The exit polls are out, and with just two days to go before counting day, P Chidambaram, senior Congress leader and columnist in The Sunday Express, has offered a broad frame in which to place the final results. It is a battle, he says, between “those determined to protect the status quo and those determined to disrupt the status quo”. Between pro-changers and no-changers, in other words.
So if the direction of the exit poll projections holds, and the Narendra Modi-led BJP coasts back to power, will it mean that the no-changers have had their way? Not really.
Because the reality on the ground is a bit less tidy, and a little more complicated, than Chidambaram’s stark opposition paints it to be.
Travelling to cover the election in five states, one thing that seemed clear to me was that if Modi wins a third term, it would be because, among the other spaces that he has conquered, he has also made inroads in the “change” constituency. On the face of it, it seems like a contradiction in terms — a two-term incumbent being seen as a force for change.
But in many conversations with voters, in which they spoke about their anxieties and discontents — from an education system that does not prepare students for employment to the job opportunities that are hard to find, from the rising prices that make a dignified and fulfilling life unaffordable for so many to the deepening of networks of local corruption — the voices for change addressed Modi more than they did his political opponents.
Perhaps this is because among Modi’s many messages to the voter, there is this powerful and resonant one: That India is on the move and changing on his watch, going towards the bigger and better. Oftentimes, the pro-change Modi voter even adds a caveat — my circumstances have remained the same, but the country is moving forward as a whole.
If Modi comes back to power for a third term, the parties of the Opposition will need to ask themselves why they were not able to persuade the pro-change voter of their credentials, why the challenger ended up looking like the status quoist, another contradiction in terms.
If the exit polls are right, and if the Opposition asks itself these questions, it should resist the temptation of easy answers — that this is an optical illusion, or a political sleight of hand, not reality. And that Modi looks like a change agent only because he controls the levers of the vast and powerful image-making industry.
If after two terms, Modi is able to present himself as insider as well as outsider, as both incumbent and challenger, it is his political feat, not a conspiracy to fool all the people all the time. It points to a shrinking space for his opponents, for which they themselves must also take responsibility.
There could be many reasons for Modi bidding more successfully for the change constituency but one of them may be that too many of his political opponents fought this election as a battle for survival, not a fight to win. They pared down their own ambitions visibly, even as Modi ratcheted up his own and the BJP’s — the BJP’s tall order of “400-paar” and the Opposition’s smaller and fragmented goal-setting, state by state, was an indication of this. In his Sunday Express piece, Chidambaram talks of a lesson ignored by the status quoists: “Who dares wins”. But whether it wins or loses, it must be said that the Opposition, which was admittedly low on funds and pushed onto the back foot by the well-armed BJP, did not show the chutzpah either, or the throw-it-all-in daring.
Its leaders were seen to attack Modi more than telling their own stories and, even more crucially for an alliance, joining the dots in between. For the most part, they sought to outdo the BJP in cash transfer promises. When they did present a big idea like the caste census, they could not frame it in ways that were empathetic and imaginative, or ensure that their own cadres on the ground ran with it. INDIA leaders mostly gave the impression of fighting singly to protect their respective turfs and fiefs, even their joint shows were few and far between.
Of course, if the BJP has managed to win a third term, going forward, it will not be enough to project itself as a change maker, it will itself have to do some of the changing. If, as the exit polls say, it is spreading from its bastions into newer territories, Tamil Nadu and Kerala or Odisha and West Bengal, it will have to become a more spacious BJP.
For a long time now, it has been adding layers — except on the question of the Muslim minority, on which it remains where it started out, is at a complete standstill. Its challenge now will be to make room for other languages, other histories.
Till next time,
Vandita
