–Rishiraj Sen 14 December 2023
In July 2023, over twenty-four political parties formed an alliance to contest elections against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The alliance was strategically named ‘Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’, which stands for INDIA. It aims to dethrone the BJP in the national elections, which will be held in 2024. The alliance pledges to fight for the constitutional, democratic idea of India. Mallikarjun Kharge, the current president of the Indian National Congress, commented, “The main aim is to stand together to safeguard democracy and the constitution”.
Under the rule of the BJP, India has gone through a tremendous change. Maya Tudor famously asked the question ‘Why India’s Democracy Is Dying’ and pointed towards the ‘declining liberties’. The BJP government has constantly misused acts like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against dissenters, students and civil activists who spoke against the politics and policies of the government. There have also been serious calls for violence against minorities and dissenters by BJP leaders. Anurag Thakur, Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting and Youth Affairs & Sports, Government of India, infamously said, “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maro saloan ko” (those who are traitors, shoot them) while leading a demonstration against Anti-CAA protestors. These are clear violations of the constitutional rights and liberties. Hence, the INDIA alliance’s emphasis on saving democracy and the constitution from the BJP is a legitimate reason to form the coalition.
However, the fight that the INDIA alliance has chosen will not be easy. Having won the last two elections, in 2014 and 2019, with growing numbers, the BJP knows how to manage elections. Modi’s image, oratory skills as well as party’s success ratio in communalising India will be on the card this time as well, as there is no reason to deviate from what has previously worked for them. The BJP will likely try to build the election narrative around Modi as they have done before rather than focussing on the constituencies and the respective Member of Parliament candidates. The slogans of the BJP campaigns were ‘abki baar, Modi sarkar‘ (This time, Modi Government) and ‘fir ek baar, Modi sarkar’ (Once again, Modi Government) in the last two national elections. By building the campaign around Modi, the BJP was able to attract the voters with his charisma and strongman persona. This is the opposite of what the INDIA alliance is planning to do. With partnerships between multiple regional parties with strongholds in certain states, the coalition aims to provide candidature to local leaders from constituencies and break the unidimensional, presidential-style campaigning of the BJP that focuses only on Modi. The move away from focussing on one leader has potential as it creates a differentiator between the BJP and the INDIA alliance from the beginning of their campaigns.
Having said that, the INDIA alliance still has serious challenges ahead of them that benefit the BJP and threaten the alliance of breaking down. Without a leader to unite the different voices of the alliance, if the differences persist, it can lead to chaos during the campaign. The other issues that can halt the electoral progress of the INDIA alliance are uneven electoral bonds, ideological deficit, conflicting interests and the uneven playing field, which I will discuss in detail in the article.
Uneven Electoral Bond Distribution
In 2017, the Union Budget introduced Electoral Bonds, which allowed companies and businesses to contribute an infinite amount of money to political parties in India. Prior to it, all donations above INR 20,000 had to be declared publicly, and even companies could not donate over 10% of their revenue. However, post-2017, the donor and the benefitter gained an anonymous status in Indian politics. The caveat here is that the ruling party had that information at their disposal, raising multiple ethical issues. The Congress Spokesperson Pawan Khera, referring to the Association for Democratic Reforms report, highlighted how all the other national parties combined earned electoral bonds of Rs 1,783.93 crores against the Rs 5,271.97 crores electoral bonds of BJP between the financial year 2016-17 and 2021-22. This disproportionate distribution of money creates three problems for the opposition of the BJP on the ground, which includes the INDIA alliance.
First, the money will allow the BJP to maximise their advertising presence and slowly make the opposition invisible. Advertising and branding have always been crucial in building perception by connecting the brand with the desired audience. By making the opposition invisible in the outdoor and digital media space, the BJP will be able to build a strong image through a monopolistic presence and reach a significant amount of the population during the electoral campaign. Furthermore, the invisibility will mean that there will be almost no counter-narrative to the narrative of the BJP. This can potentially make people vote for the BJP again due to a lack of awareness about the alternatives and what they are offering.
Second, in Indian politics, vote-buying is one of the most common malpractices. Vote-buying can be defined as the “practice of parties offering money or other material incentives in exchange for votes”, as pointed out by Still and Dusi. With more capital in hand, the BJP will have access to more resources. With the established networks of Hindutva groups and their different wings, they are equipped to convince voters to vote for them by directly exchanging a desired entity in return. This can directly impact the results as a significant proportion of neutral votes can be turned into a vote bank for the BJP through this exchange. Suppose the opposition is able to prevent it from happening, though chances of it are less considering the new bill around the Election Commission of India, which I will discuss in detail below. In that case, they will face the herculean task of stopping the BJP from buying their elected members. The third problem is the potential horse-trading post-elections.
BJP has successfully convinced elected members of the opposition to join them in many state elections, whether in Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh or Maharashtra most famously. Shiv Sena representatives claimed that the defection of Eknath Shinde was arranged by the BJP. The rebel elected members of the Shiv Sena stayed in Assam, a state ruled by the BJP, before forming the government with the support of the BJP by dethroning Uddhav Thackeray. This pattern has been repeated multiple times in state elections and has become a concern worth considering in the national elections. With that kind of uneven wealth, the BJP can repeat their strategy, which has previously worked wonders for them. By buying the elected members from other parties, they will be able to prove their majority and retain the government. This is a huge possibility, considering the alliance lacks ideological unity and the parties have conflicting interests.
Ideological Deficit
The INDIA alliance is a coalition of over two dozen parties with different ideologies and viewpoints regarding policies and politics. It has parties that are communist with different inclinations, like Marxist and Marxist-Leninist, as well as parties which are centre- right like Shiv Sena, to put it mildly. In such an alliance, there is always a threat of ideological deficit as it will be more challenging to find a middle ground on most of the things as these parties often have had completely opposite stands on multiple issues in the past. The polarity in ideology brings inconsistency and disrupts the campaign of the united front these parties are working towards.
BJP, on the other hand, is an ideological unit that adheres to the Hindutva nationalism and works towards the making of the Hindurashtra (Hindi Nation). Vinayak Damodar Savarkar formulated the structure of the ideology in his 1923 work, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? With the establishment of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), these ideas found a group of practitioners and cadres. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, alongwith groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal till today assist the BJP in propagating the ideas of Hindutva. Hindutva as an ideology is characterised by their hatred for religious outsiders (Muslims and Christians) to the Indian homeland (Hindu land). From Modi to other leaders of the party or the larger Hindutva Sangh Parivar, they all share this hatred, be it through their policies ( like the Citizenship Amendment Act) and politics (hate speech against minorities, asking for Muslims to go to Pakistan).
This ideological cohesiveness of the BJP and lack of it in the INDIA alliance was evident in how they put forward their arguments and opinions in public. Recently, a comment on Sanatana Dharma was made by Udhayanidhi Stalin, a leader of DMK, one of the allies of INDIA and the son of DMK Chief MK Stalin. The statement asked for the eradication of Sanatana Dharma as it is like ‘malaria’ or ‘dengue’. Following the statement, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership has actively called the INDIA alliance ‘Anti-Hindu’, which aligns with their larger ideological project. However, the other parties of the INDIA alliance soon distanced themselves from the comment. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said, “Udayanidhi Stalin is a minister and no one will support his statement and one should refrain from making such statements. We all are parties of the INDIA bloc…This could be DMK’s view. Around 90 crore Hindus live in this country…Everyone has their sentiments. You can’t hurt their sentiments…The BJP should not get ammunition to target us”. The Indian National Congress’s representative Pawan Khera distanced Congress from the statement, “The Congress has always believed in sarvadharma sambhav [communal amity] wherein every religion, every faith has its space. No one can treat any particular faith as less than another faith. Neither the Constitution allows this nor does the Indian National Congress believe in such comments”. Raghav Chaddha of the Aam Aadmi Party condemned Stalin’s statement, “I am from Sanatan Dharma. I condemn and oppose such statements. Such kind of statements should not be made. One should stay away from making such remarks on any religion. We should respect all religions.”
The condemnation of one party of the alliance by other member parties highlights the ideological cracks emerging within the alliance. Such lack of consensus then often leads to chaos in elections as the voter needs clarification about what the alliance stands for. A common ground on what the alliance ideologically believes in is essential when contesting against a party like the Bharatiya Janata Party with a solid ideological tradition behind itself. It has adhered to the Hindutva ideology since its inception. It has hardly deviated from its stance, whether in favour of building the Ram Mandir or the idea of a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation). Despite the popularity of the Nehruvian idea of India, it continued to consider the ‘Hindu’ population as its core voters and struggle for a Hindu Nation. However, the parties in the INDIA alliance all stand for different worldviews and ideologies, some of which are conflicting to one another. In such a scenario, referring to the same issue in conflicting tones by all the member parties of the alliance will only enhance distrust among voters towards the alliance. It presents them as prone to break-down post elections, and thus, the tendency to vote for a party that provides the security of being able to govern without breaking down increases. If such a scenario arises, the BJP is capable of highlighting these cracks in the alliance and attracting maximum votes by highlighting their incapability of governance due to their differences.
Conflicting Interest
Most of the members of the alliance compete against each other in the state and local elections. The Trinamool Congress contests election against the CPIM in West Bengal, Aam Aadmi Party and Indian National Congress are rivals in Delhi and Punjab, and the list continues. This can lead to conflicting interests in two ways- first, in the distribution of seats in a given state and second, insecurity around the rise of another party.
The constituencies will be distributed among all the parties, but the question is which party members will get what number of seats in a given state? How will the distribution be made viable for all the parties? Will the ruling or dominant party in a state willingly sacrifice the seats it can easily win for the sake of the alliance? Will the party be willing to still be in the alliance when there is a chance of electoral loss in terms of constituencies as it has to share it with other parties?
The INDIA alliance has not been able to find answers to these questions. In West Bengal and Kerala, the alliance is finding it hard to come to a mutual ground. High-intensity politics in these states have led to the inclusion of the phrase ‘as far as possible’ in the resolution of the alliance. This makes the alliance susceptible to disintegration and strengthens BJP’s focus on one leader in Modi and framing its campaign around him. The alliance was formed to fight for a goal beyond petty inter-party politics, with a promise to save democracy and constitution. However, this goal has seemed to take a backseat and party interest has taken centre stage within the alliance. There are inner disagreements about seat distribution leading to a change in its resolution. If the alliance is not able to form a consensus over seats, it projects an image of incompetence and incoherence to the voters.
The incoherence results from the animosity and rivalry between the leadership of the parties. How will the alliance dissolve that? Mamata Banerjee recently was unhappy with the long speeches that left bloc leaders delivered. These kinds of petty issues often arise out of insecurities that the leaders have due to contesting elections against each other. It will not vanish magically but rather intensify and may lead to the disintegration of the alliance. An alliance threatening to disintegrate over such issues can hardly gain public trust.
One of the reasons for such friction is that this alliance was primarily the result of the insecurity of the parties. They believed that the Bharatiya Janata Party could not be defeated independently; hence, an alliance was needed. In such a scenario, the partnership is that of necessity rather than will. Almost everyone has joined it to serve their goals, which is electoral success. In such a scenario, if the alliance jeopardises that success, it will become useless to particular parties leading to a collision and eventual breakaway of the alliance.
If the alliance disintegrates, it will allow the BJP to win the election opposition free. The reason for this is twofold- first, in most states, parties like Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress have defeated the BJP previously. If their support is not with the Congress, the Congress will be weaker as the anti-BJP or non-BJP vote will divide among all these parties. Second, the BJP will be able to portray Rahul Gandhi, who has been the face of Congress’s campaign till now, as a weak leader and blame his incompetence for the disintegration. The opposite of it is Modi who had led the National Democratic Alliance successfully over two national elections, thus creating a binary between the two leaders.
Uneven Playing Field
The INDIA alliance must be cautious as the next election is not an ordinary election in any democracy. The Bharatiya Janata Party only cares about winning elections by hook or crook. I wish to draw your attention to the new bill that BJP wants to introduce to change the procedures of appointing the Election Commissioner of India, the person in charge of overseeing a free and fair election.
The new Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023 introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party, attempts to take control of the process of electing the Election Commissioner. According to the bill, there will be a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, a Union Minister and the Leader of the Opposition who will decide the next Election Commissioner of India (ECI). In simple terms, it will be two members of the Bharatiya Janata Party alongside a member of the opposition party who will decide the ECI. This gives the power in the hands of the BJP to appoint people sympathetic to the party. It means that the BJP will get a free hand in election campaigns, providing unfair advantages to the party.
Another critical aspect of the rigged playground is the control of the BJP on the media. Media is considered the fourth pillar of democracy as it asks questions and uncovers the lies of the politicians. However, in India, the BJP has controlled most of the media. Capitalists sympathetic to the BJP, like Adani and Ambani, have majority shares or are direct owners of NDTV and Network 18. The owner of Zee News held a position in the parliament with the support of the BJP, and there are many regional news channels owned by BJP leaders like News Live and Odisha TV by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma– wife of BJP leader and Chief Minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sharma, and family of Baijayant Panda respectively. The media will, hence, make a mountain out of a mole with any issues that the INDIA alliance faces to show them as incompetent for being the government. The problems that have been highlighted above will be amplified to question the legitimacy of the alliance itself. This can be said based on the biased media reporting that has happened in the Modi era, which led to Ravish Kumar naming the media as ‘Godi Media’, a media that sits on the lap of the government.
On that note, the INDIA alliance needs to be careful about how they can be perceived for some of their actions and plan what might go wrong. The BJP will try to curb any opposition through their policies and politics and make the electoral contest predictable. Therefore, over-preparedness and a tinge of pessimism are necessary for the INDIA alliance because they will fight against all odds in this election.
Rishiraj Sen is an independent researcher. He did his master’s in Human Rights and Politics from LSE. He can be reached at senrishiraj28@gmail.com