Brazil<\/a>, Viktor Orb\u00e1n in Hungary, and Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 in Serbia. It has been similar in Romania, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Yet to call it a trend, in a world with 193 countries, is premature. Also, the right wing lately scored wins in Poland, Chile, Colombia, and Czechia.<\/p>\nStill, India has looked like a prime candidate for change. Our Gen Z movement made news globally, demonstrating the Modi regime\u2019s incompetence, corruption, lies, cruelty, arrogance, partisanship, and plummeting popularity. The opposition has been energised by the student protests. Modi looks frightened and clueless; his macho stunts, like spending Diwali watching para-military personnel dance, are wince-inducing.<\/p>\n
Indian economists say the GDP is around 2.8 per cent, and not the 8.2 per cent that the government trumpets. There are few jobs; foreign investment is unstable; our currency hovers close to 100 per dollar; and all we can see is the dust left behind by China on the highway to prosperity. In an ordinary time, in a normal country with a working constitutional system, all this would point to an electoral drubbing for the regime\u2014it was already reduced to a minority government in 2024.<\/p>\n
However, these are not ordinary times. The Cockroach Janta Party found success with the Education Minister\u2019s resignation, but can it translate the protests into a sustained political presence, as happened in Serbia? Delhi was the epicentre of the protests, but at the Delhi University Students\u2019 Union elections in September, the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad took three of four posts. A big issue was hostel safety (a private hostel collapsed in September), but never discount how the RSS has traditionally had a strong organisation at DU. On the ground, the BJP is better equipped than a moribund Congress that is energised only when it is in power.<\/p>\n
India is not a normal country. Society did not revolt when it saw cops beating its children. Instead, boomers applauded the crackdown. Society allowed the lynchings of Muslims and even marched to support the rapist-killer of eight-year-old Asifa in Kathua, Jammu. Society believes in astrology, rituals, and unscientific mumbo-jumbo like the imagined benefits of cow urine. Society believes in the caste hierarchy\u2014and the upper castes, prompted by the BJP\u2019s dog-whistling, are doubling down against equality by raising the straw man of meritocracy. India is not normal because it has sacrificed growth and individual rights on the altar of electoral communalism.<\/p>\n
The dysfunctional constitutional system is plain to see, ruthlessly corrupted by the regime to perpetuate strongman rule and Hindutva ideology. Rahul Gandhi has proved, with receipts, how State Assembly elections (and, likely, the 2024 parliamentary poll) were rigged by the Election Commission itself. Flaws in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and its attempt to disenfranchise citizens, many of whom are Muslims, did put pressure on the regime; but the Supreme Court came to the rescue. It found no problem with the SIR in Bihar; and now neither has the SIR been withdrawn, nor has poll panel boss Gyanesh Kumar resigned, nor has the issue of wrongful disenfranchisement been resolved. Woe betides any country with a broken Constitution.<\/p>\n
Is the opposition prepared?<\/h3>\n
With these formidable challenges, are the opposition parties up to the task of snatching power from Modi? Rahul Gandhi is a decent fellow. He speaks well and has maintained the consistent secular, socialist ideology spelled out in our Constitution\u2019s preamble. He has earned his spurs and grown into a leader of men, his upward trajectory marked by the successful Bharat Jodo Yatra, undertaken back in 2022. Yet the rest of the opposition seems reluctant to accept him as its leader, even if the voters do (just look at the leaders\u2019 body language).<\/p>\n
One suspects the regional chieftains would in a moment reign like Modi; a current example is Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, adopting strong-arm tactics against opponents. The regional chieftains (including those in the INDIA bloc parties) would, given the chance, each adopt the Modi model in their states and in their local politics.<\/p>\n
The only person who can commandingly bring opposition leaders together is Sonia Gandhi. She has grown old and has been in and out of the hospital, which is why she did not contest the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Freed from active politics, she occasionally writes an incisive column. Her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love,<\/i> is out, and though two extracts published in the past few days are more dry than literary, it will no doubt be a bestseller. (Just the appearance of a large tome will demoralise Modi, who she says always looked away.) Sonia might be busy with book tours, etc., to call the INDIA bloc for one of her famous dinner parties. Unspoken would be her not wanting to undermine Rahul.<\/p>\n
India needs unity in its opposition, for we are still unripe for a revolution, no matter how economically stagnant things remain. All that is on the 2027 agenda is the regime\u2019s palace politics. Maybe Modi will have himself elected as President of India. Amit Shah acts as if he already is Prime Minister, the way the recently promoted Stephen Miller already thinks he is US President. Adityanath is waiting to see whether his State\u2019s Assembly election in April affords him a leap to the top Delhi job.<\/p>\n
No, Indian voters are not assertive like Americans. We are happy to chew the cud. India is not America, for all of America\u2019s faults. India needs Sonia for a political paradigm shift.<\/p>\n
Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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