The Budget session will give more indications about the paths the ruling and Opposition fronts will take.
Published Jul 22, 2024 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jul 22, 2024 | 9:00 AM
The One Nation, One Election Bill proposes sweeping amendments to the Constitution (ECISVEEP/X)
The 2024 elections proved many things. It proved that the people of India would resist autocracy and the development of an insufferable personality cult.
It showed respect for the principles enshrined in the Constitution and that the people will give no one party the right to tinker with the primary document through a brute majority. It revealed the people’s disgust towards creating hatred and division in society.
The people displayed their remarkable ability to separate the grain from the chaff and to distinguish between facts and lies. The government continues to be led by Narendra Modi. If he has learned his lessons that impulsive and authoritarian actions — like demonetisation and indiscriminate use of bulldozers against ordinary citizens — are no longer possible.
I suspect the Opposition was surprised when it won as many seats as they did. Unlike in 2019, the Congress, the major Opposition party, seemed to have lost hope. INLD leader Om Prakash Chautala first floated the idea of a national coalition of Opposition parties at Fatehabad in September 2022.
The idea seemed to gather momentum with meetings at Patna and Mumbai in the first half of 2023, and the initiative was taken by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who visited his counterparts in several Opposition-ruled states, as well as the Congress leadership in Delhi.
However, the initiative ran into a roadblock mid-year after the Congress, flush with its win in Karnataka, looked greedily at possible victories in state elections.
It failed to retain Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, lost Madhya Pradesh badly, and rode to power only in Telangana on the crest of a strong anti-incumbency wave against K Chandrashekara Rao, who had been trying to shed his Telangana roots and begun to nurture national ambitions.
The formation of the INDIA bloc was thus delayed by half a year.
This gap resulted in the exit of Nitish Kumar, who returned to the NDA with a promise to Modi that he would never again leave it.
Mamata Banerjee, already battling the instruments of the Government of India, corruption within her party and opposition from successive governors, found that her supposed allies in the INDIA bloc, the Congress and the Left, had joined hands to eat into her party’s votes.
She, too, decided to go on her own.
In Kerala, no attempt was made by the Left and the Congress-led fronts to close the door on the BJP by joining forces in the two constituencies where the BJP was
relatively strong. Had INDIA stayed together in these two states, the Opposition bloc would have won one more seat from Kerala and the other with much more comfort and six more in Bengal.
Indeed, had seat sharing been carried out meticulously, INDIA could have been in greater strength now, ruling or only marginally behind.
The elections are behind us. Now it is time for India to move forward.
The structure of the new Parliament is radically different. The position of Prime Minister Modi is weaker than ever before. He had begun to assume a larger-than-life image in the past two decades. He claimed total ascendancy over the BJP and the NDA.
Even the RSS, although mildly uncomfortable at times, had to yield to his decisions. Modi continues to be the prime minister but only because he has the support of two regional parties, whose expectations would have to be met largely, if not entirely.
For the regional parties, public expectations would also be high as people would feel they have a stranglehold on the central government. Nor do the leaders of these regional parties have a great reputation for remaining loyal to their formations. Modi, who was never challenged in Gujarat or the Centre, is in unfamiliar territory.
The INDIA bloc is in high spirits, having done far better than they probably expected, far better indeed than the exit polls predicted. Rahul Gandhi has become the
Leader of the Opposition. His listlessness during large parts of the last 10 years seems to have vanished. He travels all over the country and is being received with acclaim.
Akhilesh Yadav is clearly on the rebound; the performance of the INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh far exceeded expectations. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress did far better than they expected despite simultaneously fighting the BJP, the Left and the Congress.
In Madhya Pradesh, however, the Congress faced a complete rout, indicating that the duo of Digvijay Singh and Kamal Nath no longer had the people’s confidence. In Odisha, Naveen Patnaik had always been submissive to the BJP. He found, to his dismay, that it was not reciprocated, that, after 15 years of his uninterrupted rule, the BJP conducted a campaign making strong allegations against his government, despite his acquiescence to BJP policies at the Centre, and his record of good work.
The first session of Parliament, which concluded recently, seemed to be a continuation of the election campaign. As usual, there was nothing very new in the President’s address.
It has always been the practice to reserve the best bits for the Budget, even though Modi-2.0 had gone beyond that, announcing cuts in corporate tax well after the Budget, new farm laws as part of stimulus packages for the pandemic, demonetisation as a bolt from the blue and using the Finance Act to create new laws.
Rahul Gandhi spoke well, bringing out significant issues facing the country, like the Manipur situation, the irregularities in NEET, unemployment, and inflation. The Opposition was vociferous and seemed confident and assertive. The prime minister spoke as usual, highlighting his achievements and denigrating the Opposition, especially Rahul Gandhi.
The 100-day programme, which officials had prepared based on his instructions in the last few days of Modi-2.0, was not mentioned. The Speaker expunged several portions of Rahul Gandhi’s speech but retained the prime minister’s speech as it was, even though both were roughly the same in tenor.
The Budget session should give more indications of the paths that either group will take.
The finance minister would undoubtedly have to revise her pre-election thoughts on the Budget. Room will have to be found for several new areas, such as the needs of the new NDA partners, support for the middle classes, new schemes and ideas for creating employment — all this in the backdrop of unrelenting inflation.
With more strength in Parliament, and other states, the INDIA bloc will also be far more vocal in their demands.
What is certain is uncertainty in the political firmament, uncertainty that needs to be dealt with maturely and wisely.
As Lee Iacocca would say, “So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don’t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.”
(KM Chandrasekhar is a retired IAS officer and former Union Cabinet Secretary. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu)
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