Video Editor: Mohd Ibrahim
The Ides of March visited Prime Minister Modi with its full fury in 2018.
On the 3 March, he knocked the stuffing out of a 25-year-entrenched Left in Tripura, and swept across all of the North East. The euphoria was still strong and loud when, just 11 days later, the combined SP+BSP knocked the stuffing out of Prime Minister Modi’s and Chief Minister Yogi’s BJP in the by-polls of Gorakhpur and Phulpur (and also in Araria in Bihar).
The arithmetic is chilling.
If SP+BSP+Congress had tied up in 2014, then BJP+ would have lost 36 seats in UP (down from 73 to 37). And if a combined SP+BSP+Congress vote pooling was done on the 2017 UP assembly polls data, that would have reduced BJP’s seats from UP to 23. This would have further denuded its parliamentary strength by nearly 50 seats to around 234, robbing Prime Minister Modi of the seminal distinction of becoming the first single party majority government since the Rajiv Gandhi landslide in 1985.
If that had been the outcome in 2014, Prime Minister Modi’s aura of invincibility would perhaps never have been created in the first place.
But wait. Remember that in 2014, a chunk of the BJP vote was cast personally for the wildly popular candidate, Narendra Modi.
While the Congress votes stayed static at around 11 crore between 2009 and 2014, BJP’s votes leapt from about 8 crore to 17 crore. One can safely assume that most of these additional 9 crore BJP voters were “fans of Modi”. They were electrified by his promise of aspirational change, of “Achche Din” (good days).
Since Modi was not directly on the ballot paper in Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Araria, can we use that data to infer that “fans of Modi” have turned away from him? Or would they be willing to give him another chance?
Remember that Modi is a tireless campaigner. His rhetorical skills are unmatched. Given his penchant for acronyms, I am tempted to second guess what Prime Minister Modi could coin as his re-election slogan for 2019.
Modi’s Acronyms for 2019: GOOGLY & CLEAN-BOWLEDDD
Yeh paanch saal toh maine GOOGLY pheki thi; agley paanch saal main CLEAN-BOWLEDDD kar doonga!
Translation: In my first five years, I’ve just thrown a GOOGLY; but in the next five, I will get them CLEAN-BOWLEDDD!
Here, GOOGLY will stand for: Gunehgaari Opposition & Old Guard ko Lapate Liya (I have neutralised a criminal opposition and jaded old guard in my first tenure).
CLEAN-BOWLEDDD: Clean New India Built On World Leadership & Energetic Digitisation, Democracy & Demographics!
Modi will further claim that “you have to give me a second tenure as your prime minister, because I will now build a clean new India that will become a world leader riding energetically on our three core strengths of digitisation, democracy and demography.”
Can Opposition Parties Play Modi’s Googly Without Getting Clean Bowled?
It’s going to be tough and challenging.
The SP+BSP+Congress tie up in UP and the Congress+NCP alliance in Maharashtra are just tiny shuffles.
The opposition leaders will have to smother their respective egos and try to pull off the seemingly impossible:
- Craft a TMC-Congress alliance in West Bengal, ceding dominance to Mamata Bannerjee.
- Cement the friendship with DMK into a hard-coded pre-poll alliance.
- Declare Jagan Reddy as a combined Congress’s unquestioned satrap in Andhra Pradesh.
- It may sound outlandish but reach out to Himanta Biswa Sarma with the promise of leading Assam.
- Why can’t Nitish Kumar be wooed back into an RJD+Congress embrace? Won’t that be the kayo punch?
Isn’t politics the art of the possible?
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