Kamal Ghorui
This round’s poll results underline much more than BJP’s durable structural dominance. They also signal implosion of an organised opposition to the BJP dominant party-system. Opposition has shrunk, without coherent strategy, or substantive leadership, to pose any meaningful challenge to BJP hegemony. At no point in Modi’s second term, did the road to office in 2024, look as smooth as BJP’s road to 2029 looks.
INDIA, when it formed in July 2023 in Patna, represented the coming together of a formidable political coalition. The alliance’s glue, Congress, boasted a govt in almost every part of India (Rajasthan in west, Chhattisgarh in east, Himachal in north, Karnataka in south). State parties held the fort – in Bengal (TMC), Bihar (RJD), TN (DMK) and Delhi (AAP). Additionally, there was a buffer zone with Andhra’s YSRCP and Odisha’s BJD.
Congress’s zone of power’s now relegated to south India – Himachal, the lone exception. State govts that gave INDIA heft are all overthrown. NDA has taken over the buffer zone – AAP quit INDIA after its defeat, following JDU’s and RLD’s exits earlier.
Influential opposition veterans – Tejashwi, Kejriwal, Sharad Pawar, Stalin, Mamata – have been diminished by electoral defeats. Akhilesh Yadav is perhaps the only regional neta who enhanced his standing. Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi’s elevated stature following 2024 LS expansion has been eroded by defeats to BJP in Haryana, Maharashtra and Assam – victory in Kerala is unlikely to offset these losses.
Opposition camp’s leadership deficit and strategic incoherence are reinforced by Left’s steady decline – that for long, was the bridge between Congress and regional parties. From UPA’s formation in 2004, to INDIA in 2023, Left veterans like Surjeet and Yechury played outsized roles in bringing together Congress and regional parties basis a shared programme.
But now, with Left not in govt in any state for the first time since 1967, there is no such force to bridge the gulf between Congress and regional parties. Last year, Omar Abdullah, J&K CM, described INDIA as being “on life support”. After this round, a large part of that life support has been taken out.
Unravelling of an organised opposition space will likely have three major implications for national politics.
● It’ll deepen NDA’s ‘hegemonic effect’ as representing the ‘only game in town’, allowing it to coast on a self-perpetuating momentum, even in the absence of widespread approval of its policies and performance.
In elections in UP, Punjab and Gujarat, BJP would likely employ its hegemonic position to arrange for the defection of opposition netas and draw in smaller parties to the NDA camp. It would also seek to employ its strengthened bargaining position to further divide opposition ranks and push through agendas in Parliament – such as on delimitation.
● State parties’ reduced footprint will whet Congress’s appetite to cannibalise. This portends a period of intense and escalating conflict within opposition ranks. In the first two Modi terms, state parties acted as principal bulwark against BJP at the state level, even as Congress steadily lost ground to BJP across the north and west. In Modi’s third term, in contrast, the striking story has been the receding space of regional parties, particularly in eastern India. Congress will certainly try to make most of their waning strength – YSRCP in Andhra, BJD in Odisha, AAP in Delhi, TMC in Bengal, NCP in Maharashtra.
Friction and tactical mishmash is increasing between Congress and its state partners in Bihar and TN. By 2029, Congress is likely to find little scope for forging partnerships with state parties. In Punjab and Gujarat, it would be more inclined to decimate AAP’s support base, rather than pursue an alliance.
● A depleted INDIA bloc would further complicate efforts to construct a broad-based national alternative to NDA. Defeats of TMC in Bengal, and Congress in Assam, show that a successful politics of opposition to BJP must go beyond narrow identity-centric narratives.
TMC’s reliance on Bengali pride and Congress’s, on a dominantcaste-led consolidation, proved inadequate. Opposition requires an alternative political imagination to Hindu nationalism.
This can be most effectively pursued by drawing on complementary strengths of diverse opposition parties. DMK and TMC, for instance, were crucial for articulating a narrative of federalism and state rights in the face of a centralising NDA in the spheres of fiscal policy, delimitation, education and language policy.
In the absence of a unified agenda and collaborative approach, NDA will find it easier to portray opposition as fragmented, thus sharpening its hegemonic effect via the TINA factor.
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