Prime Minister Narendra Modi must have heaved a sigh of relief on 8 February as he conquered the capital city’s government — the one citadel that had eluded his grasp since he captured India’s political space in 2014.
His chagrin was compounded because he had swept successive Lok Sabha elections in Delhi in 2014 and 2019, but was wiped out in the state polls that followed a few months later by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an upstart with the gall to reduce Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to low, single digits in the 70-member Assembly.
The irony was inexplicable – Jana Sangh, the parent/predecessor to the BJP – had won Delhi nearly half a century ago, in the teeth of the Indian National Congress’ overwhelming national dominance. While the Jana Sangh was a cipher across India, it actually boasted of a “Chief Minister” in the capital.
I'm sure this question must have haunted Modi — “Why can I not win our oldest bastion of Delhi even as I have wrested India from the Congress?” Now that question has vanished from his victorious mind.
The Allure of a 'Comeback'
Let’s turn to Arvind Kejriwal, the giant killer who was slain in his bailiwick in New Delhi. As he licks his wounds, he must be asking, “What did I do to deserve such a humiliating defeat, even in my constituency?”. For one, he should take solace from the fact that a defeat in politics is merely a re-strategising pause — learn your lesson, refresh, and relaunch.
I am sure his loyalists will remind him that Indira Gandhi lost in her pocket borough of Rae Bareli in 1977, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was vanquished in Gwalior in 1985. Both went on to become Prime Ministers! And why go so far back in history? Just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump, soundly defeated in 2020, bounced with the most astonishing comeback in American history.
Defeat is just a semi-colon in politics. His vote share is nearly equal to that of the BJP in Delhi; he won by eight percentage points among the poor (Source: CSDS), and even more critically, by six percentage points in the 18-22-year-old cohort (Source: CVoter). AAP had a six-percentage point lead among women as well (Source: CSDS).
The poor and the young are change agents, and they are still by his side. What’s more, his approval rating is just a notch below Modi’s. While seven in 10 said they are happy with the Centre’s performance, almost six in 10 endorsed Kejriwal’s state government.
Of course, he needs to worry that almost two-thirds of the electorate thought he was corrupt — not as much because of the liquor scam, but his hare-brained move to build a luxury palace for himself. What should give him balm is that nearly a third still believes that he was framed and trapped. So, he certainly has to make the effort to rebuild, but the bones are in place.
The 'Hand' of Friendship
Finally, to the third player in this equation, Rahul Gandhi’s Congress. At a four percent vote share in the previous Assembly poll, they knew they were not in the race. Never has a party catapulted from four percent to 40 percent (the minimum winning percentage) in just one cycle.
It was thus futile to play for victory in this round. Perhaps a shrewder strategic move would be to emaciate AAP? That’s what the Congress did, fielding their strongest local candidates against AAP’s heavyweights. Anecdotal evidence shows that had the Congress not done this, AAP may have won close to 13 additional seats — and perhaps been in power for a third successive stint. The Congress, too, would have won the Kasturba Nagar seat, had it not been for the AAP candidate.
Why does a softened AAP benefit the Congress? Quite simply, AAP has taken large chunks of the traditional Congress voters in Delhi, Punjab, Goa, and Gujarat. If AAP were to weaken, it would be “advantage Congress” on two counts — they could bargain harder for future alliances, given that their vote base would seamlessly transfer from one to the other; and in Parliament polls, historical data shows that the Congress could perform better in Delhi even after getting battered in state elections.
Just look at what happened in 2019-2020, where the Congress got more votes in Delhi than AAP, even as it plummeted in the state elections that followed in a few months. So, the Congress “could do a DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) à la Tamil Nadu”, i.e. build a medium-term alliance with AAP, be more generous in sharing seats in the state elections but bag a bigger number in the 2029 Parliament elections.
Now that the chess board is laid out above, how should the big three — Modi, Kejriwal, and Rahul — plan their next moves?
Beyond the Status Quo
Prime Minister Modi should be worried by two dramatic statistics. His party led by 15 percentage points among old voters (Source: CVoter), and by an incredible 30 percentage points among rich households (Source: CSDS). It’s an alarming truism that extraordinary support from old and rich voters could stultify you into a “status quoist” political force.
Combine this with the fact that even in this spectacular victory, Modi trailed among the poor and the young – who are the motor spirit of revolutionary change in a democracy – the “status quoist” tag gets stickier.
I think, the Prime Minister should recall his scintillating address at Shriram College in Delhi University in 2013 that sprung him on the national stage as a can-do guy. His rousing, aspirational speech had students cheering so loud that it broke the Internet, its echo reverberating throughout the country, making Modi a political icon of young India.
He should now ask why the young voters had rapidly shifted towards Rahul Gandhi, as per the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) Survey of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Why did his Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) lost the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) poll to the Congress’ National Students' Union of India (NSUI) in the summer of 2024? Why does even CVoter's survey for Delhi show the BJP trailing AAP by six percentage points among the 18-22-year-olds? The Prime Minister is such a consummate politician that the answers will leap at him. He needs no further prompt.
Time to Reconfigure
Arvind Kejriwal now needs to re-calibrate who his primary political target should be. Until now he has been fighting an equally powerful battle against the BJP and the Congress. If anything, he has treated the Congress as a bigger adversary, since he demolished the Congress to build his fortress in the capital and Punjab. But defeat can (and does) change the landscape.
Kejriwal should now build an alliance with Rahul Gandhi, putting behind old injuries and mistrust. To repeat the cliche, politics is the art of the possible. Yes, Congress and AAP should and must remain implacable foes in Punjab. But in Delhi, Goa, and Gujarat, they should bury the animosity and do a win-win deal. Both he and the Congress must learn to stoop to conquer.
Finally, I must end with another political cliché, this time for Rahul Gandhi. There are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, just permanent interests. Having spent a lot of political capital in wounding AAP, the Congress must call a halt to that strategy.
It should agree with AAP that except for Punjab, the Congress and AAP will pool their political capital in a coordinated assault on the BJP. Every data point shows that there is a fertile political ground for both of them amongst the poor, young, Dalit, and minority segments of the electorate. Their coming together to woo this constituency will have a chemically – not merely a mathematically – additive impact.
It’s clear that Delhi’s electorate has given a sharp political message to the three big political players. The message for Prime Minister Modi is that he needs to listen to what the poor and young are telling him.
For Arvind Kejriwal, it’s asking him to choose one adversary, and not fight a two-front war.
For Rahul Gandhi, it’s the time for new tactical alliances, unburdened by past animosities.
It’s the “stoop to conquer” phase in Indian politics.