This extraordinary election was an extraordinary personal journey for me. It has been a journey of loss and recovery of faith, a faith in democratic politics, a faith in the abstraction called The People.
In the last four decades of poll-watching, never before had I approached a national election with as much trepidation as in 2024. A few days after the announcement of elections a friend remarked: “Aap aaj kal mayoos se dikhte hain (you look despondent nowadays)”. He was right. While I wrote about how it was possible to bring the BJP below the 272 mark and planned with my Bharat Jodo Abhiyan colleagues to realise this possibility, I was not sure if it would happen. Media screens and middle class chatter was full of the pran pratishtha ceremony in Ayodhya. “400 paar” was being discussed as a prophecy with loyal channels drumming up figures up to 411. On the other side, the Opposition did not have a clear and shared narrative or a common programme, let alone a consensus leader to generate hope around an alternative.
I began asking myself: Is this the end of the India we grew up in? Have words like democracy, secularism, socialism lost all meaning? Putin’s Russia began to look like a mirror to India’s future. Jokes about the Election Commission of Pakistan started sounding too close to home. There were operational questions too: Would this election mark the end of parliamentary oppositional politics? Is the politics of the street and underground resistance the only path open to those who wish to reclaim the republic? There were no easy answers. I spent many weeks in depression.
Something changed thereafter. I cannot put a date to it. Nor do I fully understand what brought this about. But as we started approaching the elections, something opened up, there was a distinct change in the air quality.
The election was transiting in phases. I was travelling across the country, often doing old-style fieldwork among ordinary people. And the public mood was also moving. It got better and better as this electoral marathon moved from the first to the last phase. Now the common refrain was “Chunaav palat gaya hai” or “chunaav uth gaya hai”, the election has turned. When I probed the reasons for the change, the most common answer was “partiyan nahin, ye election public lad rahi hai (this election is being fought by people, not parties)”. I had heard these phrases in the past, but never quite experienced such a journey from despair to hope.
The hope that I experienced is only partially about my expectation of a better outcome than anyone expected in the beginning. I have repeatedly spoken about my estimates for the final outcome and need not get into the details here. In sum: The BJP is unlikely to repeat or better its tally of 303 and is likely to fall well short of the majority mark of 272. I expect it to be around 250, but it could fall even further, around or below 230. But there is no point in speculating on this very much. The numbers should be out soon, hopefully without any further controversy or shadow of suspicion.
For me, the most important issue is not Kaun Banega Pradhan Mantri. The real issue is the message of the mandate. In the context of the hype of 400-paar, the BJP’s stranglehold over money and media and the spinelessness of institutions like the Election Commission, any number below 300 would be a moral defeat for the regime. They will not be able to claim the janaadesh (mandate) any more. If the BJP falls short of 272, it will be a political defeat. It may cobble up the government but the government will lose its iqbal, or its legitimacy to govern. And should the numbers fall below 250, it will be a personal defeat for the PM, that might trigger a contestation. If the undercurrent I detected is stronger, the numbers could go down further and may well open up the possibility of a non-NDA government. Any of these scenarios would open up democratic possibilities, strengthen voices of dissent and hopefully give some strength to the media and judiciary as well.
The real basis for my hope is what I saw and heard from the people, irrespective of who they might vote for. The first thing that struck me when I started travelling was the return of normal politics. Unlike 2014 and 2019, every day issues and livelihood concerns could no longer be bottled up. Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the flight of farmers, the struggles of labour. Yes, many of them still believe that Mr Modi has raised the country’s standing in the world, they support the scrapping of Article 370 and credit the government for the Ram Mandir, but these considerations do not trump everyday local issues. Voters demand accountability from their representatives and note the caste, community and locality of candidates. These considerations did not always work against the BJP. But I realised that these quotidian routines of democratic politics are a better defence of democracy than high-minded liberal democratic ideology.
People do not speak the language of liberal democracy, but after a long time, I heard direct references to tanashahi (dictatorship). An RSS worker took me aside and implored me to work for a stronger Opposition. Many of those who voted for the BJP did not approve of the arrest of Hemant Soren and Arvind Kejriwal. They had not heard of electoral bonds, but they knew about washing machine politics and misuse of agencies like ED, I-T and police. I heard the choicest of abuses for the media that they were still consuming, expressions of distrust in the Election Commission and the voting machine. No matter who they vote for, people do not like to be taken for a ride. Having tasted democracy for three generations, Indians are not willing to give it up, not knowingly.
I did not expect to hear a ringing endorsement of secularism in these times. Indeed, most citizens do not see any problem in the prime minister, the government and a political party being involved in the building and consecration of the temple. There is undoubtedly a lot of prejudice and hatred directed against the Muslims. Yet most people want bhaichara (fraternity), they do not want their lives disrupted due to communal clashes. Above all, they are not willing to foreground religious conflict over all other considerations all the time. Muslim bashing is not a permanently rewarding political game.
For the first time, I heard the Constitution being discussed in any election. Dalit voters viewed it through the prism of reservation, which matters as much to them as land matters to the farmers. Muslims and other minorities saw it from the lens of equal citizenship. This is not constitutionalism, as there is little respect for the rule of law. Most voters saw no problem with bulldozer justice. Yet the BJP ‘s panicked defence of the Constitution convinced me that no government would be able to mutilate it.
(The writer is member, Swaraj India)
