More embarrassment than riches. That’s what the 2024 election results have brought for the top echelons of the Bharatiya Janata Party—a narrow face-saving win, a potentially worse fate averted, and plenty to introspect over. An unusual predicament for a party that had been lulled by a decade of unquestioned supremacy, but just about enough to put up a brave front. That allowed images coming out of the prime minister’s residence in New Delhi to exude an air of normalcy and cheer. It was a historic third straight term for Narendra Modi, after all. But among all the smiles, two faces bore visible signs of stress and exhaustion—that of Modi’s ‘Chanakya’, Amit Shah, and party chief J.P. Nadda. They had a series of unending back channel negotiations. Partners, potential friends, anyone who could lend the required stability to Modi 3.0. It may be just the beginning of a long-drawn phase of labour: for the first time in a decade, the BJP doesn’t have a full majority. It will be dependent on external life support.
That calls for softer”—removing, with verbal symbolism, the near-synonymity that had come to develop between his office and his self. Instead, it was the “NDA ”, an entity that has coalition flexibilities inscribed into its very name. That’s just as well. To survive and thrive, Modi 3.0 has to lean on a whole host of hard-playing partners. N. Chandrababu Naidu, the new Andhra Pradesh chief minister, brings 16 parliamentarians. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar brings 12. Even Eknath Shinde, a political creature whose rebirth as Maharashtra CM owes to saffron chess grandmasters, brings seven. Those 35 MPs, added to the BJP’s 240, are what take Modi beyond the majority mark of 272. Making up the rest of the slender buffer of 20—the NDA’s overall tally is 292—are Chirag Paswan’s five MPs, and a string of even smaller parties. If the BJP’s softer coalition-running skills have fallen into amnesia due to long disuse, it may have to relearn them from the playbook of older maestros like A.B. Vajpayee. It will have stern invigilators, at the Centre and in the states.
