India’s Modi Will Squeak by in Re-Election, but His Ability To Govern Is in Question

India‘s prime minister, Narendra Modi, isn’t as popular as he and his core followers had assumed he was.That was the shock outcome in a prolonged vote-counting process after 642 million voters trooped to the polls to fill all 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, or parliament, which elects the prime minister. All told, 66.95 percent of the nation’s eligible voters cast their ballots, 1 percent less than in the elections five years ago but still an incredible display of democracy in action.The good news for Mr. Modi is that he is expected to win a third five-year term as leader of what is by far the world’s largest democracy. The bad news is that, with 288 members of his National Democratic Alliance projected to win seats, he’ll barely have enough votes in the Lok Sabha to be sure he’s really in charge of the government.Far from winning the “landslide” of more than 400 seats that Mr. Modi had counted on, his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party now has to negotiate with friends and allies to be sure their leader will stay in power. Already the historic Congress Party — which had controlled the Lok Sabha under India’s longest-serving prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi — is calling for Mr. Modi’s resignation.Smelling blood, exultant Congress leaders talked as if their candidates had actually won the votes they needed to make a historic comeback.A leader of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, grandson of Indira and son of Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded Indira as prime minister after her assassination in 1984, said leaders of the “India Alliance,” dominated by the Congress, would soon decide whether to try to organize a centrist bloc capable of forcing Mr. Modi out of power.That appeared unlikely, but a leader of the Congress, Jairam Ramesh, said the count “proved that the outgoing prime minister is going to become former.” Now is the time, he said, for Mr. Modi to “take moral responsibility and resign” – “the message of this election.”While expected to keep his job as the first three-term prime minister since Nehru, Mr. Modi might have to rethink or tone down his emphasis on Hindu nationalism in a country of 1.4 billion people, including 200 million Muslims. He also faces severe opposition from the nation’s Sikh minority of about 24 million, most of them in the Punjab region north of Delhi, where Sikh firebrands are demanding “independence.”More troublesome for many Indians is that, as India has grown economically and militarily, improving ties with Washington while standing firm against Chinese encroachment along its northern borders, most people below a small upper crust are not sharing in the nation’s seeming success story.“The BJP’s Hindutva or Hindu nationalist ideology has not resonated throughout the country, particularly in the south where the party does not control any of the five state governments.,” the senior research fellow for South Asia, Asia-Pacific at London’s influential Chatham House, Chietigj Bajpaee, writes, citing “concerns about youth unemployment (which accounts for over 80 percent of the country’s unemployed) and inflation,” notably food prices.At a press conference, Rahul Gandhi played upon deep-seated class and caste differences, saying “India’s poorest and backward stood up to save the Constitution.” The Times of India quoted him as saying, “The people have given a clear message to PM Modi, ‘We do not want you.’” More realistically, though, the paper ran the headline: “Stage set for NDA 3.0 despite INDIA bloc’s impressive gains” — and reported Mr. Modi’s party “winning only 241 seats, 31 seats short of majority and a whopping 62 seats less than its tally in the 2019 polls.”

India’s Modi Will Squeak by in Re-Election, but His Ability To Govern Is in Question

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