Modi has the tall task of putting the country back on track, quickly.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: For Narendra Modi it has been a hectic year and the last month had been particularly blistering. But it climaxed today and he has been crowned the king.
For those who had been following Indian general elections, the picture was already clear: Modi was becoming the Prime Minister and nothing could stop him. And what helped him the most was the repeated dismal performance of India’s oldest party and its allies, the UPA, for ten years. It had dashed people’s aspirations and hopes with rising prices, employment and a string of multi-million dollar scams effecting each and every department of the government.
Absolute corruption and an unwillingness to connect with the people at the ground level brought the curtains down for the Congress and its allies, but it took ten long years to do that. But the anger and disappointment was evident in the results which came out today.
The BJP and its allies garnered 334 seats, much above the 272 mark to form a government. The party, which gave its best performance ever (going solo) gathered a mind-boggling 284 seats, which means that India would have a single party government and could say good-bye to the pulls and pressures and indecisiveness of coalition partners.
The capital and other parts of the country wore a festive look. Sweetmeat shops were doing brisk business and so were crackers and fireworks. Sounds of fire-works and crackers boomed in New Delhi as jubilation spread all around.
The outcome of the General Elections 2014 has simply become a victory romp for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has been transformed from a right-wing Hindu dominated outfit to a party of national significance, thanks to the Modi wave.
Modi rode the wave of the elections like a colossus; grew larger than the party as the days passed and became a household name even in remote north-east states to the deep south where the party hardly had any significant presence.
The ruling Congress and its allies have managed a meagre 61 seats, which again is a record rout. The defeat for the Congress had been so devastating that they are staring at losing their status as the main opposition party in Parliament. A party needs to win at least 10 percent of the Lok Sabha seats to obtain the status. At 1.30 PM, Congress was leading in 60 seats; it needs to remain above 54 for its parliamentary party leader to have that position.
The weakening of the Congress position as the opposition party also means that it has thrown in a new factor. It’s time for the regional parties to seek a place under the sun. The AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress, the Telengana Rashtra Samiti, and the Biju Janata Dal will be the key opposition parties, with Samajwadi Party being a bit player.
“India has won,”Modi tweeted Friday after his party ripped through all opposition to come out with a clear majority.
And it’s just a matter of formality when Modi would step into 7 RCR, or seven Race Course Road, the Prime Minister’s house as it is known.
The so-called Modi wave became a reality as the 63-year-old son of a tea stall owner from Gujarat lifted BJP (which itself was not in a great position of late owing to infighting and bickering amongst its members) on the road to power after almost 10-years of warming benches, as the main opposition party. Modi was quick to take advantage of the mounting public anger over corruption, rising prices and unemployment.
Modi, who won from both Vadodara and Varanasi, sought the blessings of his 90-year-old mother Hiraben in Ahmedabad after the results came out. And before descending on Delhi on Saturday he would hold victory laps in Ahmedabad and Vadodara. And by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his cabinet would have tendered their resignations.
“This is not just a victory, it is a big responsibility for us to live up to the expectations of the people,” said BJP spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain.
It’s only the second time in independent India that an opposition party has come to power in such a manner, the earlier being the 1977 elections.
The party would be coming to power for the fourth time since it was founded in 1980 after the split in the Janata Party. In 1998, the next government of the BJP via the NDA route lasted 13 months, while in 1999 it again came to power leading the NDA in the backdrop of the Kargil conflict with the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee projecting it as a victory over Pakistan. The party suffered its worst defeat in 1984 after the formation of the party. It could win only two seats in the 543 member Lok Sabha in the wake of the sympathy wave for the Congress following assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
But Modi cannot rest on his laurels for long. There are tasks to be done and a massive cleaning exercise to be executed at the earnest. For when he marches to the Parliament to deliver his first budget, he will have to bring back the investors spooked by the earlier government. That is a tall task for he has to contain the country’s fiscal deficit.
“He has to succeed on the economy and that’s the thing on which he will be judged,” said Christophe Jaffrelot, an academic on India from Sciences Po University in Paris and King’s College, London.
Another task is to fix the structural challenges that have kept the current account deficit wide, such as the weakness of manufacturing exports. A looming danger is the El Nino weather pattern, typically associated with weak rains that could batter India’s farm output. Citigroup estimates that below-average rainfall in the June-September monsoon could shave 0.50-0.90 percentage points off its economic growth forecast and lead to a spike in inflation.
Fixing the structural challenges that keep the current account deficit wide, such as the weakness of manufacturing exports, could take years to reverse but Modi has to fix it soon.
Although an elated market is welcoming Modi but their perceptions are based on Modi’s past track record as chief minister in Gujarat, where he is widely credited with attracting investment. But some say that replicating that nationwide will be difficult as states can have the last word on approving projects. In a recent survey, Credit Suisse had estimated that only a quarter of pending projects depend on central government approval. India has several projects awaiting clearances topped with funding issues in infrastructure projects. Also there are bad loans associated with these projects which have made banks wary of lending.
But all this is akin to cleaning the Augean Stables, as industrial production has dipped to new lows along with an inflation that refuses to climb down. But these are exactly what people expect him to do so and many have voted for him because they have been reeling under its ill-effects. Modi for now has not much time to bask in his glory for his real task has already been cut out for him.
“But India does not need only development, it needs a reassurance that riots would not be replicated in the country and that there would be communal balance and harmony. I think that Modi will walk the extra mile to prove that the ghosts of Godhra will not come back to haunt and forever erase the image of being a butcher. The fresh new BJP will surely have a pan Indian outlook that would take onboard as many plural and diverse elements from the country,” Vivek Rammohan, CEO, Gladstone, told The American Bazaar.
Robert Srinivasan, a retired government official, speaking to The American Bazaar, was cautious on Modi’s rise to power.
“Modi and Co. are from the erstwhile RSS brigade. Once he comes to power the RSS may try to remote control his actions that are when the real problem would start,” he said.