WHAT is going on with India’s elections?

India held its general election in stages, since April 11. The last phase – its seventh – took place yesterday.

The primary contest is for the 543 seats of India’s lower house of Parliament – the Lok Sabha.

This is one of the largest democratic exercises in the world, with 900 million voters deciding on a new central government for the 1.3 billion-strong south Asian giant.

The results are expected to be released this Thursday.

Who is running? What is at stake? 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is running for a second term.

A former chief minister of Gujarat state, he came to power in 2014 with the simple but powerful slogan “Ache Din Aayega” (Good Days Will Come).

This resonated with Indian voters angered at the previous scandal-dogged Indian National Congress (Congress) administration, especially in the impoverished northern regions.

As a result, Modi swept to power: the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition that BJP led won 336 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats. BJP itself won 282 seats ­– the first time an Indian party won an outright majority since 1989.

On the opposition side, the only party with nationwide reach is Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of Indira Gandhi. However, the grand old party of India has been progressively weakening across the country and now stands as only one of the many opposition parties, jockeying for power against resurgent regional players. In 2014, Congress didn’t even win enough seats to be chosen as the national opposition and were almost eclipsed by the AIADMK a regional party from Tamil Nadu.

Is Modi a shoo-in for re-election?

Exit polls released yesterday after the last stage of polling indicate that Modi is headed for re-election with a strong mandate. But in the run-up to the polls, Modi’s re-election prospects were arguably dimmed by the triple threat of an economic slowdown, agrarian distress and concerns about rising intolerance and violence against minorities.

His 2014 promise to create 10 million new jobs a year for India’s burgeoning youth population has been unfulfilled. Moreover, a recent study by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) argued that 11 million jobs were lost in 2018 alone.

A controversial leaked government survey allegedly showed that the unemployment rate in India is now at the highest it has been in the past 45 years. The economic doldrums have been largely blamed on the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) imposed by the government and its botched 2016 demonetisation exercise, which took 86.5% of India’s currency out of circulation.

The plight of India’s farmers has also become a major electoral issue. Stagnant grain prices, erratic weather and unresolved systematic problems has led to an alarming number of farmer suicides in a country where more than 50% of the population is employed in agriculture. In 2017, the central government told the Supreme Court that around 12,000 farmers had committed suicide every year since 2013.

BJP’s use of Hindu nationalist rhetoric, meanwhile, has always been controversial. Its leaders, like the monk-turned-Uttar Pradesh (UP) Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, have been accused of using anti-Muslim rhetoric.

What are the battleground states?

The outcome of Indian elections often depends on political calculations and issues at the state level. India’s 29 states are highly diverse linguistically and ethnically.

Five of these states – UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Paschim Banga and Tamil Nadu – send more than 40 MPs each to the Lok Sabha, meaning that winning them will be essential for either side.

The biggest “prize” among them is UP, which sends 80 members to Parliament.

In 2014, BJP was arguably able to win nationally because it made huge gains in UP, taking 71 of the seats up for grabs.

This time however, the BJP is vulnerable there due to the challenge mounted by two major local players – Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). They have formed an alliance and are strong with the crucial Yadav and Dalit (i.e. ex-untouchable) castes in state.

While SP and BSP won more than 40% of the popular vote in UP in the 2014 elections, SP only won only five seats due to India’s first-past-the-post electoral system and their lack of an alliance. This time, some pundits expect the SP-BSP alliance to win at least half of the 80 seats on offer, if not more.

BJP’s prospects look equally slim in the economically-dynamic south of the country, where here too, powerful regional parties are challenging its grip on power.

In the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the regional-based YSR Congress Party and the Telangana Rashtriya Samithi are expected to sweep the polls. Both have openly said they prefer “a third front” government that does not involve either BJP or Congress.

In India’s southernmost state and its automotive hub, Tamil Nadu, the socialist, Tamil nationalist Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(DMK) party seems on the cusp of major gains due to anger at the BJP central government and its local ally, the AIADMK.

BJP is also at risk of shedding seats in the central and western states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where Congress made gains in during recent state elections.

BJP is however expected to make nominal gains in eastern India, in states such as Odisha, Paschim Banga and the seven states of India’s northeast.

A major voter concern in those areas include alleged illegal migration from Bangladesh; BJP is running a communally charged campaign, playing up on local fears of Muslim refugees, to capitalise on this.

What will all this mean in India?

Assuming BJP loses ground to the regional parties, and Congress retains its meagre base, India might find itself with a virtually hung Parliament.

For instance, BJP and its NDA coalition might still be the largest bloc in the Lok Sabha, but still short of a majority.

Regional parties have also been demonstrating unprecedented solidarity with each other, such as joint rallies of all the big leaders of opposition, encouraging the possibility of a third-front (non-Congress, non-BJP) government.  

So, while the results are far from certain, 2019 might herald a return to a form of politics India knows best: the proliferation of regional powerbrokers and complex coalition governments. – May 20, 2019.

* Abhay Regi is a researcher at KRA Group. He reads The Malaysian Insight.