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Business News/ Opinion / Restraint without opposition
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Restraint without opposition

In the absence of a serious Opposition, the BJP should resist the temptation of pushing through policies that can divide the nation

Photo: Indranil Bhoumik/Mint Premium
Photo: Indranil Bhoumik/Mint

Once it became clear that Narendra Modi was going to lead the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to an unprecedented number of seats in the Lok Sabha, enabling his party to form a government on its own if it wanted to, many who did not want him to win started looking for some information, some evidence, some hook, that could convince them that the sweep was not as vast as it appeared to be; that there were still some constants in Indian politics.

But the saffron wave was almost everywhere, except parts of the country’s northeast and southeast. The Congress was routed in state after state on a scale not seen since 1977 (and even then, the party had held firm in the south). This time, if you looked at a map of India with each constituency coded by a colour representing a party, then India had become a saffron country.

With the BJP doing well among almost all voting segments, and even in constituencies where Muslims formed a sizeable proportion of voters, the BJP’s opponents could draw comfort from few facts, and one was that the BJP’s vote share was 31%. Aha, it meant that 69% of Indians voted against the BJP. That they did, but that’s not meaningful, and it is something Indians have always done—no ruling party has ever secured 51% of the popular vote ever: not Jawaharlal Nehru in the first elections, not Indira Gandhi after the Bangladesh War, not the Janata Party after the Emergency, and nor Rajiv Gandhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

While adding up the popular vote is a useful way to gauge a party’s support, in parliamentary democracy what matters is how the supporters are spread. Is the spread wide? Even? Does the party face multi-cornered contests? To argue that the result would have been different under proportional representation is also peculiar, because if the elections were fought on proportional representation, then the parties would have fielded candidates differently, and their electoral strategies would have varied. More important, voters would have expressed their choices differently. Simply put, it would not have meant the BJP getting about 31% of the seats and the Congress 19% (instead of 52% and 8% respectively now).

The fact is that the BJP had an unprecedented swing in its favour—from 18.8% to 31%. That’s a whopping 12.2 percentage points. The Congress lost close to 9 percentage points of its vote. This shows nationwide disenchantment with the Congress and significant support for the BJP.

To be sure, it is a fair point to say that no party has got a majority in India with such a small per cent of the national vote—but that may say more about India’s fragmented political landscape, with more parties than ever. None of that consoles Modi’s opponents much, but therein lies a lesson for the BJP—about what this majority means, particularly because, officially, the parliament will not have an opposition, unless the Speaker waives the 1998 rule that requires the principal opposition to have 10% of seats in the parliament. And the biggest danger for any ruling party in a democracy is the absence of serious opposition. It leads to complacency and hubris—by ignoring criticism, disregarding dissent, crushing alternative views, and taking opponents for granted. Modi’s record when he has unbridled power, as in Gujarat, is hardly inspiring.

Such majority can also make a party more adventurous, even reckless, making it assume mandate where it doesn’t exist. The BJP should resist the temptation of pushing through policies that can only divide the nation further in its early months, when the opposition is still shell-shocked.

The BJP and its core supporters may indeed want to build a temple to commemorate Rama in Ayodhya at the spot where Babri Masjid stood until 1992 when they demolished the mosque; that Article 370 of the constitution which gives Jammu and Kashmir special status be scrapped; that the country needs a uniform civil code; or, that India must retain its Victorian era prohibitions on sexual relations between consenting adults even if the laws criminalize a minority. It should resist that urge. Nor does it have to placate some core supporters who believe that women should not go pub-crawling, or that their daughters should marry men only from their own faith, or that housing societies should deny flats to people of specific faiths or particular dietary habits.

A large number of voters supported the BJP because of its development-oriented agenda. Its campaign rhetoric offered simplified and reduced taxes, more jobs, better roads, smarter cities, fresh investments, freedom for people to do more by making the government do less, and a clean and efficient administration that would make India look like the Gujarat of the state government’s brochures.

It won’t be easy. And when it gets tough, it would be so tempting to revive that antediluvian agenda, which would accentuate India’s narrower identities and presumed hierarchies, keeping it mired in a darker, meaner reality. Can Modi rise above that urge?

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com.

To read Salil Tripathi’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/saliltripathi

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

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Published: 21 May 2014, 05:51 PM IST
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