It took its time coming, but in the end Bharat (more on that later) trumped the so-called political experts from New Delhi's gin-n-tonic cocktail circuit. And how!
The recently concluded round of elections to five Assembly assemblies returned a verdict that can only be described as a thumping endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership of the country. The final tally reads BJP: 4 states; Congress: 1 state. We will now have BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and BJP-led coalitions in Goa and Manipur. The Congress won Punjab thanks to the personal charisma of Captain Amarinder Singh, the former Maharaja of Patiala and the party's chief ministerial candidate, as well as the two-term anti-incumbency of the government in which the BJP was the junior partner. Of the five states in question, Uttar Pradesh was undoubtedly the most important. Occupying about the same area as Great Britain, the state would have displaced Brazil as the fifth most populous country in the world had it been independent.
Then, it elects 80 Members of Parliament, i.e. about one out of six lawmakers, to India's Lower House. Conventional wisdom has it that the road to power in New Delhi runs through this crucial state and that whoever rules Uttar Pradesh rules India.
So, the overwhelming victory (325 out of 403 seats) in the state has sealed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reputation as India's most popular politician and the BJP's status as the most prominent pole in Indian politics. Many analysts have called this round of elections, considered the semi-final before the 2019 General Elections, a watershed - and with good reason. For it marks a decisive rejection of the top-down development model followed by the Congress and the many regional parties that have sprung up over the last quarter of a century to fill up the political vacuum caused by its decline.
That space has now been occupied by the BJP across most of India. Addressing party workers, as well as the nation, following the landslide win, Modi said: “A new India is emerging... The poor seek opportunities, not sops. The more opportunities you give them, the more the country will shine...” Management guru C.K. Prahalad had called it the “bottom of the pyramid”, others have referred to the “last man in the queue”. In the new Indian political parlance, it is called Bharat, the millennia-old name by which Indians refer to their country. Just consider the stats and you'll see why Modi has, within a short span of less than three years, one of India's most popular Prime Ministers ever.
- His government electrified 1,464 of 1,529 villages in Uttar Pradesh that no power connection. The previous state government had electrified only three villages during its five-year tenure and the government before it had electrified 23 villages only.
- Then, the Modi government provided over 5 million subsidised cooking gas connections to poor households cutting across caste, community and religious lines, saving them from the toxic fumes of the wood, kerosene and coal-fired stoves that they have used since Independence. That's more than 12,500 households per constituency.
- Under the MUDRA scheme, his central government has disbursed about $2 billion collateral-free loans to small and micro entrepreneurs across Uttar Pradesh, thus, generating livelihoods and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the informal sector.
- And it has distributed 15 million LED lamps to people living below the poverty line.
- All of the above has also been replicated on a smaller scale across the other four states and, indeed, across the rest of India as well.
All of these schemes have led to a material improvement in the lives of ordinary Indians. There is a saying: Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you'll give him an occupation that will enable him to stand on his feet for life.
Since Independence, the Congress had perfected the art of giving hand-me-downs that tied multiple communities and special interest groups to the party for generations and created captive vote banks.
Shunning conventional political wisdom, Modi has consciously empowered the ordinary Indian, teaching him, as it were, to fish. I interpret the mandate as Bharat's thank you note to the Prime Minister and his party.
The results have also clearly demonstrated that Prime Minister Modi's inclusive slogan of
(Development for all, discrimination against none) still resonates with the electorate, who have rejected the obstructionist policies of the opposition parties led by the Congress.
These elections were held in the immediate aftermath of the demonetisation (dubbed Demo by the media) of high value currency notes that, according to anecdotal evidence, had caused great economic dislocation. It was a bold and politically risky move and many political pundits and academics - mostly from the Opposition camp - had predicted that the ordinary Indian would punish Modi's party at the hustings for the alleged hardships they suffered.
The results show that Modi, who has established a massive connect with the voters, was able to convince the people that the long-term benefits of Demo would far outweigh its short-term pain.
The results, which many say was like a mid-term referendum on Modi's performance, are expected to embolden the Prime Minister to focus further on bold and deep economic reforms that are
for taking India's GDP growth rate past the 8 per cent mark - the threshold beyond which the country will begin to generate the millions of new jobs needed to employ the army of youngsters who join the work force every year.
The results also mean the Opposition, which is still quibbling over the fine print of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will subsume a welter of central and state taxes and stitch India into a common market, will be less likely to try and delay this much needed reform any further.
In the wake of its electoral success, there is also speculation in the media on the government coming out with a policy to allow FDI in organised multi-brand retail subject to certain conditions. The BJP has, thus far, resolutely refused to allow MNCs into this sector on the grounds that it could rob millions of workers in India's unorganised retail sector of their livelihoods.
Meanwhile, experts expect the stock markets to rally sharply in the immediate aftermath of the BJP's victory several foreign fund managers, who had been sitting on the fence, take the plunge and pour billions of additional dollars into India.
Their logic: the election results presage a period of political and policy stability in India.
Does this mean Modi's re-election as Prime Minister in 2019 is a foregone conclusion A week is a long time in Indian politics; so, it is impossible to forecast a verdict two years in advance. But suffice to say that the 2017 election results show that the BJP-led NDA government under Modi is far better placed than its rivals to return to power.
