India’s Modi tightens his grip on power
Narendra Modi. Pic: AP.
Two state assembly wins solidify the BJP mandate in India, writes John Elliott for Asia Sentinel.
Narendra Modi and his fellow leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party believe they are on a 10-year mission to turn India into a successful world power with a strong nationalist base. On Oct. 19, they put two more building blocks in place with state assembly election victories in Maharashtra and Haryana, where they have ousted Congress Party governments and reduced that party to a humiliating also-ran role.
They have not however done as well as they had hoped because they have not won overall control in Maharashtra. Nevertheless Modi, who was the BJP’s star campaigner in both states, has broadened his and the BJP’s base in the country, and will now be able to implement his message and new policies more easily in the two states. The results also improve the BJP’s minority position in the indirectly elected Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament), where the Congress Party and other opposition parties can currently block the government’s legislation.
In Haryana, adjacent to Delhi, the BJP has won outright control with 47 seats in the 90-seat assembly, compared with just four in the last election. It has ousted a Congress government that has been in power for 10 years and was widely perceived to have facilitated corrupt land deals involving, among others, Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi’s businessman son-in-law. Congress won just 15 seats, down from 40.
In Maharashtra, the BJP won 123 seats and is by far the biggest party, but needs support to establish a majority in the 288-seat assembly. Maharashtra has been run by Congress-led governments for 15 years, and the outgoing coalition with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was riven with corrupt land and infrastructure deals that Prithviraj Chavan, who was shipped in as chief minister by Sonia Gandhi four years ago to clean up the government, has admitted he was unable to stop.
In an attempt to remain politically relevant (and maybe seek protection from corruption inquiries), the NCP has offered the BJP the support of its 41 assembly members. The Shiv Sena, a state-based chauvinist and often violent party which has 63 seats and has been a BJP ally for 25 years, is however a more natural supporter despite sharp clashes during the election campaign.
There will be some debate about whether the BJP’s failure to win outright in Maharashtra marks a gradual dwindling of the popular wave that swept Modi to power nationally in May, though the BJP line is that the wave has become “a tsunami”. Modi campaigned extensively in the state, but could not sufficiently reduce the grip of the Shiv Sena, which is renowned for its street-level gangs and clout, nor of the moneyed NCP, whose leaders include Sharad Pawar, a veteran national and regional politician, and Praful Patel, a controversiual aviation minister in the last Congress government.
The main loser is the image and clout of the Congress Party, led by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, who must have expected defeat because they made fewer than 20 appearances during the campaigns, compared with a total of over 70 meetings addressed by Modi and Amit Shah, the powerful BJP president. Congress came third in Maharashtra after the BJP and Shiv Sena and with almost the same number of seats as the NCP, while in Haryana it came third behind not just the BJP but also the local-based Indian National Lok Dal, whose former leader and chief minister, Om Prakash Chautala, is in jail for corruption.
