India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claims it will stay in power for a long time. India’s Home Minister Amit Shah recently asserted that India will lead the Indian government. next 15 years. In early 2015, he said that for the next 30 years, era of Bharatiya Janata Party.
The party has been in power in Gujarat for over 20 years. He ruled India for more than a decade and won a third consecutive five-year term in June 2024.
Why are you confident that the BJP will remain in power?
The BJP carried out institutional reforms aimed at maintaining power. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi claims that the opposition has institutionalized corruption and that is the reason for the opposition’s struggle. Not against political parties, but against the “entire apparatus” of the Indian state.. He pointed out that elections cannot be fair without a free press, an independent judiciary, and an objective, neutral and transparent electoral commission.
But fraud alone cannot explain the Bharatiya Janata Party’s continued electoral success. There are complex strategies and political narratives that parties use to attract voters.
Opposition parties need to decipher the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political strategy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, backed by its ideological parent organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), appears to be working on a long-term plan.
An indicator of this is Boundary setting process The number of parliamentary districts remains subject to gerrymandering by the ruling party as before. Sighted in Jammu and Kashmir. Other indicators of the BJP’s power grab strategy are: destroy other political parties and establish a government In some states of India and even Election management committee selection process To distort it in favor of the prevailing providence.
The opposition parties do not have a long-term strategy and are taking a purely reactive stance. Nor is it politically agile. It often struggles to provide a counter-narrative to the BJP. The BJP is considering the potential reactions and is ready to weaponize even contrary evidence to its advantage. Opposition parties cannot predict the actions of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
This remains the most important challenge for opposition parties in their fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party.
During the last decade of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s centrist reign, opposition parties have been unable to offer an alternative perspective to the ruling party’s majoritarian policies. Contains independent critiques of each of the BJP’s slogans and campaigns. However, taken together, these critiques do not amount to an alternative social vision.
The movement around the constitution and the need for a caste census is the closest Congress has come to an alternative perspective. However, the party has been ineffective in countering the BJP’s social vision, which is stratified based on micro-dynamics that take into account variations across states.
The opposition Nationalist Congress party, under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, succeeded in launching policies, for example. Campaign to save the Constitution of India and Protect job reservations During the 2024 general election. It brought some benefits.
But the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, wary of such rebuttals, quickly corrected course. I immediately moved on to the next The story of defending the Constitution is appropriate.. Similarly, the idea of offering was quickly adopted. internship as a temporary solution to the growing problem of youth unemployment.
After all, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party that sets the terms of reference for political debate, and the opposition parties have only ad hoc countermeasures.
Consider the fact that the BJP is driving religious minorities to the wall to create religious polarization. But that’s not all. It also adjusts the political options and scenarios that emerge from the situation. Predicting the reactions of religious minorities and factoring them into electoral calculations.
It also paves the way for pro-minority and pro-Dalit parties to represent them and separate them from opposition secular parties. These parties – like Asadudddin Owaisi All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and Prakash Ambedkar. Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi – Inexplicably never joins the opposition coalition, thereby indirectly strengthening the BJP electorally. However, they remain critical of both the Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition parties. The same goes for other Dalit parties. Bahujan Samaj Party. He also claims to maintain equal distance from the Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition forces.
The BJP seems to have anticipated this development. However, the opposition is not so wise in predicting the outcome of its political debates.In fact, opposition political discourse is often exploited by the BJP in unexpected ways.
For example, in the recent Haryana elections; parliament Athletes aim to win on the strength of farmers’ protests, young people who want to join the military are angry about their four-year contracts as Agniveers, and female wrestlers are shaken by allegations of sexual abuse by the former president of the wrestling federation. The BJP cleverly used these protests to polarize voters along caste lines. Jats vs non-Jats. The state’s main opposition party, the Congress Party, failed to understand the nature of this split and its consequences until it was too late. He lost the metropolitan assembly election.
Similarly, the Bharatiya Janata Party stirred up anti-Maratha sentiment in Maharashtra. In the Gujarat elections, it exploited anti-Patel and later anti-Rajput sentiments to win elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party also promotes its opponents and positions them in its political process for electoral advantage. This is almost the same as what it did against the Aam Adami Party (AAP). help create through “India Fighting Corruption” Movement and projecting it as a major rival to weaken Congress. of AAP effectively intervenes in parliamentary votes As is evident in Delhi and Punjab.
Finally, the Bharatiya Janata Party does not allow itself to develop a counter-narrative by constantly carpet-bombing the people with various slogans, policies and campaigns. As soon as one story starts to stall, I move on to the next. In addition to this, it also increases agility when creating. confusion and confusion in parliament It means the opposition cannot offer consistent criticism.
In effect, the Bharatiya Janata Party pre-empts the reactions of the opposition parties, while the opposition parties react only to the actions of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Therefore, it continues to struggle to occupy voters’ mind space.
This ability to set the terms of discourse is what Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have in mind when they say they are here for the long haul.
Originally published under creative commons by 360 information™.
