When the Opposition Becomes Modi’s Campaign Manager

 

There is a joke waiting to be made about Indian politics: Narendra Modi may not need a better campaign manager than his opponents. 

The Opposition spends its days attacking him. Every speech mentions him, every protest is directed at him, and every political quarrel somehow ends with his name. After a while, one begins to wonder: are they trying to defeat Modi or keep him famous?

There is an old rule in politics: if you keep talking about your opponent, you may accidentally advertise him. The Opposition's problem is not that it attacks Modi. Attack is the Opposition's job. 

Its problem is that it has made Modi the hero of its own political script. If Modi is the answer to every question, the voter may reasonably ask: what is the Opposition's question?

Television studios may treat a shouting match as a political earthquake and social media may declare victory before breakfast. A protest may produce splendid photographs. 

But elections are not conducted in television studios. They are conducted in homes, villages, markets and polling booths, where the Indian voter has the irritating habit of being practical.

He worries about the price of vegetables, school fees, electricity, roads, ration, jobs and whether the money promised by a government actually reaches his bank account. The politician calls it a welfare scheme. The beneficiary calls it money. That distinction matters.

₹1,500 may look like loose change to a television intellectual discussing fiscal policy. To a woman running a household, ₹1,500 arriving every month can mean groceries, school expenses or simply one less worry. 

One may dislike welfare politics or call it freebies, but the voter may politely listen to the economic argument—and then take the money. Politics, unfortunately for political philosophers, is not a university seminar.

The voter does not always vote for the best argument. He votes for what he thinks is good for him. This is where Modi has understood something that the Opposition often forgets: governments acquire legitimacy through accumulated experience. 

A benefit arrives, a service works, a road appears, a problem gets solved. None of this necessarily trends on social media. But it may turn up at the polling booth.

Then there is Rahul Gandhi. The more Rahul Gandhi talks about Modi, the more Modi remains the central character of Indian politics. It is rather like trying to remove a man from the centre of a photograph by repeatedly pointing at him. A challenger should make the election about tomorrow. The Opposition keeps making it about yesterday—and about Modi.

Three questions therefore remain unanswered: Who is the alternative? What is the alternative? Why should anyone trust it? Anger is not an answer. A slogan is not an answer. Parliamentary disruption is certainly not an answer. While the Opposition occupies television screens, the BJP can occupy booths, organise cadres, calculate alliances and count votes.

Politics is partly theatre. Elections are mostly arithmetic. Uttar Pradesh will be the real test. If the BJP has lost ground, the Opposition must do more than point at those losses. It must persuade voters that it can govern better. That is the difficult part.

The Indian voter is also becoming harder to classify. Caste matters. Religion matters. Identity matters. But so do aspiration, welfare and self-interest. A voter can dislike the government and still vote for it. He can dislike a politician and still think the alternative is worse. He can listen to everyone and tell nobody what he intends to do.

That silent voter is the one political commentators most often forget. The Opposition therefore has a problem larger than Modi: it has to imagine a politics in which Modi is no longer the main character. Until then, it risks performing the greatest political service an opponent can perform, keeping the man it wants to defeat at the centre of the stage.