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Now that the verdicts from five state assembly elections are in, the eyes of 1.4 billion Indians turn to the country’s general elections, expected to be held between April–May 2024.
The state results confirm what is already common knowledge: Headed into 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the clear front-runner. This advantage is principally driven by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s enduring popularity.
According to the Morning Consult global leader tracker, 78% of Indians surveyed in late November approved of Modi’s job performance. It is even more remarkable that Modi’s approval has been consistent since August 2019.
Domestic opinion polls confirm that Modi’s popularity remains intact, further fuelling his party’s dominance. The biannual India Today Mood of the Nation poll consistently shows, including as recently as August 2023, that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would handily capture a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha.
However, elections are popular demonstrations of the will of the electorate, not preordained coronations. Past experience — not least the previous NDA government’s surprise upset in 2004 — suggests that Indian voters do not thoughtlessly conform to conventional wisdom. As the road to 2024 begins, five issues are worth watching: The waning predictive power of state elections, the challenge of Opposition coordination, the battle for backward castes, the arms race of competitive welfarism, and the emergence of foreign policy as a mass issue.
First, we must keep in mind the limited predictive power of the recent state assembly polls.
In an earlier era of Indian politics, scholars detected an unmistakable relationship between state and national elections. As the political scientist Nirmala Ravishankar found, candidates that state ruling parties put forward in national elections fared well when the elections occurred early in the state government’s term. Conversely, candidates nominated by state ruling parties whose respective governments were deep into their tenure were punished in national elections.
This correlation has broken down in recent years. As figure 2 demonstrates, the Congress swept the December 2018 assembly elections in Chhattisgarh and bested the BJP in both Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. But this advantage proved short-lived. In the parliamentary result, the BJP dominated the Congress in all three states less than six months later. In the 2018 Telangana state polls, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) — rechristened the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) — won three out of every four seats but could not replicate this in the 2019 elections.
However, there is reason to believe that this correlation could be stronger in 2024 than in years past. Modi’s unparalleled popularity means that the electorate has extra incentive to back the BJP in national elections.
In 2014 and 2019, the BJP was aided in its quest to attain a single-party majority by a fragmented Opposition. Many opposition parties were competing with one another as much as they were battling the BJP.
The Opposition, after two successive general electoral defeats, seems determined to learn from past failures. In July, more than two dozen opposition parties announced the creation of a new opposition formation, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). The opposition alliance has talked a good game about collectively taking on the BJP, but it faces an uphill climb on at least three counts.
First, the alliance must agree on a common platform that transcends a reflexive hostility to the Modi-led BJP. The BJP alliance earned 45% of the vote in the 2019 elections, suggesting that more than half of the country did not support it. While their common anti-BJP position creates a floor for the opposition, INDIA must also offer an alternative vision for governing that sufficiently distinguishes it from the BJP.
Second, at present, the INDIA bloc is leaderless. While the Opposition is factually correct in stating that India is a parliamentary democracy in which the prime minister is chosen by the party (or coalition) that enjoys a Lok Sabha majority, this ignores the fact that Modi has successfully presidentialised the system over the past decade. In the face of a popular incumbent, INDIA risks being dismissed unless a leader emerges who offers a counterpoint to Modi.
Finally, the Opposition must negotiate a delicate seat-sharing agreement. If it is to truly fight as a unified front, INDIA’s constituent parties must voluntarily forego contesting seats they feel they “own” to make way for partners. In many states, such as Punjab or West Bengal, constituent parties have long been bitter opponents.
Even if alliance members overcome their differences, coalition arithmetic does not automatically generate coalition chemistry. For example, in Uttar Pradesh in 2019, the two foremost regional parties — the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), long at loggerheads — joined forces to keep the BJP out of power. Notwithstanding this grand coalition, the BJP alliance earned 51% of the vote and bagged 64 (of 80 total) seats, while the BSP-SP alliance won 39% of the vote but just 15 seats.
On paper, the opposition alliance had arithmetic in its favour; the SP and BSP jointly earned 42% of the vote in 2014 — the same share as the BJP. But, in 2019, arithmetic on paper was not a substitute for the lack of chemistry in practice.
The third factor to consider is the battle over other backward classes (OBCs), the single largest voter bloc. In large measure, the electoral transformation of the BJP under Modi owes its success to the party’s ability to attract OBCs. Hindi belt parties shot to popularity thanks to their ability to cater to large segments of the OBC vote — that is, until Modi’s arrival. According to data analysed by political scientist Rahul Verma, in the 2009 elections, the BJP captured 22% of the OBC vote (see figure 3). In 2014, under Modi, the BJP made large inroads among this community.
In particular, the BJP positioned itself as the champion of the extremely backward classes (EBCs), or lower OBCs, which did not reap the benefits promised by the Mandal mobilisation. The BJP’s bet paid off big in 2014, capturing 30% of the OBC vote and earning 43% of the EBC vote. In 2019, the BJP won 41% of the OBC vote and 48% of the EBC vote. The share of the backward vote flowing to the Congress and once-dominant regional parties declined in turn.
Down but not out, the Mandal parties plotted revenge. The charge has been led by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who has championed the cause of a caste census in his state, a politically contentious manoeuvre meant to spotlight the pervasive underrepresentation of OBCs. Bihar released the results of this first-of-a-kind census in October, revealing that OBCs made up 63% of the state’s population. The finding fuelled fresh demands for proportional reservations in government jobs.
The issues surfaced by the caste census have placed the BJP on the back foot. But the BJP does not lack cards to play. Chief among them is the Rohini Commission, a government committee set up to propose the creation of official subcategories within OBCs. This task of sub-categorisation is crucial because it provides a blueprint for allocating OBC reservations among the hundreds of communities that fall within this larger grouping.
The commission submitted its final report in August, but the contents remain under wraps. If the government publishes the report and announces its intent to implement the committee’s recommendations, it could blunt calls for a caste census. But there are also clear downsides to this as well: Divvying up OBC reservations will create winners as well as losers within this large, heterogeneous group, increasing disaffection among dominant OBC castes. Furthermore, highlighting the issue of reservations could raise the ire of the BJP’s “upper caste” supporters, who worry about the adverse consequences of affirmative action schemes in which they do not figure.
A fourth factor shaping the 2024 fight is the impact of welfare schemes on voting behaviour. As former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian noted, a critical pillar of the Modi government’s economic program consists of “new welfarism,” in which the government has ramped up investments in the public distribution of private goods such as gas cylinders, toilets, bank accounts, and electricity connections. This welfare push has been coupled with the government’s embrace of direct cash transfers, funnelling benefits into household bank accounts.
According to economist Suyash Rai’s calculations, the central government transferred 7,370 crore rupees in cash to about 108 million beneficiaries in 2013-2014. In 2019-2020, it channelled 2.4 lakh crore rupees in cash to more than 700 million beneficiaries using its direct benefits transfer platforms, alongside an additional 1.4 lakh crore rupees worth of in-kind benefits. These benefits surged further on account of the pandemic.
Although the conventional narrative holds that the BJP fought — and won — the 2019 elections on the back of nationalism induced by the Pulwama attacks, economics had a distinct role to play. In the months leading up to the polls, the central government announced an annual cash transfer of ₹6,000 to every farming household under a new scheme meant to alleviate symptoms of rural distress.
Survey evidence suggests that these investments engendered political returns. One analysis of the 2019 general elections found that voters who received benefits under central government schemes involving cooking gas, bank accounts, and housing were more likely to support the BJP.
In the recently concluded assembly elections, parties of all stripes made lavish promises of transfers. For instance, the BJP announced a ₹15,000 cash transfer to every girl child in Mizoram if it were brought to power. To entice voters in Telangana, the BRS promised ₹1 lakh to the families of low-income and Muslim brides. In Rajasthan, the Congress promised ₹10,000 to every woman head of household.
Not to be outflanked, the Modi government recently announced the extension of a pandemic-era scheme to provide free food grains to 800 million citizens for an additional five years. While lofty welfare promises do not guarantee victory, the BJP will likely look to further innovate in this domain ahead of 2024.
A final factor informing the 2024 elections is India’s evolving role in the world. Traditionally, political scientists have distinguished between “elite” and “mass” issues. Elite issues concern subjects such as foreign policy, national security, and trade policy, while mass issues pertain to matters such as inflation, jobs, and welfare benefits, issues that have a visceral impact on ordinary lives.
Modi has broken the invisible barrier between these two categories. The February 2019 Pulwama attacks, and the ensuing Indian response at Balakot, generated a nationalist fervour that Modi skillfully owned on the campaign trail. Polling data suggested that the crisis bolstered the BJP’s fortunes, displacing quotidian concerns about the economy.
But the impact of foreign policy on voter behaviour cannot be reduced to contingencies alone. There is a widespread perception that Modi has elevated India’s status on the global stage. The government’s yearlong, high-voltage marketing campaign celebrating its inaugural G20 presidency serves as recognition that the way India is perceived globally is a matter of domestic political salience.
As international relations expert Rohan Mukherjee has argued, rising powers such as India care deeply about their status. While India has long emphasised its moral exceptionalism and civilisational greatness, Indians do not always believe that non-Indians share their perceptions of their country’s global significance. The Modi government has worked overtime to propagate the idea that India has transitioned from being a “balancing” power to a “leading” one.
The Opposition is at a disadvantage here. It lacks the agenda-setting power incumbency affords. And its attempts to critique the government also risk backfiring if voters believe it is actively rooting against the country. As this newspaper’s Prashant Jha has noted, the Opposition has repeatedly shifted the goalposts when scrutinising the government’s foreign policy, undercutting its attacks.
As the battle for 2024 begins, the BJP undeniably maintains the upper hand. After disappointing state election results, the Opposition must regroup. Rhetorically, its leaders have agreed to a ceasefire allowing for collective action against an existential threat. Even the Congress, which has been hampered by charges of dynasty and nepotism, has named a party chief whose last name — after a long time — is not Gandhi. The question is whether disparate opposition groups can develop a forward-looking political narrative that is simultaneously cogent and flexible. The Opposition has a steep hill to climb, and time is not working in its favour.