Modi Hangs on to Power in India with Smaller Margin

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory in the 2024 election on Tuesday night, but he will enter his third term with greatly reduced parliamentary support from his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which performed well below expectations.

BJP lost its majority and will need to form a coalition with smaller parties to keep Modi in office.

BJP already had such a coalition ready to go, christened the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). BJP and its partners in this alliance won a total of 292 seats, 20 more than the minimum needed to form a government.

“People have placed their faith in NDA, for a third consecutive time! This is a historical feat in India’s history!” Modi declared, offering the happiest possible spin for a glum election outcome. He predicted before the election that the NDA would win over 400 seats. He actually built this projection into a slogan for his campaign.

No matter what other disappointments he might have suffered, Modi can legitimately claim to have made a bit of history, since he is the first prime minister to score a third term since Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. On the other hand, BJP lost 50 seats and surrendered its majority for the first time since 2014.

Modi proclaimed the election a victory for “the world’s largest democracy,” which is no idle boast. India’s gigantic parliamentary election began in April, ran through seven phases over six weeks, and concluded on Saturday. 

About 642 million votes were tallied on Tuesday, collected across an enormous land mass, some of which is difficult to access. Poll workers must hike to remote villages, lugging ballots and voting machines with them. Voters turn out by the millions despite brutal weather. Unlike certain other democracies, India usually manages to count all of its votes in a single day.

The long election was a roller-coaster ride for BJP, which at some points appeared to be racking up a gigantic victory, and at others looked to be teetering on the verge of losing the government.

Controversies erupted as Modi and other BJP officials played to their Hindu nationalist base. The opposition accused Modi of “blatantly targeting” India’s Muslim minority with hate speech. The restless province of Manipur, where Christian tribes accused Modi of siding with the Hindu majority to persecute them, kicked out BJP and installed two members of the opposition Congress party as its representatives in parliament.

“This is the voice of those people who love their motherland and those who resented the kind of things we have gone through in the last one year … the suffering, the tragedy,” proclaimed A Bimol Akoijam, one of the victorious Congress candidates from Manipur.

“In normal times, we would have won. The emotions and sentiments are still running high, and that has bubbled over, and translated to negative votes against the BJP,” a spokesman for Modi’s party conceded.

Manipur remains so unsettled that the first attempt to poll its voters in many precincts had to be discarded, because armed gangs were interfering with voters and vandalizing ballot machines. Indian military forces were deployed in various areas to ensure votes could be cast safely, and some of them remained in position on Wednesday to prevent violence as the results were announced.

The BBC saw the election results as a “personal blow” to Modi, shattering his “aura of invincibility” and energizing the opposition. The major opposition party, the INC or Congress party, leads a coalition just as BJP does. The opposition coalition, INDIA, won a total of 232 seats, and its de facto leader Rahul Gandhi has come to rival Modi in stature. Congress and its allies can hope for further upsets in five key state elections over the coming year.

“The BJP’s significant drop in seats may be linked to joblessness, rising prices, growing inequality and a controversial army recruitment reform, among other things. Mr Modi’s harsh and divisive campaign, particularly targeting Muslims, could also have alienated voters in some regions,” the BBC postulated.

In Modi’s defense, the BBC noted that Indian politics are usually “chaotic” and BJP’s decade of majority rule was unusual. A humbled BJP forming a coalition with mercurial allies is much closer to “normal politics” for New Delhi.

Political commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Indian Express called the 2024 election a “wondrous moment” on Wednesday, because “the air of despondency, the suffocating shadow of authoritarianism, and the nauseous winds of communalism have, at least for the moment, shifted.”

Mehta, clearly not a Modi fan, saw the election as a “radical realignment of Indian politics” as BJP’s “unchecked domination” ended, Modi was “cut to size by the people,” and India has a “deeply competitive political system” again, with “checks and balances and accountability.”

“The election was, in part, fought on the theme of danger to democracy, institutional degradation, and risk to the Constitution. A more balanced polity also allows the possibility of institutional regeneration,” Mehta wrote.

The Indian Express columnist also had some warnings for Congress and its INDIA coalition, noting that the electorate still seems to trust Modi and BJP more on the economy, preferring growth to a stagnant welfare state.

Kyodo News noted that Modi led India from 10th place to become the 5th largest economy in the world, an achievement most Indians view with pride. BJP lost support “due to the widening gap between the rich and the poor amid a rapidly developing economy,” however.

“We fought in the elections on unemployment, inflation and attacks on institutions. People aligned with our issues,” said Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Congress party.

Across the border at the headquarters of India’s regional rival China, the state-run Global Times sourly predicted “China-India relations are unlikely to improve much,” because the chastened Modi is “likely to play the card of nationalism.”

“After his reelection, Modi may make its external policies more hawkish and aggressive, and China-India relations are unlikely to see any major change,” one of the Global Times’ “experts” said.