The INDI Alliance has indeed won !!!!

Quite a long time back when I first got the opportunity to sit in a company board meeting, I noticed the Chairman making a strange remark as he opened the board meeting. He used to say something like – “Please unhide your hidden agendas and keep your vested interests outside”. Young, intrigued I finally summoned enough courage to understand this from some other seniors and got a lesson I have never forgotten.

He said that be it a person or an organisation, in many a situation, they have a stated intent and a real intent. Meaning that when they approach a situation, they explain what is their intent which would be more popular, acceptable and palatable to the audience but the real intent could well be very different. Most likely the real intent would be self-defeating or unpopular.

In this just concluded election for the Lok Sabha we saw this happening in full flow and to my mind the BJP likely missed reading the message. It is not as if I have some inside information but am using logic. Yes, there is hindsight wisdom here.

Post 2019 the opposition realised that Modi was not just strong and popular but also performing. Trying to defeat him on policies and politics was almost impossible. Everybody who dislike Modi spoke about unemployment, inflation, economic results not reaching the bottom of the pyramid, agrarian challenges and each such argument had merit but given the overall results, were not overwhelming enough to defeat Modi’s BJP. Further the BJP/NDA emerged victorious in Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh state assemblies. I plan to write about the results separately but the focus here is how the opposition alliance has indeed “won”.

Over the last 5 years I have come across many a highly educated, well-informed folks but politically anti Modi, pro Congress say something that seems ridiculous but had a platform to work on. They kept harping that 60 ~ 70 % of the people had voted against Modi/ BJP. Taking a vote share of 40% for BJP, this is logical fact and 2 years back the opposition realised the maths behind these numbers. Most of us missed this.

If the entire opposition could get together, this 60% votes may not actually come to them, but could make a difference in the election results. The problem was how to bring the opposition together. Trying to create a program, policy, would not hold water, projecting a PM face was out of the question, the very thought of working together was unacceptable and consequently forming a government was never a target. The answer was – change the target.

The sole real intent of the opposition became – Ensure that Modi is not PM again or at best weaken him as much as possible.

The stated intent of the opposition as a block was never mentioned. We had each party chasing their own real targets which matched with their (un)stated target which was to remain strong in their respective states. 

The level of contradiction we saw during the entire campaign was humungous. An AAP/ Communists were fighting Delhi together with Congress as allies and fighting Punjab/ Kerala against each other. Similarly, the others like DMK, TMC were together with Congress but retained their fiefdom in every place.

The manifesto of some parties was beyond belief even if those kind of ideas are dangerous to the nation. If a Congress manifesto spoke about removing the constitutional cap on reservations, giving away govt land for free, creating reservations for minorities in public tenders and contracts, writing off student loans (145,000 Crores in 2022) and many such, their ally the Communists stated that they would dismantle weapons and denuclearize India.

That the media never bothered to analyse and debate any party manifesto indicates the disdain they have for manifestos. Are we to assume that the Congress or other allies in the INDI alliance agreed with each such policy intentions? Would Congress agree to dismantle nuclear weapons in India? To put forth an argument that they would not be able to implement such ideas is not the issue. The fact remains that a manifesto is the most official policy document of a political party, displays their thoughts and intent and cannot be ignored as election rhetoric unlike election campaign speeches. This would be the most unacceptable argument since the manifesto is like a promissory note to the nation even if there is no time limit and they can also fail to deliver certain points.  

Yet within these contradictions the opposition pulled together as one because those were never an issue between them, they had no intention of wanting to form a government. Which is also why they never spoke about who would be PM, it didn’t matter as regards their real target. The key for this disunited group to succeed in their target was that someone had to sacrifice seats while contesting. That sacrifice was made by Congress – as a national party.

The Congress is the ONLY national party in the real sense in this INDI alliance and they contested in 417 seats in 2004, 440 seats in 2009, 464 in 2014, 421 in 2019. Given 543 seats this means an average of 80.5 % of the total is what Congress would contest in. In 2024 the Congress contested just 328 or 60% of the total. A national party targeting just 60% of the seats to contest and then expect an 83% success rate to get a simple majority to form the government is stretching the imagination significantly. The Congress contested just 3 out of the 7 seats even in the Capital Delhi, a state they ruled for 15 years and the most important location nationally.  The point is not about they being in an alliance, but that the thinking from day one was never about forming the government.

The moment one changes the goalpost from wanting to form the government to a goal of just removing Modi and/or weakening him, then even oil and water can mix seamlessly. It also explains every contradiction that we saw, never becoming one and the entire alliance pulling together perfectly in unison when it came to communicating. The communication did not matter, the entire alliance was in it together just to get rid of Modi, nothing more, nothing less.

When the results came, nobody bemoaned the fact that the alliance had lost, that the Congress had just 99 seats even if higher than last time, that BJP with 240 seats was more than the cumulative seats of Congress (195) over the 3 elections, that the 2^nd position bagged by Congress (99) was 59% lesser seats than the 1^st position BJP (240), the 3^rd position was 84% behind the 1^st with 37 seats and so on. The total seats of the 26-member party INDI alliance was 234 seats compared to BJP’s 240. 

The entire clamour from the moment the results were announced was that Modi had lost, lost faith with the people, and this was a anti Modi result. This was a defeat, and he must resign and go, he cannot become PM, he had no moral authority to become PM. The arguments were endless, and every loyal Congress supporter parroted this argument with no logic.

Without going into any kind of analysis, it is nobody’s argument that the Modi/ BJP govt had been given a less than passing mark of 272, but the people gave them 88% marks as against Congress 37% and the next party 14%. But to call this a defeat is again stretching the imagination and logic to suit one’s opinion.

With the INDI alliance as the examiner, my own view is that, given the stretched target of 400 that Modi had set, even 380, meaning 95% would still be a failure/ defeat of Modi. Even BJP getting to 300 on its own would have been a defeat in the examiner’s eyes since that’s just 75%. The one and only way in which Modi could claim victory was by hitting/ crossing the 400 mark, getting 100% +.

Consequently, when looked at from the real intent/ target of the INDI alliance – defeat/ weaken Modi, they have surely succeeded. Based on their warped logic, they have indeed won. 

The risk going into the next few years is not about this INDI alliance winning, it is about how long the defeat of Modi remains the sole and only target since that can result in political strategies that can work due to the maths.

The maths is a whole new subject to be researched, but as a back of the envelope flavour, the combined vote share of the INDI alliance was about 37.21 % against the 36.56 % of the BJP alone which resulted in 234 seats from 26 parties. This means that the overall voting percentage which was about 65.79% may need to go up to 72 % or so for the maths to work in favour of BJP. Far more BJP/ Modi supporters need to go out and vote as a commitment. More on this in a different piece.