The political campaigns have been launched and the electoral knives will soon be out now that the dates have been announced.
The India Gate in New Delhi, India
It is a busy weekend in India.
The election campaign has taken formal shape since Saturday. The Prime Minister has been in the South campaigning since Friday. Rahul Gandhi will launch his campaign and the INDIA bloc’s after the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Mumbai on Sunday.
The Model Code of Conduct is in force from the evening of Saturday, 16 March. The political parties in power at the Centre and in the States have already announced most of the allurements.
A confrontation between the contestants and the Election Commission begins over illegal measures to lure voters. The Election Commission assured the people on Saturday that it would brook no malpractice, no matter how powerful the guilty may be. That has to be seen.
All government servants report to the Election Commission during the period of the poll process and not to the Union and State governments.
The code tells political parties what they can or cannot do. The governments cannot announce policy initiatives during this period as the EC understands they can influence the voters.
Incidentally, ordinary citizens, too, will have to follow the code of conduct if they are campaigning for their candidates or political parties.
Underlining his importance to the 130 seats in South India, the Prime Minister sought to spend five days there. On Saturday, as the election schedule was announced in New Delhi, he was in Karnataka. In this phase, he will tour the five southern states.
The BJP is leaving no stone unturned in stitching alliances with even the smallest party and welcoming any number of defectors from other parties.
In Telangana, for instance, the intent is to bleed the BRS of its leaders. The scare of probe agencies to reportedly force recalcitrant parties into submission is at work here. K Kavitha, daughter of BRS supremo K Chandrashekar Rao, was arrested on Friday in the Delhi liquor scam. This is over and above the many defections engineered to weaken the regional party’s electoral presence.
In Karnataka, the show is on the other foot, with the Congress in full command of the situation after his victory in the Assembly elections. It has the task of reducing the BJP tally of Lok Sabha seats as much as possible. The BJP, not taking chances, has made sweeping changes in its candidates’ list, bringing in as many as ten new faces and dropping some incumbents. One of its stalwarts, former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, has suddenly suffered the embarrassment of having been booked in a sexual assault case under the POCSO Act following a complaint by a minor girl’s mother.
In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP has teamed up with the TDP and Jana Sena Party for the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. They plan a joint fight against YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s ruling YSRCP. He faces opposition from the Congress, which is headed by his sister, YS Sharmila.
In Tamil Nadu, the ruling DMK claims to be unconquerable because of the people’s loyalty to Dravidian culture and tradition and the party’s relentless fight against Hindutva. The BJP has tried several initiatives to make inroads in the state, and the Prime Minister has toured several times, trying to leave his imprint in the people’s minds.
In God’s own country, Kerala, the BJP attempts to have a foothold, at least this time. However, the electoral irony is not lost on all that the two main political forces in the state, the CPI(M) and Congress, are as much rivals as they are friendly constituents in the INDIA bloc. They grin and bear it, though, insisting that whoever between them wins, they would collectively keep the BJP out.
In the run-up to the 2024 elections, India has witnessed several major events that political parties will exploit for votes. The prime among them are the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the notification of the rules for implementing the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, and the disclosure of donations to political parties through electoral bonds between 2019 and 2024.
The political parties are already in the first phase of their electoral campaigns. The Bharatiya Janata Party has publicly asserted that it will return with 370 seats this time. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a pack of senior ministers led by Home Minister Amit Shah are crisscrossing the country, launching the party’s campaigns.
After a decade of rule at the Centre and in most states, the BJP has at its command a well-oiled campaign machinery accompanied by an often vituperative but scientific propaganda set-up, which will be its campaign mainstay. Its strategy is simple: Last time, it got the maximum seats in many states. It just has to retain them. But then, it has to be prepared for anti-incumbency and fatigue while rigorously promoting its Hindutva agenda.
The Congress party is equally geared up for the elections. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi will address a rally of the INDIA bloc at Dadar’s Shivaji Park on March 17, the concluding day of his Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra.
Rahul paced and timed the two phases of the Bharat Jodo yatra to coincide with the announcement of the election schedule. The first phase took him from South to North, and the second took him from East to West.
The INDIA bloc, formed last year as a platform of the opposition parties has faced several hurdles of leadership, common ideals and campaign issues, Lok Sabha seat-sharing and personal egos.
Unlike in 2019, the Congress is buoyed in 2024 following its victories in the Assembly elections in Karnataka and Telangana. They give it a heft in strategizing against the BJP even in the face of desertions of its leaders in several northern and western states. Though it lost Assembly elections in Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, it hopes the revived party ranks will help on voting day.
In the states ruled by regional parties and the Left, the game is on to buy purchasing power by winning as many Lok Sabha seats as possible. In some states, the regional forces have an unwritten understanding with the BJP, while in others, these forces are the constituents of the INDIA bloc.
The Hindi heartland states are challenging for both the BJP and the INDIA bloc. The BJP won the maximum possible seats in many states in 2019 and cannot afford to lose any in 2024. To keep it from returning with 100 percent victories is the tactic of the opposition. The Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal have the task of not confronting their allies and shoring up their ranks to fight the BJP.
Incidents of strife and polarization have tainted the electoral scene in West Bengal, Assam and Manipur, where the BJP wants to expand its foothold in the East further. The fact that it entered into an agreement with a regional party in Tripura formed by a former royal attests to this.
The elections in Jammu and Kashmir will test the Centre’s efforts to abrogate Article 370 to ‘blend’ the local population with the national mainstream. However, they are not happening, with no explanation why. In Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party will test the BJP’s mettle, having won the last Assembly elections by a huge majority.
The BJP claims it cannot lose a single seat in Gujarat, the Prime Minister’s home state. In Maharashtra, the onus is on the broken Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi to pick up the pieces and put up a strong fight against the ruling NDA. Two major state parties – the NCP and the Shiv Sena—have been split, weakening the Aghadi and posing the toughest and possibly his last electoral challenge to strongman Sharad Pawar.
In a country where perceptions rule the roost at election time with Brand Modi as the primordial campaign factor, it is to be seen whether the 2024 elections will have any brush with real issues.
Despite the rosy picture the Union government presents, the economy is a worry. Unemployment has not been tackled effectively. Aspirations among the youth have been stoked, but no opportunities have been provided to channel those energies.
On the one hand, India is on an infrastructural overdrive, making rapid progress in developmental works, industrial production, and agricultural production. The government claims to be feeding 80 crore people with free food grains and putting money in their banks, and it claims that only five percent of poverty remains to be tackled. If there is so little poverty, why is the government freely feeding over half of the population? There are no answers here.
The country beneath the surface presents an awful story of growing deprivation and lack of even basic medicare, education and employment. The migration of people, especially landless peasants and labourers, which began during the Covid-19 lockdown, continues as millions search for two square meals and money to spare.
The dichotomy of the ever-progressing urban classes and stalled lives of the expanding poor is perhaps at its most stark today. The Gaganyaan mission to carry an Indian to the Moon or foray into space as close to the Sun is as important for India as reaching the basics of existence for the poor to live with dignity.
The manifestos of the scores of parties led by the incumbent power, the BJP, will certainly mention all these issues. Freebies, or ‘revdis’ as the Prime Minister coined them, appear to be the mainstay of all political campaigning. The regional forces have also freely borrowed the concept. Governance by dole is no governance.
The political narrative continues to be a melange of hypernationalism, national security and national threats with a dose of communal polarization. It is accompanied by a deteriorating importance of and respect for democracy, its institutions, and Parliament. The death of Stan Swamy or the jail-without-bail rule that keeps hundreds of activists and free speech believers in jail, and the probe-and-arrest scheme that even the innocent are scared of are serious issues that harm the core values of governance and stability.
Now that the election dates are announced, will the 2024 campaign narrative be grounded in realism, not just perception, and fought on issues, not just social media fracas?
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