Rajdeep Sardesai's book decodes 2024 polls through many unknown stories

2024: The Election that Surprised India

Author: Rajdeep Sardesai

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 528 

Price: Rs 799

 

It is almost a ritual. After every general election since 2014, Rajdeep Sardesai has come out with a book trying to decode the mind of the Indian electorate. Voters have a discomfiting way of punishing those who claim to represent the club of electoral punditry. Mr Sardesai records some of that discomfiture with painful honesty, including star pollster Pradeep Gupta’s tears: He, along with most psephol­ogists, had forecast a higher than ever number for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 general elections and wept on national TV as the results proved him hopelessly wrong. 

So why was the BJP’s performance sub-optimal and how did the Opposition Congress and other parties improve their parliamentary tally? This is at the core of the book through 14 chapters with such provocative titles as “Hamare Saath ED Hai: Washing Machine Politics”; “Taali Bajao, Thali Bajao: The Covid Challenge”; “Khela Hobe: Pawar Saheb and Mamata Didi” and “Yeh Adani ki Sarkar Hai: The making of the INDIA alliance”. 

One of the most traumatic events in the 2019-2024 period was Covid. As well as commenting on the inadequacy of systems in preventing mass migration, Mr Sardesai records with sensitivity, the cascading effect of the meeting of the Islamic organisation, Tablighi Jamaat, which is thought to have spurred the spread of Covid, as Indian citizens who may (or may not) have attended the meeting were ostracised, attacked as “corona terrorists” and beaten up. The Indian state did little to prevent this or punish the culprits. The way Mr Sardesai tells it, holes in India’s handling of Covid were glossed over by an event-management approach at which the Modi administration excels. 

There is a contradiction here. If the handling of Covid was merely event management, why did the BJP post such a stellar result in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections that followed the pandemic? The book addresses the question but says that Mr Modi “not only survived political ruin but also emerged stronger” after the pandemic, and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s artful use of the bulldozer as a metaphor for Hindutva power along with his “foul polarising rhetoric resonating with deep-seated anti-Muslim prejudices” contributed to its success in the Assembly elections. 

Farmer protests over the government’s efforts to “reform and transform” agriculture followed the pandemic. The dismissive approach towards farmers might have contributed to the BJP’s Lok Sabha debacle in Uttar Pradesh. But its brilliant showing in the Haryana Assembly elections and the increase in its Lok Sabha vote share in Punjab (where admittedly it fought more seats than ever before) suggests greater complexity is at play. 

Against the background of the Congress’s high Lok Sabha tally in 2024, the book seeks to deconstruct the leadership conundrum in the party and skilfully explains the core contradiction: That formal leadership of the party is rarely the real locus of decision-making. From Rahul Gandhi’s resignation as party president to the “election” of Mallikarjun Kharge as president but the stubborn continuance of Mr Gandhi’s “advisors” all led to drive important leaders such as Ghulam Nabi Azad out of the Congress. 

But organisational intrigue paled before the bigger draw of Mr Gandhi’s mass-contact Bharat Jodo Yatras. Basing itself on the principle that “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, the Congress, says Mr Sardesai, drafted the Mumbai-based brand and advertising company, “Teen Bandar”, to create a new public perception of Rahul Gandhi in juxtaposition against Narendra Modi. The “mohabbat ki dukaan” slogan was meant to counter “Modi hai toh mumkin hai”: One compassionate, the other muscular. The Lok Sabha results show this avatar caught the public imagination. 

But the government had more weapons in its arsenal. The book describes how the threat of a “weaponised” Enforcement Directorate (ED) bludgeoned critics and potential rivals into falling in line. Chhagan Bhujbal and his extended family were charged with multiple cases of corruption. Yet, when they “joined” the BJP, the cases were “for all practical purposes, put in cold storage”. The same applied to Ajit Pawar, whose defection to the BJP-led alliance contributed to destabilising Uddhav Thackeray’s Maha Vikas Aghadi and replacing it with a government in Maharashtra, in which the BJP is a central player. 

The threat of ED raids and the possible arrest of his wife propelled Pawar BJP-wards. How did it work? The book asserts that “the cases built up by the ED against those who switched sides were either slowed down or rendered redundant”. This was done by the government under the overall rubric of punishing corruption. The result of the Maharashtra Assembly polls due later this month will be the test of whether voters have bought this narrative. 

The media has played an important role in influencing the result of the 2024 general elections. Mr Sardesai describes the challenges the Fourth Estate in India faces: The deployment of agencies such as Pegasus, the arrests of Siddique Kappan and others, and the takeover of NDTV by the Adani Group. In pursuit of balanced journalism, he sought an interview with Hiren Joshi, the PMO’s communications in charge since before 2014. Mr Joshi’s reply was: “In the interest of honesty, I want to say the book will not be charitable to us. It will be, like your tweets, loaded with backhanded jabs, so I do not wish to legitimise this effort. But I wish you the best for it.” 

No one book, however detailed, can ever explain the result of the 2024 polls. But Mr Sardesai, with his panoramic view of Indian politics, sharp detailing of trends, and anecdotes from his encounters with political figures (many hugely entertaining) make this book easy reading. Written from a standpoint broadly critical of the BJP, it is nevertheless a rich and authoritative account of a slice of Indian history.