The election politics in India

Sarwar Jahan Chowdhury writes for DOT
The pre-election politics in India , this time around, has attained some unique characteristics . This is already marked by some kind of special desperation by the ruling BJP. This desperation stems from certain mis-governance and failure of the Narendra Modi government and their unprecedented cravings for clinging on to power at whatever cost and by covering those lacks of success up.
The cutting edge slogan of Mr. Narendra Modi in 2014 was development and clean governance. Hindutva was there too , but just implicit with its limitations of pulling votes as a sole factor. The development or ‘Vikas’, as they say it in Hindi , and clean governance propagation of Mr. Modi got traction among Indian youth in the context of economic stagnation and corruption allegations in the later part of UPA-2 rule.
However, rather than delivering on his key promises diligently and intelligently , the Modi govt made a mess in last four and half years. They failed to calibrate their strategy in line with the pressing and dividend yielding agendas and rather experimented , in an ill prepared way, with some old programmes of the Congress led UPA govt , e.g. GST , Multi Brand Retail , and launched some big and fresh but unnecessary ones of their own e.g. Demonitization that caused great inconvenience for ordinary Indians and delivered nothing despite some massive expenses for the project. Modi Govt’s odd and uncanny coziness with some big Indian industrialist and visible attempts to favour them created a huge uproar among Indian media and a big section of the citizenry .
The solo and somewhat good part of this episode of the BJP rule is that , they kept the GDP figures going. However, their GDP calculation method has been a bit dubious and the good growth percentage of the GDP hardly had any trickledown effect in terms of demand for production in agricultural , industrial and service sectors and also in the job prospects for the ever increasing and gigantic youth workforce of India. Modi or his much spot lighted Finance Minister Arun Jaitly didn’t have much clue how to go about these complex challenges it seemed.
Sensing the downfall lately , the controversial and manipulative party President of the BJP Mr. Amit Shah along with the core Hindutvawit leaders at various levels of the govt and the party started intensifying their divisive hate mongering politics targeting the minorities and the secular forces to consolidate Hindu votes under the rubric of the Saffron in 2019. But the cracks are already visible in some provincial and by polls and it’s not clear whether their connivance will fool Indian electorate.
Moreover, the opposition aren’t as divided as they were in 2014 and that makes it difficult for the BJP even if they repeat their 31% of the popular vote of the last Lokshava election – which is actually quite unlikely in the coming one. Some provinces like Rajstan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh etc of BJP’s Hindi heartland core base have already experience long BJP rule and anti-incumbency is quite ripe there. The BJP itself as a party and many of its party leaders and their close relatives have become hugely wealthy in last few years in mysterious ways . All these are likely to coalesce with the poor performance of BJP in the Center when the electorate decide.
Despite some Phoenix like rise of Rahul Gandhi from the ashes of 2014 , Mr. Modi still appears to be more popular than the young Gandhi individually . Its not entirely clear where this combination of Mr. Modi’s personal stature and divisive Hindutvawit propaganda will win or fail in 2019. Hence , 2019 is not yet a foregone conclusion for India.
The writer is an opinion writer in Bangladeshi and Indian newspapers and news websites.