Governments are made by the people, meaning there will be either a single party gaining a clear majority, or various parties winning votes. When a large number of votes go to smaller or regional parties, the mainstream political parties engage in inter-party discussions to determine if a majority government is possible. This is what is happening in India this very moment.
Falling short of a majority, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has turned to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to form the next government. It’s now heavily dependent on regional allies, mainly the JD(U) and TDP to secure 272 seats, The BJP has only 240 seats in its kitty.
As for the INDIA bloc, which is made up of the Congress, Samajwadi Party (SP), Trinamool Congress (TMC), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and DMK, among 20 other parties, it has a total number of 232 seats. The Congress on its own has 99 seats, SP has 37, TMC 29, and DMK 22. Like NDA, the INDIA bloc is looking at enticing TDP and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) to hop onboard and form a coalition government at the center.
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Coalition Government 2024: Fall of Dynamic Leader?
The BJP had been expecting to sweep through 400 seats (Ab ki baar, 400 paar), but failed to make much of a ripple. What does this mean for a dynamic leader like Narendra Modi? Will there be a diminish in his popularity? Is this the end of the Modi era?
Modi-led BJP’s promises for a developed nation by 2047 seem to be on shaky ground. Yesterday’s election results also had a negative impact on Indian stocks with the NSE Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex indexes closing at 5.93 percent and 5.74 percent lower, respectively. During the day, it had fallen 8.5 percent, but recovered in the afternoon.
Modi’s rule in the last decade brought strong economic growth across India, the gross domestic product grew by 8.2 percent and GDP per capita has risen to more than $7,500. The country has seen good times and settled as the fifth-largest economy in the world.
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Not an Ordinary Lok Sabha Election Results 2024
Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta says 2024 election was not ordinary election. He said politics itself was at stake. Mehtra said the results pricked the bubbles of Modi’s authority. He asserted that the prime minister had made the election about himself – his performance, his omnipotence and omniscience, and his ideological obsessions.
The analyst highlighted that Modi is not the indomitable vehicle for history, or the deified personification of the people – he is just another politician, cut to size by the people.
Mehta added that the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 results restored a finer balance of power between different political parties, otherwise, India would have once again headed towards uncheckered domination of the BJP.
It will Be Different
Now with a coalition government on the horizon, things are going to be different. Alexandra Hermann, a senior economist at Oxford Economics, says it would be difficult to pass reforms related to land, labor, and capital regulations. However, Gary Tan a portfolio manager at Wellspring Global Investment believes the election result will not affect the longer-term outlook of the India market.
Another regional watcher said the election result would not lead to much shift in policy over the longer term. She pointed out that an NDA with 290 or 310 seats will not make much difference in terms of policy approach.
