Shikha Mukerjee | It's a matter of choice: Modi magic versus Modi baggage

The 2024 Lok Sabha schedule has set up the finish line, June 4, when the votes will be counted and the results will be known. Till that final conclusive vote is checked, this election is really a matter of choice. Will the voter succumb to the familiarity of the buzz around the magic touch of Narendra Modi or will the voter take the risk of making a choice by scrutinising the baggage that Mr Modi and his party and government have accumulated in the past 10 years?

It could be argued that the choice between scrutiny and unconditional endorsement is what voters routinely do, so there is nothing special about the act in 2024. Not true. There is something, or rather there is more than one thing, that makes the issue of choice or preference a tough call for voters.

And, the BJP and its Sangh Parivar apparatus is just as conscious of this dilemma as is the voter. The Opposition and potential alternative to the BJP and its invincible star power is not a challenger of substance; the Congress is as shambolic as it has always been; the parties in alliance in the Indian National Developmental Inclusive bloc have separate strategies that they believe will ensure their future by securing their regional bases. The voter has to decide for or against the BJP amidst this scenario.

In 2024, Mr Modi as the unparalleled helmsman and vote catcher, the BJP as a vast and micro-managed organisation and the Sangh Parivar as the nerve centre of the right-wing Hindu Rashtra-Akhand Bharat ideology will all have to work much harder to take on challenges of their own creation. This is an entirely new test for the ruling side and its power base.

Having robbed itself of its best mobilisation gambit, the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, and its baggage of dubious historical veracity by meeting Mr Modi’s deadline of consecrating the temple before the election, the overarching narrative of Hindutva currently lacks a focus, a purpose and a unifying appeal. The best thing about the Ram Temple story since the 1990s was its value as a switch that could be used to turn on or turn off the emotional mobilisation of the BJP’s core constituency and voters swayed by the Hindutva appeal. In 2024, the temple is up and running and its future and fate will be the same as all the other temples that are taken for granted across India.

The big test for the voter will be to buy the story the Modi government is marketing that the electoral bonds through which the BJP raised Rs 6,060 crores since 2019 was a noble act aimed at cleaning up money paid to political parties by bringing in transparency. Was the money used as part of a barter or was the money given without strings is the choice that voters will have to make. Till the voters actually decide, there is no way of knowing whether the issue is important in deciding the future of Mr Modi.

Money power is something that voters understand very well. If the Election Commission is to be believed, the influence of money is more in some states than in others. A key campaign issue for Mr Modi is the role of money in politics, which he deploys as much against the Congress as he does against the regional and smaller parties by painting them all guilty of securing power and amassing money for the perpetuation of a particular dynasty. Therefore, EBs and why money was handed over by various companies to political beneficiaries will certainly be part of the public discourse.

The other issue that Mr Modi, inexplicably, chose to revive may not be as electrifying as he and the BJP had perhaps hoped. Notifying the rules of the Citizenship Amendment Act were not welcomed as the answer to the prayers of Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist and Jain non-citizens whose families originally came from Akhand Bharat, or Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. After the mandatory but muted celebrations, there is no rush to submit applications and get certified as citizens; in fact, there is an obvious wariness about doing so.

The CAA issue was a last-minute job by the Modi government to keep the controversy — contestation on religious identity — alive as a key element. It did not take with voters regardless of how the Opposition predictably responded, from Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal to Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala to M.K. Stalin in Tamil Nadu, who for different reasons emphatically rej-ected its implementation.

As the campaign kicks off, Mr Modi will have to generate the mania that musters the masses and propels them to the polling booths. Expectations are low from the united Opposition as a national alternative to the BJP, which effectively deprives Mr Modi of a credible target for his sharpest attacks.

Instead, he has the hard task of taking on the far better organised and certainly battle-hardened regional and smaller parties by calibrating his campaign to fit the priorities of each state, separately.

Having to be accountable for acts of omission and commission, state by state, is a complex matter. What is common to the states from the perspective of regional and smaller parties is the Centre’s discrimination against the people or outright deprivation of benefits or wasting public money on projects that do not solve people’s problems of joblessness, price rise, unaffordable costs of education, impoverishment due to a health shock, negative savings and the general lack of opportunities that makes taking risks even less attractive than ever before. What is common to the states is also the promise that a “double-engine sarkar” is the panacea for all ills. What is also common is that the “double-engine” is backed by “Modi’s guarantees”.

This particular narrative has been successful in keeping the BJP in power across North India and out of power across the South. The reason is that India looks very different from the South; it is richer for starters, and the BJP’s “labharthi” schemes are mostly inconsequential as the states had delivered these benefits before Mr Modi thought it electorally expedient. All Lok Sabha elections are historic. The 2024 one will also be historic; Indian democracy, or rather the voter, will get to make a choice of chugging along like a blinkered beast of burden or seizing the initiative by calling the political class to account. Opinion polls indicate voters will choose preserving the status quo. In politics, that is a dangerous place to be for those who want to stay in power and those who want to win power.