Commentary | Roshni Kapur, Opposition space in India: Challenges and prospects
Introduction
The Indian National Congress party finds itself at crossroads following a series of humiliating national and regional elections. Although internal party elections to elect a new leader in October 2022 and the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India March) are good starting points to overcome the worst of the crisis, the Congress Party still has much to do to revamp itself as a credible alternative to the ruling government. On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) landslide victory at the Punjab state assembly elections last year has encouraged the Party to seek a national party status by campaigning hard and preparing the ground for assembly polls in 2023.
This essay explores the opposition space in India including efforts adopted by regional parties to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of their strongholds, along with the challenges they are confronted with. The ruling party’s forays in the political arena has not only altered the party system but also the political system by making it more centralized and less democratic. The first section discusses the gradual decline of the Congress and its recent efforts to revive its fortunes through the internal party elections and Bharat Jodo Yatra. The second section will examine strategies adopted by the ruling BJP party to assume power in some states despite losing elections before discussing which opposition parties are likely to pose a formidable challenge to the BJP at the state level. India’s national and state politics are experiencing dissimilar trends. While the BJP’s dominance on the national level remains unchallenged by any opposition parties, its clout has not transcended into some states.
“The ruling party’s forays in the political arena has not only altered the party system but also the political system by making it more centralized and less democratic.”
Decline of the Congress and recent efforts to make a comeback
The Congress party has a storied history, but is undergoing turmoil following many electoral losses at the national and state levels in the last eight years. It was the dominant player in the Indian political system at one time, arguing that it had a duty to the country’s nation building project lifting the masses out of the mess created during the colonial era. The party’s ownership and dominance of the centrist space was legitimized through its reputation as the ideal party to represent secularism and inclusive politics. However, the centrist space has declined since the early 1980s as religion and caste became increasingly politicized. The Congress was pushed to the margins during the Mandal the Mandir movements. In its place, caste-based parties including the BJP, Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) grabbed the spotlight and made inroads into the former’s vote bank.
The Congress temporarily revived itself during the 2004 General Elections under the combined leadership of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, coupled with populist schemes and the appeal of secularism. But a series of scams, high inflation and high unemployment rate hurt its popularity thereafter. The 2014 General Elections saw the party’s real decline when identity politics and ethnic nationalism became key election themes.
The Congress now displays few signs of reviving, making internal changes, or reflecting why it lost in many national and regional elections in the last eight years. This is despite many within the party urging that efforts need to be undertaken to prevent the party from being marginalized. Many also think the party’s leaders are entitled and slowly becoming irrelevant in a young, dynamic and aspirational India. It is not surprising that key leaders and functionaries have defected from the party or abandoned it for rival political groups. Ghulam Nabi Azad who left the party recently said that experienced leaders have been sidelined in favor of a new batch of inexperienced members currently in charge of key issues.
The party leadership election was a rare occasion where both parties and the public took an interest in the Congress party’s internal affairs. This could be attributed to the Gandhi family’s decision to not contest the elections. It was also a welcome distraction from the party’s series of electoral defeats, internal infighting, and difficulty to retain members. There is now speculation about what the new president’s role would entail, how much authority they would have, and whether or not Kharge would be a proxy of the Gandhi family.
The Congress has continued the country’s tradition of long political marches in the ongoing yatra, which started in Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, and will continue into northern Kashmir in January 2023. Seen as a public relations exercise, the yatra is arguably the party’s biggest, longest, and most ambitious campaign in decades to connect with the masses. Although the yatra is a good starting point, it is uncertain whether it can lift the Congress out of years of political inactivity and stagnation. The party has not done enough in recent years to project itself as a strong opposition or as a credible alternative to protect the country’s secular and democratic values.
Opposition parties operating under one-party system
The 2014 General Elections brought coalition politics to an end at the national level when the BJP won a parliamentary majority and formed a national government on its own. The party managed to make inroads into the vote bank of the Congress in 2014, and five years later it made forays into states where powerful regional actors were governing. The BJP’s electoral victory in 2014 also departed a shift from the secular politics of the Congress Party to the right wing politics of the BJP, as part of a new political orientation promising to liberate a new India from the Congress.
Indian political scientist Rajni Kothari defined a one-party dominant system as “a competitive party system but one in which the competing parts play dissimilar roles and one which consists of parties of pressure and parties of consensus.” While parties of pressure, or opposition parties, are subjected to pressure from their counterparts, parties of consensus consist of those who are part of the ruling consensus, and set the norms and standards in the system. Not only has the BJP’s dominance in the political space continued, but it has also succeeded in widening its territorial footprint in other areas. It The ruling party’s forays in the political arena has not only altered the party system but also the political system by making it more centralized and less democratic.
A study by the Indian Express found that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has increasingly targeted members of opposition parties since 2014. Although the Congress also used the CBI to target opposition parties when it was in power, the agency targeted 72 political leaders including 43 from opposition groups between 2004 and 2014. Since then, the state’s crackdown on opposition party members has gone beyond IT-related cases to placing targets under house arrest to prevent them from leading or getting involved in protest movements. It is telling that charges against opposition members were dropped when they left their respective parties to join the BJP. For instance, investigations were launched against Telugu Desam Party (TDP) minister Y.S. Chowdhary during the 2019 election campaign, but the charges were dropped when he joined the BJP in the same year.
The BJP has also become proficient in masterminding defections since it came to power, even in states where it lost elections. For instance, it engineered the resignation of 16 members of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition in Karnataka, resulting in the collapse of the government there in 2019. The BJP carried out similar maneuvers in Goa in February 2017 by playing the defection card to prevent the Congress from coming to power in the state.
As parties prepare for the 2024 General Elections, most opposition parties find themselves in a crisis and face difficulty mounting a serious challenge to the BJP’s dominance at the national level. The outcome of the assembly elections held in seven states in 2022 provides an assessment of the ruling party’s clout in the country’s political arena. The party swept to victory in all states except Punjab, demonstrating the difficulties that opposition parties are facing in convincing dissatisfied voters to cast their vote for them.
Linguistic-based regional parties are arguably the only remaining options to keep the BJP out of their regional turf. The linguistic autonomy movement in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated the will of the states to reject dominance by the union government. The BJP’s forays in the east have largely been possible by replacing the Left or the Congress rather than making inroads into the space held by regional linguistic parties, such as the Biji Janata Dal (BJD) and Trinamool Congress (TMC). Moreover, the inclusive policies of regional linguistic parties are a stark contrast to the BJP’s divisive rhetoric. The Dravidian politics of the Tamil Nadu and the Left in Kerala are based on egalitarian principles. One-party rule has prompted these regional parties to project themselves as guardians of democracy, civil liberties, and constitutional federalism against the BJP’s Hindu nationalist ideology.
Another exception that has the potential to become a strong player in the centrist space by replacing the Congress is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). This party started its political journey from the streets of the capital and has traditionally received the support of the urban middle class. It captured the public imagination in Delhi through promises to tackle deep-rooted corruption and to implement a model of alternative politics. The AAP’s populist and development-centric model, along with its lack of political baggage, are its key strengths. But they are paradoxically its major weaknesses. The party will need to focus on bigger campaign ideas, including defense and foreign affairs, and not simply grassroots or populist issues. It remains to be seen whether it can replicate similar success in other states of the country, particularly those where caste, religion, and language play key factors.
Strong unity among parties is the most feasible solution to the ongoing political crisis in the opposition. Prior to the West Bengal assembly election in 2021, Mamata Banerjee wrote a letter to 15 top opposition leaders requesting they unite against the BJP and protect the country’s democratic and constitutional system. The AAP, which previously held that most political parties in the country are corrupt, has relaxed its stance on opposition groups and even attended some of their meetings. In November 2022, Banerjee met M. K. Stalin to discuss ways for opposition parties to unite ahead of the 2024 General Elections. However, there is still a lack of consensus on concrete plans of action and strategies to take on the ruling party. Moreover, the minimal unity among opposition parties is motivated by a common resentment against the BJP and its centralizing and dominating tendencies, rather than ideology. Opposition parties need to find ways to reconfigure themselves by learning from past mistakes and incorporating strategies adopted by the regional linguistic parties, including developing strong organizational structures.
Conclusion
There is no robust opposition to the BJP on a national level and the real opposition lies in the states with regional parties. The Congress has already ceded substantial space to its regional counterparts. The BJP’s centralizing tendencies, animosity with some regional actors, and refusal to take their interest and concerns fully into account has resulted in electoral defeats in some states. Even though the Indian political system is biased towards the union government, the states continue to push back against the centralized and unitary system of governance.
The Congress party needs to find ways to extend its appeal beyond its core constituency to mount a comeback. It also needs to strengthen its rank-and-file at the grassroots level and set feasible goals that it can achieve. Rahul Gandhi has said that the party was India’s “default operating system.” While the statement had some merits in the past, this is no longer the case under a political system dominated by the BJP. Despite efforts to revive the party’s fortunes, Indians are not interested in buying what Rahul and other Congress leaders are selling: a return to its past glory. The party’s vain efforts at social integration and to return the country secularism do not have a place in an Indian political environment filled with larger-than-life leaders like Modi. It is evident that language remains the only counter against religion and the politicization of religion. If opposition parties remain complacent and stagnant, the only political groups that will pose a real challenge to the BJP will be regional-linguistic parties or perhaps the AAP. One should also note that the electorate vote differently in national elections versus assembly polls. Hence many regional parties who have dominance over their respective states face challenges in convincing the public to support them during national elections. The ruling government is likely to comfortably occupy the national space except for the Southern and Eastern areas of the country in the medium-to-long term.
Roshni Kapur is an independent researcher based in Singapore. She is the co-editor of the volume, Sustainable Energy Transition in South Asia: Challenges and Opportunities (2019). She has contributed pieces for Observer Research Foundation, Lowy Institute, Middle East Institute and Channel News Asia. Her research area of focus is on transitional justice, conflict resolution, party politics, conflict resolution, identity politics and geopolitics of South Asia.
To cite this essay, please use the entry suggested below:
Roshni Kapur, “Opposition space in India: Challenges and prospects,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, January 11, 2023; https://doi.org/10.52698/CDXK9297.