JUNE 23, 2023 - in Washington DC and in Patna – has framed the lines for the Big Battle in 2024 that India is getting ready for. The red carpet welcome given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US, a state banquet by US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, attended by 400 guests who vied with each other to be there, a vegetarian meal specially curated by the First Lady, Modi’s address to a joint session of the US Congress (the first PM to do so twice), the promise of technology transfers, ending of a denial regime, the signing of space and defence deals, including fighter jet engines – all laid out for a man who had once been denied a visa to the US. The optics of the visit, carefully crafted and painstakingly executed, was as much about India 2024 as it was about the upgraded bilateral relations between the two countries. The intellectuals and the academics back home could quibble about the fine print of the visit, but Modi happily met academics and intellectuals in America. 👉 Click here to register! This was also about national pride, “desh ki izzat”, creating a feel-good among the diaspora and Indians back home – of India being accorded its due on the world stage. Back home, another meeting was taking place in the country’s dusty plains, in Patna, where many a movement for change has taken birth, like the Jayaprakash Narayan-led Bihar movement which dethroned a powerful PM like Indira Gandhi in 1977. Leaders of 15 parties opposed to Modi gathered to plan how they could defeat him in 2024. Opposition leaders have gathered together in the past too for photo-ops, with nothing substantive coming out of the exercise - though photo-ops are not to be sniffed at, as Modi has shown over the last decade and more. But Patna appeared to signify a little more than the usual optics. For starters, the gathering arranged by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar brought together those who had so far serious political reservations about the Congress, like Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Arvind Kejriwal. It also had the two most important Congress figures present – party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi. Since most regional parties have grown at the expense of the Congress and fear its revival at their cost, they are understandably apprehensive of the Congress acting like the big brother. And yet, most of the state satraps concede now that Opposition unity would be meaningless without the Congress. The ball is now in the Congress’s court, how to decide between the Left and Mamata in West Bengal; to be reasonable in its demand for seats in Uttar Pradesh; and to settle the AAP question, with the latter pushing Friday that the Congress take a stand on the Centre’s ordinance divesting the Delhi government of administrative powers. The AAP might need to rethink its strategy though, with Kejriwal getting no support from other Opposition parties in Patna, over how he virtually held a gun to the Congress’s head on the issue. As for the Congress, it has shown signs of mellowing. From all accounts, Rahul informed Nitish that he will not be in the reckoning in 2024 – and urged state satraps to go ahead and forge unity, and that the Congress would back their efforts. Patna also showed that the idea of a 'third front' – a front of regional parties minus the Congress – is now a thing of the past. Politics now is going to be about two fronts, one led by the BJP and the other made up of those opposed to it, which includes the Congress. Of course, there are the 'non-aligned' non-BJP parties, but in reality, they are more with the BJP than the other side. The Naveen Patnaik-led BJD will go it alone in elections and, in all likelihood, give issue-based support to whoever comes to power next year. So will Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP. Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Chandrashekar Rao’s semantics are somewhat different; he talks about Opposition unity, but criticises the Congress more than the BJP and plans to field candidates against it in Maharashtra too, apart from Telangana. If the Opposition is making an effort to join hands, the BJP is also revisiting its strategy on allies, aware that it has no presence in the South and peaked in the North in 2019, and conscious of a 10-year anti-incumbency taking its toll. It has an alliance in place with the AIADMK, while the TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu has had a meeting with Amit Shah. The BJP has been making overtures to old ally Akali Dal for a while now, while former PM H D Deve Gowda, patriarch of a weakened JD(S), has often praised Modi. One absentee in Patna was the RLD’s Jayant Chaudhury, an SP ally who announced a day before the meeting that he would not be able to make it. The RLD has sought to quash any speculation about Chaudhury's future plans, saying he had a “pre-arranged” event to attend. The Opposition would likely not have missed Jitan Majhi’s Hindustan Awami Morcha, which swung away from the JD(U) and back to the NDA, days before the Patna meeting. One of the biggest challenges for the Opposition will be finding a leader acceptable to all who can give a “takkar (tough contest)” to Modi. While the BJP's fortunes might have taken a hit, the PM more or less retains his popularity. Opposition leaders indicated Friday that they knew what lay ahead, and are clear they must remain focused on the bull’s-eye – ensuring “one-on-one contests” against BJP/NDA candidates in as many Lok Sabha constituencies as possible. As a senior Congress leader remarked, “Nothing else really matters.” Modi, on the other hand, can be expected to rely on macro strokes to retain support. Washington DC was another reminder of that – an invocation of Indian pride, that the BJP believes can help conquer the disappointment that may be setting in, of loss of jobs, reduction in incomes, increase in expenses. “I paid Rs 140 a kg for gwar ki phali, which used to grow all over Maharashtra,” a doctor in Mumbai said recently. “And my domestic help cannot even afford vegetables in her family’s diet.” Modi's grand sweeps will gather momentum in the months to come, including with the G20 summit in September, to be attended by the world’s most powerful leaders, in the run-up to the state elections. Then will come the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January 2024, billed as a “civilizational project”, and expected to be crafted around Modi’s persona, with an outreach planned specially for those from South India – as also lower castes like the Valmikis and Nishads. It is this aspect of Modi’s politics that Opposition parties have not known how to counter. (Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections)
