Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by supporters as he arrives at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in New Delhi, India, on June 4.Manish Swarup/The Associated Press
The signature act of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election bid was to inaugurate his campaign by opening a vast Hindu temple in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, built with money crowdfunded from his devotees on the site of a 16th-century mosque that had been destroyed in 1992 by a Hindu-fundamentalist mob.
By the time he held that nationally televised spectacle in January, Mr. Modi – expecting to win a third overwhelming majority for his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – had drifted from the policies of economic growth and modernization that had characterized his original 2014 victory and often appeared more interested in building a cult of personality. In his campaign speeches, he likened himself to a god, frequently referred to himself in the third person, and became known for jailing political opponents and denouncing them as agents of Muslim “infiltrators.”
His moment of karma arrived on Tuesday, after seven weeks of voting across India, when 642 million voters defied polls to deliver a rebuke. His BJP failed to reach a majority, losing 21 per cent of its national seats, and suffered big losses in regions considered his heartland – even losing its seat in the city of Ayodhya, home to the grand temple that began his campaign.
Instead, Mr. Modi spent Wednesday scrambling to assemble a fragile coalition with regional parties that do not share his religious-fundamentalist inclinations. Holding onto that government will involve striking expensive deals with those parties and backing away from some of his grander ambitions.
In particular, his governing coalition – known as the National Democratic Alliance – had to reach out to Chandrababu Naidu, head of the Telegu Desam Party (TDP), a regional force in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, if it had any hope of attaining a majority. Mr. Naidu was not a sure bet; in 2002, when brutal Hindu-Muslim riots killed at least a thousand people in the state of Gujarat, he called for the resignation of Mr. Modi, then the state’s premier. As recently as 2018, he had broken with the NDA amid feuds with the BJP Leader.
On Tuesday night, Mr. Naidu seemed to hint that he might side instead with the main opposition bloc, dominated by the venerable Indian National Congress party. Led by Rahul Gandhi, 53, the fourth generation of his family to lead the religiously diverse party since India’s founding in 1947, the Congress-led coalition surprised most observers by winning 232 seats, just shy of the 240 won by the BJP, on a campaign largely devoted to employment and economic equality. Because 272 seats are needed for a majority, the TDP’s 16 seats, along with those of similar secular regional parties, were considered decisive, and might have given Mr. Gandhi a government.
In the end, the TDB agreed on Wednesday morning to join the National Democratic Alliance, allowing Mr. Modi to remain in power. In exchange, Mr. Naidu reportedly insisted that Andhra Pradesh be given special economic status, entitling it to lavish national development funds, along with five cabinet seats and other concessions not yet known. Several other regional parties also struck deals.
Mr. Modi has never governed in a coalition, either as premier of Gujarat or as Prime Minister. He is accustomed to ordering executive measures – such as crackdowns on the media and on internet access, and the persecution and jailing of critics, journalists and opposition figures – that would not be tolerated in a coalition. This could leave him vulnerable to a non-confidence vote.
Indeed, this extraordinary election can be viewed as a confidence vote by Indians on Mr. Modi’s form of single-party rule. Although he has presided over a dramatic reduction in poverty (which began years before he was in office), a rise in economic growth and an expansion of India’s infrastructure and social programs, his recent terms have seen sharply rising inflation, deep unemployment and worsening conditions for farmers.
Many voters were also likely responding to Mr. Modi’s appalling response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the military was used to restrict the movement of poor Indians, cutting off their access to food and leading to a starvation crisis, while also failing to control the disease, causing more than half a million deaths, the third highest toll after the United States and Brazil.
India appears to be part of a wave of elections this year in which voters in lower-income countries – especially in South Asia – have defied expectations. It follows Pakistan’s February election, in which a plurality and possibly a majority of votes were cast for the party of a candidate, Imran Khan, who was imprisoned and banned from running. In both countries, attempts to crack down on democratic rights have led to a welcome backlash at the polls.