On June 4, India released the results of the 2024 parliamentary elections. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to win a majority on its own. India’s Lok Sabha (“House of the People” — the parliament’s lower house) has 543 seats. Before the elections, the BJP had 303 seats in the Lok Sabha, and Modi set the target as 400 this time around. Instead, the BJP won only 240 Lok Sabha seats, and Modi is in power only thanks to his allies. In fact, the BJP’s allies did better than their big brother in these elections.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 293 seats. This is less than the BJP held alone in the previous Lok Sabha (303) and much less than the alliance as a whole did (353). Clearly, the BJP is now in a weaker position and Modi is not quite as powerful as before. He has been prime minister since 2014 and the undisputed top dog in Indian politics. Now, Modi’s top dog status is under threat.

There are four key reasons why the BJP has fallen short in these elections. First, the party ran a poor campaign which ignored key issues that concerned Indian voters. Second, candidate selection was poor, and the party over-relied on turncoats while ignoring popular local leaders. Third, Modi alienated core voter groups that are traditionally loyal to the BJP. These groups felt taken for granted and sat the election out. Lastly, Modi failed to sufficiently extend the party’s appeal to voter groups traditionally outside of the BJP.

Ultimately, all four factors come back to a first cause: Modi has attempted to run the BJP from the top down. Instead of balancing the concerns of leaders, members and voters in each state, Modi tried to campaign on a national brand that centered on his own personality and achievements. This presidential style played poorly in a party with a strong tradition of internal democracy and grassroots organization. Modi has filled his cabinet with career bureaucrats that only answer to him instead of politicians that have their own followings. Instead of mobilizing all the forces of the BJP — which is still by far the most powerful political force in the country — Modi’s small circle of apparatchiks isolated itself and lost a sense of what voters really wanted.

The last two months have demonstrated that the Modi-led BJP is running out of steam. Opposition leaders such as Indian National Congress (INC) chief Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor and Mahua Moitra have been hammering Modi and the BJP in the Lok Sabha. Because it lacks the votes in parliament, the government has had to withdraw key bills. However, the Modi government has still not learned its lesson and has no clear plan for the future. Furthermore, no feedback loop exists and Modi is increasingly out of touch with the new realities of Indian politics.

The BJP’s campaign was not only poor but also tone-deaf

In 2014 and 2019, the BJP successfully sold a positive message of growth and development that galvanized voters. This year, its messaging got bogged down in identity politics, focusing on irrelevant Hindu–Muslim culture war issues such as which meats people eat and what ornaments women wear on their wedding days. The BJP thus ignored more vital issues like economic distress and mishandled numerous entrance exams, alienating voters.

What issues do matter to Indians? It is an oft-cited law of elections that “it’s the economy, stupid!” The universality of this truth may be fairly doubted. Still, it holds true in most elections, and the 2024 Indian elections were no exception. In the years leading up to the election, India faced several economic setbacks.

In 2016, Modi announced his now-infamous demonetization scheme. The government pulled 500- and 1000-rupee banknotes from circulation. Modi hoped that removing large bills would hamper organized crime and force businesses to conduct exchanges electronically, thus preventing them from avoiding taxes. Instead, the move wreaked havoc on India’s vital informal sector and on small businesses that relied on cash. The scheme may have wiped out as much as 1% of India’s GDP and cost over 1.5 million jobs.

The demonetization fiasco is a great example of the growing out-of-touchness of the Modi administration. Had party leadership consulted more closely with small business leaders, it would have understood how vital the cash economy was for this vital sector. Instead, it arbitrarily rolled out a policy that decimated millions of small businesses around the country.

The Modi government deserves much credit for rolling out the much-needed goods and services tax (GST), which made India an economic union like the EU for the first time after independence in 1947. Yet it is also true that the government implemented the GST suddenly and arbitrarily (on July 1, 2017 — India’s financial year begins on April 1), giving no time for businesses to adapt and causing many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to go bankrupt. As per the World Bank, “the multiple rate structure and an enforcement framework using onerous reporting requirements for businesses place[d] a huge compliance burden on businesses especially SMEs and [had] a negative impact on the economy.”

From 2020, India also struggled through the COVID-19 pandemic. Although India eventually succeeded in inoculating the majority of its population, the vaccine rollout was bumpy. Several nationwide lockdowns froze the economy for a total of 74 days, with additional lockdowns in many states. These lockdowns were arbitrary. Bureaucrats changed conditions every few hours, leading to nightmarish results for citizens and businesses.

Demonetization, GST and COVID shrank the economy. Businesses closed and unemployment soared. For example, the number of unincorporated enterprises fell from 63.3 million in 2016 to 5.03 million by the middle of 2021, only recovering to their previous levels in 2023. That meant over a hundred million lost jobs in that sector alone.

India currently faces an unemployment rate of 8%, and many economists believe the real figure is much higher. India’s population is growing, but the economy is not growing fast enough to employ millions of young people entering the job market every year. Also, growth is increasingly jobless, and fast growth alone may not solve the jobs problem.

In recent history, Indians have looked to the public sector for jobs. Under socialism, these jobs were prized. Although they make up only 5% of the job market, public jobs continue to hold symbolic value for struggling Indians. However, there is an acute lack of openings in the public sector and scarce jobs have resulted in sporadic protests by angry youth.

In an unpopular move, the government made military service temporary. Now, volunteers join for four years and only 25% of them will be retained. If they get wounded or killed, it is unclear whether their families will get pensions or benefits. This scheme has cost the BJP votes among castes and communities with a tradition of military service.

In India, huge numbers of applicants compete for a relatively tiny number of positions. Of course, this is often frustrating, but one can at least content oneself when the selection process is fair. Recently, however, a spate of leaks has compromised the integrity of civil service exams in many states. In February, hundreds of candidates appearing for these entrance exams protested in Lucknow. They had good reason to do so. Exam papers appeared on social media platforms before the government conducted the exams. The Uttar Pradesh (UP) state government was forced to cancel the examination and it has not been the only state to suffer this embarrassment. Between 2015 and 2023, nearly 70 incidents of paper leaks have taken place across India.

The BJP’s campaign neither addressed the exam leaks issue nor provided potential solutions. Indians understand that their young nation is emerging from poverty and that prosperity will not come easily. Yet they need to know that their government is aware of their needs and that it has a plan to address them. Instead, the BJP campaign ignored their concerns and focused on irrelevant culture war issues. Modi fearmongered about the opposition pandering to Muslim vote banks, claiming they intended to give public sector jobs slotted for members of poor Hindu castes away to Muslims. He baited voters with thinly veiled references to Muslims as “infiltrators.” This turned off an electorate that largely rejects religious antipathy and wants progress, not infighting.

In 2014 and 2019, the BJP ran smart campaigns that gave it an advantage over its opponents. It successfully leveraged Modi’s personal charisma, made effective use of social media and commanded a solid party organization. After ten years in power, the party seems to have lost its edge.

Modi’s charisma and his spirited campaigning did little to save candidates whom the party fielded with no consideration to their background and track record, especially in UP. Commentator Sanjeev Singh remarks that the BJP lost 10 to 15 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats simply due to the massive unpopularity of its chosen candidates.

This time around, the opposition used social media more deftly than the BJP. The BJP merrily repeated the slogan “char sau paar” — “400 plus” — to indicate its high hopes for a blowout result. The opposition turned the slogan on its head and stirred voters to action by warning that, if the BJP won more than 400 seats, the party would change the constitution. The BJP top brass tried to reassure voters that they had no plans to do so, but the damage was done.

Finally, the party organization had grown lax compared to previous years. The widespread belief that Modi could win any election and complacency that “400 plus” was inevitable encouraged BJP voters to stay at home.

The BJP sidelined grassroots politicians in favor of bureaucrats and turncoats

The BJP has been a mass-based party that rose as the INC lost its mass base and turned into a dynastic fiefdom. Along with its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP is a cadre-based organization. Neither the RSS nor the BJP was designed to function as a one-man crew. Modi has fostered a personality cult within the BJP, and the party has not organized an internal election since 2014, the year Modi became prime minister. Party members complained that Modi and his number two, Home Minister Amit Shah, kept tight control over candidate selection. The system has ossified from the top down, and talent is not rising through the ranks.

Worse, Modi has surrounded himself with sycophants. Officers of the heaven-born Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) are more powerful than cabinet ministers.

Many ministers are ex-IAS officers like Ashwini Vaishnaw and could not win even a municipal election. Vaishnaw’s shambolic handling of Indian Railways, with tracks deteriorating and accidents increasing as service drops, has been an embarrassment. Vaishnaw has tried and failed to present an image of success by publicizing the premium Vande Bharat lines, which most of the population do not use. Voters sense that ministers like Vaishnaw are shallow social media phenomena and not representatives of a bona fide constituency. They declined to support more of Modi’s flash-in-the-pan, manufactured politicians at the polls. 

Modi even gave tickets to undeserving children of IAS officers like Nripendra Mishra whose son Saket Mishra lost a seat the BJP would have otherwise won. Modi has no children and has a reputation of abstaining from nepotism. However, he has allowed his ministers and bureaucrats to make nepotistic choices. Voters punished the BJP for nepotism.

Nothing just gormint servants touching feet of their "colleague" minister

Just like IPS used to do with Mayawati and Mulayam

Mr Vaishnaw being from urban educated civil services background should have reprimanded the first person who did this https://t.co/hwKshszgFR

— Comrade Muji (Muji ka Parivar) (@mujifren) June 11, 2024

In addition, the BJP has given tickets to turncoats from other parties. Kripashankar Singh went from heading the Mumbai unit of the INC to running for the BJP in Jaunpur, UP. Naturally, he lost the seat. In Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar split a faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), a party founded by his uncle Sharad Pawar, to join the NDA. The NCP contested four seats in Maharashtra and won only one. Voters found these Machiavellian alliances unconvincing because they had no ideological justification.

Meanwhile, the opposition lampooned Modi’s “washing machine” in which corrupt politicians were forgiven in exchange for their loyalty.

Not only did Modi stuff the party with nonentities who do not command the loyalty of the rank-and-file, but he pushed popular local leaders out. Rumor has it that Modi and Shah have been gunning for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is charismatic and popular. Apparently, Adityanath sent a list of 35 candidates to the BJP national leadership, but not one of them got a ticket for any of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats.

As a result, many BJP workers and RSS members refused to campaign, and many loyal BJP supporters declined to vote. Why should they work for spineless turncoats while their own leaders sit on the sidelines?

Modi’s shrinking inner circle is out of touch with up-and-coming talent. Indeed, it feels threatened by young blood. So, instead of making organic promotions from within, Modi and company cobbled together a motley crew of administrators, relatives and turncoats. Needless to say, they inspired nobody.

The BJP alienated core party followers and RSS members

Poor messaging and faulty candidate selection are tactical errors. But the rot runs to the strategic level as well. Simply put, the Modi cabinet has become so out of touch that they have forgotten who actually votes for their party. The end result: the BJP alienated the individuals, castes and movements that form the core of its voter base.

We have already described how the BJP alienated party workers by sidelining local leaders. It bears noting that this was no mere blunder, but a symptom of something deeply wrong within Modi’s approach. Traditionally, the BJP is a grassroots party. In each state, local leaders command the loyalty of sections of the populace that have a long-standing relationship with the party and trust them to promote their interests. The party has a culture of local democracy, unlike the INC, which is always led monarchically by a scion of the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty. Modi attempted to graft a leader-centric style of politics onto the BJP and run it from the top-down. He thought that he could build a platform on national issues and ignore sectional interests. Thus, core constituencies felt ignored. They punished Modi by staying home on election day.

Hindi-speaking forward castes — particularly Brahmins, Rajputs and Banias — make up the backbone of this Hindu nationalist party. These affluent castes support a disproportionate amount of India’s tax burden. (Just 1–2% of India’s population pays income taxes.) Modi’s administration has raised taxes in order to pay for its ambitious infrastructure development projects and welfare schemes. The bureaucrats who make these decisions are not politicians and thus feel no pressure to please their constituents. Forward caste voters thus feel that their loyalty is being punished as Modi robs Peter to pay Paul. They send their children to private schools and make use of private healthcare. Why should they supply Modi with funds and votes in return for nothing?

The Modi administration has alienated Rajputs in particular. This caste was once the warrior aristocracy of central and northern India. Although they number just 12 million, they are a key BJP constituency and have been loyal to the party since its inception. Rajputs resented Modi’s sidelining of Adityanath, who belongs to their caste. To make matters worse, in March, Parshottam Rupala, a member of Modi’s cabinet, gratuitously insulted Rajputs by insinuating that they broke bread with the British colonizers.

Rajputs still retain their old aristocratic disdain for businessmen and look with diffidence upon Modi, Shah and Rupala, who hail from the mercantile, coastal state of Gujarat. They feel no loyalty for a Gujarati party elite that disrespects them and treats them, not as constituents, but as footsoldiers who will vote for whom they are told. So, Rajputs in key BJP stronghold states like Rajasthan, Haryana and above all Uttar Pradesh sat the vote out.

Another key constituency is the RSS. The RSS, whose name translates to National Volunteer Organisation, is the source from which the BJP sprung. This Hindu nationalist organization originally founded the BJP and still largely defines its ideological makeup.

The RSS is a truly popular movement. It boasts millions of members, among whom the most dedicated are the pracharaks, unmarried young men who dedicate their lives to the organization to win hearts and minds by preaching, demonstrating and organizing social relief programs. The RSS distributes food to the poor, help build homes and participate in disaster relief. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they distributed masks and hand soap. These efforts have won them widespread popularity. Often accused of being Hindu fascists — since, at their founding in 1925, they modeled themselves on Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts — the RSS is in many ways more like the Boy Scouts or the Knights of Columbus. They are the BJP’s backbone and spiritual heart.

Notably, the RSS headquarters is not in Delhi but in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The RSS has an independent power base that must be respected but the BJP forgot this  basic point. The Modi administration has distanced itself from the RSS. Jagat Prakash Nadda, Modi’s appointee as BJP president, virtually declared the BJP independent from the RSS in a May 2024 interview. This statement alienated millions of traditional RSS/BJP workers.

Note that Nadda is himself a sycophant with no significant popular base. Once again, one of Modi’s out-of-touch cronies was speaking to the cameras, not to the people. Distancing the party from a controversial right-wing organization may sound good to the Westernized English-speaking press, but it betrayed an utter lack of understanding of the sentiments of the average BJP voter.

Modi had hoped to earn the gratitude of conservative Hindus by constructing the Ram Mandir, a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, UP. In 1992, Hindu rioters destroyed a mosque supposedly built atop a demolished temple during the reign of Mughal Emperor Babur. The temple’s construction was expensive and annoyed residents of the sacred city. Too many people lost their homes and did not get adequate compensation. Modi’s favorite bureaucrat. Nripendra Mishra, the notorious IAS father of the earlier-mentioned Saket Mishra, was in charge of building the Ram temple and did a truly awful job. 

Modi insulted Hindu organizations like the Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal by telling them not to attend the inauguration of the Ram temple. He invited film star Amitabh Bachchan, whose wife is an opposition MP, to the ceremony but ignored Lal Krishna Advani, the prime mover of the temple construction movement and his political godfather. Many traditional BJP voters were disgusted by Modi’s behavior.

The BJP also estranged ideologically friendly parties in various states. In Maharashtra, the BJP’s unnecessary schism with the local Hindi nationalist Shiv Sena cost the party dearly. In Tamil Nadu, the religiously oriented AIADMK is a natural ally and ran as part of the NDA in 2014 and 2019. In 2024, the BJP decided to go it alone. BJP state president Kuppuswamy Annamalai exacerbated the split with antagonistic comments against the AIADMK. The BJP took just 11% of the vote, the AIADMK 20%, and neither won a single seat with the opposition sweeping all 39 constituencies.

Modi forgot to keep main supporters and key allies happy. He acted like the BJP was his personal fiefdom. Modi assumed that party members and workers, Rajputs, Brahmins, Banias, Hindu groups and the RSS would vote for him automatically. In a nutshell, Modi forgot that he was the head of the BJP, not the INC.

The BJP underperformed among poor castes

Modi failed to heed his own party because he was trying to expand beyond his traditional base and attract a wider set of voters — the poor. He thought he could gain a voter base so wide that no particular interest group inside or outside the party would have any sway over him.

Yet Modi was not successful. Of course, some of the poor did vote for him; it is impossible to win an election in India without at least some of the poor. Yet Modi did not win the poor over in nearly the numbers he had hoped. Why?

The most basic reason is that, to attempt to reach out to the poor as a voter base, the BJP attempted to play a game that everyone else was already playing. The BJP’s traditional middle- and upper-class voter base knows why it votes for the BJP. They are invested in the part. But why should the poor vote for the BJP? Modi offers a dole of grain or rice, free cooking gas, new bank accounts, maybe even cash transfers. Who cares if Rahul Gandhi offers even more?

It is true that Modi has built infrastructure at record pace. It is also true that Infrastructure projects are impressive and will pay dividends for decades down the line. Modi’s government presided over unprecedented economic growth. Yet unemployment is still very high. To the unemployed, growth is just a number in the newspaper or, worse, the reason prices are rising.

So, neither welfare nor development have won over the poor. Token reforms do not win elections — especially not when those reforms are paid for by squeezing the traditional party base.

“Is that the thanks I get for feeding you and treating you so well?” complained the Shepherd.

“Do not expect us to join your flock,” replied one of the Wild Goats. “We know how you would treat us later on, if some strangers should come as we did.”

— Aesop

Populism is not a game the BJP was built to win.

For all its Sanatan socialism, the BJP also performed poorly with poor populations, especially Muslims and Dalits. India’s Muslim community is largely poor, and many of them benefited greatly from Modi’s infrastructure development and poverty alleviation projects. Further, Modi banned instant divorce, a deeply unfair traditional practice that allowed Muslim men to abandon their wives simply by uttering the word “divorce” three times. He has made the lives of poor Muslims, especially women, considerably better. Yet he has not reaped political support in return.

Instead, Muslims perceive the Hindu nationalist BJP as anti-Muslim. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which grants a fast track to citizenship only to non-Muslim refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, reinforced this perception. And in the lead-up to the election, Modi did himself no favors. He indulged in rhetoric that made Muslims appear threatening. And of course, though the Ram Mandir affair underwhelmed Hindus, Modi’s construction of a Hindu temple on confiscated mosque grounds infuriated Muslims, who then voted en masse against the BJP.

Modi also lost the sizable Dalit constituency. Prior to Independence, Dalits occupied the lowest rank in India’s caste system, performing menial labor. India’s constitution abolished the caste system and established an affirmative action system wherein Dalits would fill reserved positions in the bureaucracy and educational institutions. The INC circulated a rumor that the BJP planned to do away with these reservations if it got enough seats in parliament to amend the constitution. Dalit voters responded in droves and rejected the BJP.

It did not make sense for the BJP to abandon Dalit reservation. That would have meant political suicide and few, if any, parties would engage in such an act. Yet the rumor stuck. This shows the extent of the disconnect between the BJP and the poorest of the poor.

In Uttar Pradesh, Muslims and Dalits joined together with Yadavs to back the dynastic left-wing Samajwadi Party and the INC. Together, they gained 37 seats. The BJP hemorrhaged 29. Note that Uttar Pradesh is by far India’s most populous state and commands 80 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. It is a miracle that the BJP is still governing without winning in the state. Next time, the party may not be so lucky.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.