Dr. Duygu Çağla Bayram
The results of India’s election, which came in on the evening of Tuesday 4 June after the votes had been counted, showed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had surprisingly secured a third term in office. The surprise was not that Modi had secured a third term; that was expected. The surprise was that he did it in such a way that he would need coalition partners to form a third term government. The 73-year-old Modi won three consecutive terms, matching Jawaharlal Nehru’s record as the first prime minister, but despite his party’s “landslide” victories in the first two terms, his third term – despite even greater expectations – fell far short of the 272-seat threshold for a clear majority, leaving Modi and his team frustrated. Although Modi had announced on his X platform on the day of the vote count that “we have won a historic/major victory”, this was not the case. While his party, the BJP, secured 240 seats, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which he leads, retained the right to form a government with 53 seats. However, this will be Modi’s first experience of leading a coalition government. Modi’s party, the BJP, has lost ground and will now have to rely on its partners in the National Democratic Alliance, in particular the Janata Dal (United) Party and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Nevertheless, despite the setbacks, the BJP won 36.56 per cent of the national vote, only one per cent less than in the 2019 elections. In any case, it must be said at the outset that these election results in India are important in demonstrating democratic vibrancy against the possibility of the country drifting towards one-party rule.
The fact that the opposition almost doubled its vote share surprised everyone in India, everyone outside India and even the opposition itself. The opposition alliance INDIA, led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party, won 232 seats, 99 of which were won by the Congress, a sharp increase from 2019, when the Congress and its allies won only 52 seats in 91 constituencies. Rahul Gandhi, 53, heir to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, appears to have a new chance to revive a party and family name that has long been at the centre of politics in the world’s largest democracy, unlike in 2019, when he suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the BJP and resigned as Congress president, a post he was appointed to in 2017. Like his father Rajiv Gandhi, a commercial pilot who was forced into politics after his mother Indira Gandhi, a former prime minister, was shot dead by two bodyguards, Rahul Gandhi was originally a reluctant politician. The legacy of the assassination of his grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi, both prime ministers, forces Rahul Gandhi and his Italian-born mother Sonia Gandhi, a senior Congress leader, to live under tight security. So it remains to be seen how and whether this opportunity will be used by the Congress or by the opposition, which in general does not seem to show much promise… In fact, the Congress, although doing much better than expected, is second only to the BJP and Rahul Gandhi is not seen as an alternative to Modi as prime minister. It is important to recognise that Modi is a hugely popular, globally recognised, oratorically powerful leader and, more importantly, at the helm of a huge party with resources, connections and influence across Indian society. “If there is one thing missing in my life, it is a good opposition,” Modi told a news channel during the election campaign. So a strong opposition seems to be on the cards, but only time will tell whether it will be a “good opposition” or not.
First, it is clear that the surprise election results – in an equation where the Congress and Rahul Gandhi mobilise in the name of secularism, equality, inclusiveness and liberal democracy – are an indication of dissatisfaction with the BJP on economic grounds such as unemployment and inflation, and also on grounds such as Hindu nationalist divisive harsh rhetoric. As a result, much has been written, drawn and said in this short time about Modi’s third term, i.e. the policies of the new government he will form with his coalition partners. There have been views that it will have an impact on domestic and foreign policy, and views that it will not. My view is that it will not have a direct impact, but there is a possibility of a very limited indirect constraint. We need some time to observe this. However, it is not very difficult to draw conclusions and make predictions, even if we look at the new cabinet. In the coalition government announced by Modi on Monday, you can see that the old guard of his party is at the top of the list and their important positions remain unchanged. The first thing I have to say is that 7 of the 71 ministers are women, two of them in the senior cabinet. This is still low for India, which has made efforts to bring women into politics… And the first thing to say about the previous sentence is that this is a clear signal of political continuity. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar remain in their posts. All of them are BJP loyalists and all of them are names whose frequencies are very much in tune with Modi. Meanwhile, BJP president Jagat Prakash Nadda has been appointed health minister.
However, I would like to devote a separate section to Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, who is considered by many in the country to be a “jewel” whose popularity stems from the fact that he has made diplomacy an issue of interest to the common man. Although, as the election results show, foreign policy and diplomacy still do not hold much sway with Indians, I have to say that at least public awareness has begun to emerge. Jaishankar’s books The Indian Way and Why Bharat Matters have put forward a new diplomacy for India. At this point, much of the credit for replacing India’s old tradition of “non-alignment” with the formula of “multilateralism” goes to Jaishankar. The diplomatic rhetoric of Modi and his top aides is taking on a new tone, replacing earlier leftist, anti-colonialist references to ‘non-alignment’ with other terms such as ‘strategic autonomy’ and references to ‘Bharat’ instead of ‘India’. And, more importantly, Jaishankar’s “India is not Western, but it cannot be anti-Western” approach is receiving more praise. He was able to convince Prime Minister Modi, who was once banned from entering the US, that New Delhi could work with Washington, and over the past decade India has built a relationship with America that was once unimaginable. Jaishankar is a pragmatist: no rising power in the last 150 years has succeeded without the West, so India should work with it… I wrote a more detailed assessment of Jaishankar’s worldview in Harici about four months ago. Anyone interested can take a look.
Speaking of the Foreign Secretary, let us turn to foreign policy. The first thing to say is this: A BJP emboldened by the election results is likely to be more modest about its Hindu nationalist ideology and more pragmatic with its coalition partners. But when it comes to India’s foreign policy, strong nationalism is extremely popular beyond the BJP faithful, and it is difficult to see exactly where Modi’s worldview diverges from Hindu nationalism. Another problem: Elections in India are never fought primarily on foreign policy, but their results have consequences. That is, they can influence the policy-making process, the ideology and the worldview of the government in power. In the current situation, the question is whether the coalition partners will force the BJP to return to some semblance of normal parliamentary order, or whether they will instead exercise their power through direct negotiations with the BJP. If normal parliamentary order is restored, the BJP could face new and sustained scrutiny, for example, over controversial national security initiatives such as the Agnipath plan for military recruitment and major defence procurement deals with the US and other foreign suppliers. Budget and procurement decisions, for example, were largely avoided even during Modi’s first two terms and often became the focus of serious political wrangling over allegations of corruption or mismanagement. So Indian ministers and bureaucrats responsible for signing big deals, such as bold investments in defence or the ambitious trade and investment agreements needed to advance Modi’s ambitious agenda on the world stage, may need to think twice.
But foreign policy and national security are unlikely to be priorities for Modi’s coalition government; the BJP’s coalition partners are much more interested in regional and livelihood issues. The coalition leaders have also been given smaller ministries such as heavy industries, food processing and fisheries. The civil aviation ministry, however, belongs to 36-year-old Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu of the TDP, the BJP’s biggest ally. The TDP, originally from Andhra Pradesh, is led by veteran politician Chandrababu Naidu, who began his political career in the Congress. And the next largest party, Bihar’s Janata Dal (United), is led by Nitish Kumar, who has a history of switching allegiance to the BJP to suit his own interests; he was one of the founding members of the opposition alliance that ran against Modi in this year’s elections, but switched sides just weeks before the polls. The point is that the BJP’s dominance in the cabinet far outweighs the need for policy continuity in a coalition government, but at the same time Modi is likely to have to build more consensus in this parliament. Incidentally, unlike the last two governments formed after the BJP won a majority, there are no Muslim MPs in the third term.
All in all, after a decade of stability and predictable politics, India seems to be drifting back into the uncertainty of coalition politics, but it can be predicted that this will be a minor uncertainty. Although the country has been ruled by the NDA coalition for the past 10 years, the ruling party has had an absolute majority on its own. The current NDA alliance will be different from previous ones as the BJP is limited to 240 seats. However, it is important to recognise that the significant reform agenda pursued by the Modi government, as well as the ambitious foreign policy outlook of the last decade, may encourage more parties to volunteer to support it, thus providing greater stability to the government. In the meantime, however, the victory of at least three independent candidates with separatist ideologies should not be overlooked. Two of them, Amritpal Singh and Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, open supporters of the Khalistan ideology, won from Punjab, while the third, Kashmiri separatist Abdul Rashid Sheikh, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, was elected from Jammu and Kashmir. Amritpal Singh and Engineer Rashid won the elections from jails where they were detained for anti-India activities. The last time a separatist voice entered the Indian parliament was in 1999, when Simranjit Singh Mann was elected from Sangrur in Punjab. In short, the third victory of the Modi-led coalition is a parliamentary record in India, but the current situation calls for more compromise and responsible politics. It is worth noting that Mahatma Gandhi, who first introduced coalition politics in India’s pre-independence era, attributed his success to humility and courtesy.
Finally, India’s election results cannot be viewed through the prism of China and America, with whom India has a bipolar relationship:
One of the short-term consequences of Modi’s relative loss of power may be related to India’s troubled relationship with China. The long-awaited return of China’s ambassador to New Delhi in May seemed to signal that Beijing and New Delhi were ready to resume normalised relations after the Indian elections. Perhaps anticipating another landslide victory for Modi, China may have preferred to strike a deal to reduce bilateral tensions during his five-year term. At the same time, expecting a solid victory, Modi could have used his unchallenged political standing at home to gain an advantageous position in negotiations with Beijing. But if China now perceives that Modi is in a difficult political position, it may rethink its negotiating calculations and take a tougher line. Modi, in turn, may postpone any overtures to Beijing to avoid criticism from his domestic political rivals. In short, the difficult India-China relationship will continue to be difficult and the focus for India will continue to be on China.
India’s election results may also affect American and Western perceptions of India and Modi. In today’s murky world, America positions New Delhi as a natural strategic partner and counterweight to authoritarian China because of India’s democratic credentials. This is unlikely to change, at least under current circumstances. However, there already seems to be a section in the West that is stressing that the unpredictability of the Indian elections and the fact that Modi and the BJP, whose authoritarian tendencies have imposed increasingly serious political commitments on India, have been punished by the Indian electorate is proof that Indian democracy is alive and kicking, that it reduces the risk of the country sliding into autocracy and that it promises to change India for the better. While this is a typical case of “I change my mind when the facts change”, the China factor will remain the common denominator, at least for the foreseeable future.
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