To beat Modi, Opposition needs new ideas-not nostalgia and caste math

Stuck in the past, the Opposition is recycling slogans while Modi scripts a new political grammar

Heading for the first anniversary of his third term in office, Narendra Modi looks and sounds supremely confident and assured again. The diffidence and stress lines you could see after that verdict of 240 seats are gone. Haryana and Maharashtra victories helped, of course — as did the disarray in the INDIA bloc.

 

But there is a deeper and more substantive justification for this new confidence, bordering on smugness. It is the bankruptcy of new ideas from his challengers. There is nobody — no leader, party, or idea — that threatens to disrupt national politics today. This is the politics of doldrums. Nothing is rocking the boat. Modi’s BJP is the boat in this case — and he’s happy with where the boat is.

 

All his rivals have their old ideas — either already defeated, or adopted and improved by him. And in case you are also looking at those WhatsApp forwards about Modi retiring at 75 in September this year, please don’t embarrass yourself. Modi isn’t going anywhere. He will lead the BJP again in 2029.

 

This does not need astrology or political prescience. Just the facts. In 2029, he will only be as old as Trump today. If his rivals want to live in the fantasy world that they can time him out, and that Rahul has age on his side, they are disrespectful of the Modi epoch.

 

They simply do not seem to have a better offer for the voter. Or, at least, a more interesting, exciting offer. None of them in their style, ideology or political proposition brings what could create the grand disruption needed to shake this comfortable stalemate. Meanwhile, Mr Modi is going on like a team in a Test match chasing 300 (that number is deliberately chosen), and batting at 190 for 2. What will — or can be — that one, big disruptive idea?

 

It can’t be anything that the Opposition has on offer currently. Secular-communal divide is an old trope, its edge blunted. The rich-versus-poor debate, they can’t win.

 

Mr Modi will always seem more like a commoner than them, and his politics is way more “pro-poor” than theirs. This is why the Adani-Ambani label is not sticking to him. Not because he’s coated in Teflon or cast in titanium. It is because the idea simply doesn’t have the glue. Neither do its proponents have much conviction. Mr Modi has moved several steps up the povertarian ladder from the MGNREGA he inherited from them. Now, there is free food grain for 800 million people, home-building, improvement and toilet-building grants, a firm handout to farmers, Mudra loans, and much more. The poor are getting more than they ever have from any government in the past — and this comes without the usual friction of dealing with the state or the corrupt local official.

 

Are freebies the way forward for the Opposition? Anything they promise, Modi will improve on the offer. By now, Modi’s challengers should understand the downside of reducing their politics to transactionalism. A transactional voter has no loyalty. They will go for the highest bidder.

 

Where does the Opposition go then? They cannot fight Modi on religion, no matter how many temples they visit or which livery or threads they wear. Nationalism? Don’t even try. That platform should have been built over the past 11 years. You can’t do it now, when the last train has left. Caste is the flavour of the season for Modi’s rivals. Apart from caste-based parties, the Congress can achieve zilch playing the caste census card.

 

A party designed to be a large umbrella under which all get a share of power and thrive looks like a caricature talking of caste census. Brings back to me the immortal line that Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto spoke when he migrated to Pakistan: “When Punjabis (the vast majority in Pakistan) speak Urdu, it sounds as if they’re lying.” The Congress pretending to be a caste-census party, and offering social justice through that, sounds just like that: As if it’s lying. They are also digging a moat around what should have been their expanding and mainstreaming politics.

 

What’s the Congress going to do next? Jump in the moat? The perils of the caste census are already showing up within its Karnataka government. If somebody convinced Rahul Gandhi that caste census is that killer idea to disrupt Modi’s power, he needs better minds. Even a McKinsey, with no idea of politics, wouldn’t come up with a joke like this. Which brings us to the question we started with: Is there an idea, a leader or political movement that can turn this game? As a six-over Bumrah burst might with the rival cruising at 190 for 2?

 

Since 1969, only three big ideas have emerged in Indian politics. Garibi Hatao (Indira Gandhi’s hard socialism), Mandal (social justice) and Mandir (Hindutva). Each has had a successful run for varying periods. The challenge: Two of these are fully shared by all major parties. Hindutva is still the BJP’s. When others, led by the Congress, promise to do socialism and social justice again, even if better, it excites nobody. Least of all, the nearly 15 per cent voters who can swing between sides. We know from data that 20 per cent are committed to the Congress, and about 25 per cent to the BJP. Another 10-12 per cent is the Modi bonus. These voters got tired of the Congress and crossed over. They will not return if you repeat the old mantras. To be boring and predictable is a crime in politics.

 

In the past five years, we have seen some really unconventional characters reinvent politics to disrupt ossified political patterns. Donald Trump’s politics has no resemblance to the classical Republicans. Maga is a different party, with its own ideas, style, method, language and an outrageous disrespect for any established conventions. Enough voters like this. After the usual Republican/ Democrat cycle, there is product differentiation.

 

Giorgia Meloni achieved this in Italy. A complete outsider, young Javier Milei, armed with a chainsaw to cut the government into half, upended established politics in Argentina. His product was so radically new that voters, bored with the same old, gave him a chance. Closer home, in its heyday, this is how AAP swept Delhi and later, counterintuitively — given how strong religion is in the state’s politics — even Punjab. A Milei looks an impossibility in a country as large and diverse as India. But note that his ideology is neither Left nor Right, but Libertarian. In India, we’ve had a Libertarian Party, Swatantra, founded by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari in 1959. If you read the 21-point charter of his party, it is the first agenda of Indian libertarians. It is the original minimum government, maximum governance. It distinguishes between regulation and control, disses the distribution of existing riches, and talks of creating more wealth through production — and more production — possible only through industry, aided by incentives, savings, and capital, rather than by taxation and repression.

 

In conclusion, I will quote a couple of lines spoken by Swatantra leader Minoo Masani in the parliament debate on Indira Gandhi’s bank nationalisation Bill. “The consequences will be disastrous for the economy,” he said, and elaborated: “I want to warn her (Mrs Gandhi),…that whatever is nationalised has three evils. One, bureaucratic red-tape and inefficiency, second, that is subject to political influence, graft and corruption and third, inevitably almost all state enterprises make a loss.”

 

Mrs Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao and labelling of Swatantra as the party of princes, while she abolished their titles and privy purses killed the party by 1974, at age 15. Must good ideas die?

 

A true challenge to Modi will rise when somebody has the audacity to speak such truth. India is now bored with the meandering politics of alleged Right and Left, bundled together in old socialism. Only a libertarian challenge can upset this mango cart.

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