Bihar Sets Stage For Modi’s 400 Lok Sabha Seats Dream
Chances of Modi’s victory in 2019 improve with Bihar, but don’t expect any big bang reforms.
The Bihar masterstroke sets the stage for Narendra Modi to target 400 seats in the 2019 general elections, but don’t expect any big bang reforms leading up to the polls. That’s the verdict of Sanjay Pugalia, the editorial director at The Quint, and Shankkar Aiyar, a well-known journalist.
On Wednesday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar resigned, after his government's alliance partner, the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal refused to address corruption charges. This morning, Kumar was once again sworn in as the chief minister, this time with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The 24-hour drama has put Lalu Prasad Yadav out in the cold and given the BJP a foot in the door in Bihar politics.
Here’s the edited transcript of the discussion with Sanjay Pugalia and Shankkar Aiyar.
What do you make of the 24-hour drama and what does this mean for 2019 and Modi’s near domination of India?
Pugalia: What we thought of as an audacious dream in Mr. Modi’s mind, now seems to be a real game plan, which is 40 percent vote share and 400 seats for the NDA.
Bihar was the biggest hurdle in terms of ideological and electoral fight. There was a possibility of Nitish Kumar being the only person who could challenge him on grounds of morality, ethics, clean image and could be a cementing force for opposition alliance, exactly like the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar, a dream which is now unattainable. So Mr. Modi’s victory in 2019 appears to be a very strong possibility.
The opposition stands further decimated. What does this mean for the politics of this country here on and what will be the impact on economic policies?
Aiyar: We’ve reached a unipolar status in politics. The Congress Party, like I’ve stated a lot of times, has some market share and dealership, but no product offering. They tried to cobble up a product in the last election and made some improvement when they joined hands with Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav in 2015. But they have no game plan or programme of their own. This is a fight of ideas and Congress is bereft of ideas.
It’s winning elections in states and creating options elsewhere. Take this incident for example, how well this whole Nitish Kumar drama was scripted. It was written over a year ago, the first signs came to the fore when Nitish Kumar supported demonetisation, and then Nitish Kumar waited it out to see how well BJP does in Uttar Pradesh.
Now, the entire Gangetic belt is with the BJP and it is so well scripted that the governor happens to be in Patna, Nitish Kumar happens to be in the first row of Presidential oath taking. One giveaway was Amit Shah walking across to greet Nitish Kumar and that was probably part of fine tuning of the arrangements for yesterday’s events. What this represents is that BJP is on the ball, they are political entrepreneurs, while Congress and other opposition parties are in the brick-and-mortar business in the age of e-commerce.
We have two budgets to be rolled out before the next election. In the light of yesterday’s events, would this give BJP the right to go ahead and implement reforms as they deem fit because this will be seen as a supposed coalition of parties with a clean image?
Pugalia: Reforms in our book and Mr. Modi’s book have different definitions. Anything that can create political controversy and impact the bottom of pyramid-voters, Mr. Modi would not have touched it. But to create a perception that he’s moving towards difficult reforms like the labour one, there may be some movement. But, I do not expect him to go whole hog over it just like I do not expect him to go whole hog on privatisation.
What is your take on the economic policy formulation and will this change the way Modi government crafts policies?
Aiyar: I don’t think there will be any change as Mr. Modi’s politics is very simply defined - it’s based on entrepreneurship.
He has his own calculus on what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, who will do it and where it needs to be done. I think he mentioned that they have a great opportunity, because they will be in power in roughly 17 states. Most of the reforms that need to be brought out are in the states, so if Mr. Modi wishes to present himself as the great reformer or as a person who has brought about transformation in India during 2019 election, then this is his 18-month window.
Do you think Mr. Modi would now issue reforms that have a political agenda, because now in his mind, 2019 might seem to be a given, so he might think of going down the other route?
Aiyar: I don’t think that’s the case because this is like an army moving forward, whose agenda is to conquer, consolidate and conquer again. Yesterday’s event shows that there’s another aspect to it, reclaim.
So the government will be totally focused on politics, the next parties to be targeted will be All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Biju Janata Dal, and Trinamool Congress.
Their aim is to reclaim and conquer and they will move on those lines. I don’t think they will tilt too much on the left, or too much on the right, because they need to achieve their goals without derailing the economy too much. It should be noted that they have 31 percent of votes, and need to move towards attaining 40 percent vote share without derailing the economy.
Hence, they cannot afford to lose the crucial middle-class votes. Their big challenge, the question that Mr. Modi will face in 2019 is, where are the jobs?
Will Modi getting stronger impact economic growth, in the sense of more job creation considering that in the last three years, reform or change at the state level has been visible only in a small measure?
Pugalia: I think there will be lots of action unfolding. As in the case of real growth, I do not see any possibility of a great significant turnaround. As far as jobs are concerned, I have constantly reiterated that Modi or BJP politics resorts to ‘Emotional Atyachar’ via patriotism, nationalism, class-war. First, we saw demonetisation, and now again there will be handfuls of action unfolding on Benami property and black money fronts.
The class war between ‘ameer’ and ‘gareeb’ will be such a noisy and powerful narrative, that Mr. Modi knows even if he would not be able to provide jobs, he will be able to take the votes.
Should we be concerned by the domination of India by a single party? Especially one that does not hesitate in infringing on personal rights in any fashion?
Aiyar: Well, we should be concerned about a single party rule in a democracy. Oligarchy may work in Russia, but oligarchy in politics is a very bad idea. From BJP’s perspective, it should want to have competition because democracy and growth in politics is all about competitive ideas. We should look at this as a probable ‘temporary phase’, hoping that somebody in the opposition might just wake up.
This is too large a democracy to be left to a single party ideology system. It is critical for democracy sustenance and economic growth to have some sort of competitive ideas.