Modi’s greatest strength is his foes' weakness

The results from four state elections in India announced last weekend might appear dispiriting for India's opposition: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party swept all three states in India's north. 

While the opposition Congress party dislodged a regional satrap in the southern state of Telangana, its governments in two of the three northern states fell. In the fourth, Madhya Pradesh, it didn't come close to repeating its defeat of the BJP in 2018.

These were three of the only states in India's heavily populated, Hindi-speaking northern belt where the Congress still has a presence, and most observers see the BJP's triumph as a sign that Modi's re-election next year is guaranteed. The BJP has twice now won majorities in India's parliament by sweeping almost every constituency in the north and the west of the country.

But we shouldn't overstate things either. A closer look at the results shows that the BJP — though not Modi himself — is more vulnerable than the headline numbers suggest.

A big part of the reason the BJP did so well is because the party put Modi himself on the ballot. Usually, in India, local issues and the relative popularity of the candidates for chief minister determine state elections. The BJP has traditionally won such contests by emphasising the calibre of its local leadership.

On this occasion, knowing the prime minister is more popular than his party, the BJP essentially ran a national campaign. It didn't choose chief ministerial candidates beforehand, instead designing its campaigns around 'Modi's guarantee' that the next government would work on their behalf.

India's first-past-the-post electoral system can exaggerate relatively small differences in vote shares. In reality, the opposition remains competitive in elections which don't turn on Modi's personal appeal. 

In the state of Rajasthan, for example, a difference of just over a percentage point between the BJP and the Congress turned into a solid 115 to 69 advantage in seats. Meanwhile, the Congress's own vote share barely declined in any of the three states it lost. The opposition's voters are sticking with it, even in the north.

Modi may genuinely be the world's most popular leader. What is often difficult for outsiders to appreciate, though, is that turning this popularity into sustained political control is an order of magnitude harder in India than elsewhere. 

This is too diverse a country, with too many different axes of political mobilisation, for sustained domination by one party or one narrative.

The Congress party's consolation victory, in the state of Telangana, illustrates the point. Once as dominant as Modi's BJP is now, the Congress has seen its geographical footprint shrink for a decade. Traditionally, if the party lost power in a state for two successive elections, it had a hard time ever winning again. In Telangana, it broke that rule.

More broadly, the BJP has had a hard time breaking into the prosperous states outside India's northern heartland. The Congress — which emphasises India's federalism and promises more decentralisation — and regional parties have largely held off the BJP in most states with a strong local cultural identity.

Can the opposition transform this influence into power at the national level? It's not hard, theoretically, to see how the BJP could lose: If a general election is fought the way they were before Modi exploded onto the national political scene in 2014, as an aggregation of lots of state and local contests, then the Hindu nationalists could well see their majority crumble.

For that to happen, however, the Congress-led opposition would have to be a lot more organised. It would need, for example, to be able to position itself as clearly distinct from the BJP on a whole host of economic issues that might attract swing voters who have, for the last two elections, lined up behind Modi. Instead the opposition has largely stuck to welfare promises, only to find that voters largely think that 'Modi's guarantee' of handouts is more reliable than theirs.

Most importantly, the opposition would also have to agree that their own internecine feuds are less important than a shared victory. There's no sign of that happening. 

The opposition alliance — cleverly abbreviated I.N.D.I.A. — is due to meet this week. If it spends more time criticising Congress for its poor showing than it does figuring out how to win next year, the BJP can indeed look forward to another victory.

Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by a special syndication arrangement.