Run up to 2024: The BJP and INDIA seem to have skipped the semi-finals

Three factors make it a challenging election for Modi and BJP: Opposition alliance with a well-defined core, consolidation of the anti-BJP vote and a changed geopolitical situation

There are about eight months left for the first round of voting in the next general elections, and full-blooded campaigning has already broken out. We see it in all the moves, utterances and speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his lieutenants and key apparatchiks. It also shows in some of the prime minister's critical foreign policy moves, to which we will return in a bit.

Besides an earlier start, what's distinct— about this buildup is the display of common purpose and action by the Opposition as well. It is in the DNA of electoral democracies that an Opposition always sees a chance of defeating the incumbent. This time, not only is the energy particularly high but there is more realistic alliance-making, too.

This wasn't quite the case in 2019. The Congress was still savouring its triple wins in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. It believed that Rahul Gandhi's "Chowkidar Chor Hai" was a killer campaign line. The line had worked in these heartland states and had Modi on the ropes. It didn't turn out that way.

Depending on where you are coming from, you can say that the Congress was being delusional and got shown up, or that Pulwama-Balakot turned the entire election in a way nobody could anticipate. Any way you put it, we know what the final results were.

The first difference is that the action this time has begun much earlier in the sense that the focus is on the biggest prize, the general elections, and not so much the coming elections in the three key Hindi heartland states and Telangana that will come a few months earlier.

In the past, they have generally — if erroneously — been accorded the bellwether status. At this particular point, by the way, we should add brave little Mizoram, too. It sends only one MP to the Lok Sabha but is a critical neighbour of Manipur, and its government is an increasingly impatient member of the NDA. It is as if our highest political league has skipped the semi-finals and jumped straight into the final.

Three things have made it a particularly challenging election for Modi and the BJP:

*With the constitution of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), there is one common alliance of parties spread across the country, and while they only have 144 MPs between them, these are drawn from 20 states and Union Territories. In addition, constituents of this alliance also rule 11 states. Further, unlike the third front kind of khichdis in the past, this has a well-defined core in a national party, the Congress. In the not entirely unlikely event of some more parties joining, especially K. Chandrashekar Rao's Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the challenge will look more formidable.

**The key to a full BJP majority is a repeat sweep in Uttar Pradesh and most of the Hindi heartland, if not Bihar. Among the many key factors that must work in its favour is a division of the Opposition vote, or the kind of vote most unlikely to switch to the BJP.

Especially the Muslim vote. The BJP needs that vote in UP to be divided among the SP, the BSP, the Congress and ideally, Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM. Karnataka has indicated that the Muslim vote is now consolidating, quite robustly, behind any party most likely to defeat the BJP. A large alliance like INDIA makes that choice easier.

***The national security and geopolitical situation is radically different from 2019 now. We must state for clarity that there is no suggestion that India is weaker. India, in fact, is much stronger than in 2019 and has an elevated global stature.

It is just that the world has changed. It will be much less patient with a post-Pulwama kind of retaliation or any action large enough to fire the nationalist imagination again vis-a-vis a neighbour. Pakistan is on its knees economically and has grave internal political issues. It is unlikely to encourage another provocation, either. Further, the Chinese are only increasing their activity along the LAC in Ladakh and elsewhere.

In fact, just as the Pakistanis are too weak to think of creating another crisis on the borders, the Chinese are very well positioned to deliver a provocation, should they find it politically and strategically beneficial. You can always start something with Pakistan and conclude it quickly by declaring victory. That flexibility isn't available with China.

That is why the Modi government has been so careful and pacifist in its dealings with Beijing. And now that the Chinese have — quite deliberately — spilled the beans on the short but crucial Xi-Modi meeting in Bali last winter, we can see an outreach to Beijing to calm things down.

This is the foreign policy move we were referring to earlier that we said we would come back to. A Chinese provocation in the run-up to the election is a security threat to India but also an electoral challenge to a government that claims to be the strongest in India's history on national security. 

It is possible that Modi moved early for a patch-up of sorts, but it had been kept under wraps. Then, the Chinese mischievously inserted that reference to Bali in the Mandarin version of their readout on the Johannesburg meeting between Ajit Doval and Wang Yi. The MEA's discomfiture at "admitting" the substantial element in what was earlier described as a mere exchange of courtesies tells us it's an important story. It is as much about diplomacy as internal politics.

The Opposition is currently building up for its no-confidence motion. The prime minister isn't particularly worried about it, and not only because no such motion has ever succeeded in India — except maybe where a government resigned before facing the vote. Indira Gandhi, for that matter, faced 15 no-confidence motions in her approximately 16 years as prime minister.

Indian politics tells us that the real fights have taken place instead when governments have moved confidence motions. Vajpayee lost two of these, and Manmohan Singh survived two close things, one in each UPA term. The first, his confidence motion over the nuclear deal, nearly took his government down. The second challenge, over FDI in multi-brand retail, was lighter in comparison.

Usually, a no-confidence motion is an opportunity for the Opposition to force a debate with clearly allocated time and a response from the prime minister mostly guaranteed. To that extent, it is a great point-scoring opportunity. However, this wouldn't bother Modi too much. He's the real master of the set-piece, and there's nobody better than him when it comes to point-scoring. This time, however, there will be a worry.

This worry will be rooted in the fact that the mostly united Opposition will be able to use this debate as a wider assertion of unity. Over the decades, popular opinion has come to mock and ridicule the routine group photos of Opposition leaders with raised arms and palms clasped. A united assault in Parliament will underline their new claims to unity. It will also be a brand-building exercise for INDIA.

In the Modi-Shah approach to politics, no political threat or electoral battle is taken lightly. It is just that now the three factors, Opposition unity, pan-state consolidation of the anti-BJP vote and the complicated geopolitical scenario, have added to their challenge.