the Opposition parties have ganged up against it in one huge formation.
The election of 1977 was one such time, and V.P. Singh’s grand coalition against Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 was another. But in both these instances, the Congress retained its single-largest-party status and had a dominant presence in many of the states, especially in the South of India. Even when the BJP took power under Atal Behari Vajpayee and did so well for three elections, the Congress took a national thrashing only once, in 1999. Though it no longer had a lead over the big states against the BJP with a couple of exceptions (mainly Karnataka), it had a larger share of the total vote.
This time, if opinion poll results hold and the Congress-BJP positions are reversed, meaning 100 seats to the Congress and 200 to the BJP, it will be the first time that the Congress will have been outperformed by the BJP across India. I think this is a sign that there is a positive vote in favour of Mr Modi rather than a negative one against the Congress. Even in states where the Congress Party is in a good position locally (once again: Karnataka) it is seen as surrendering the advantage in the national battle.
Mr Modi is an exceptional asset for his party in that sense, and we should conclude that there is a Modi wave. His tireless campaigning — he has been on the road now for a year — shows the work ethic of a motivated politician who is focused on the prize. One criticism I have from observing the campaign this week is that nature of the BJP’s message. It is true that Mr Modi has always been overly aggressive in tone. He demands not only the defeat of the BJP’s rival but a Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India). This takes political rivalry into the realm of enmity. The latest BJP online ad issued to Indians was “the command to destroy the virus that has infected India for the last 60 years”.
The BJP should be careful. It’s record of whipping up emotions and then not being able to control the mobs that it has fired up is not very good.
