BJP AND THE OPPOSITION
Defeats, defections and disorganisation: Why India’s opposition is nearly irrelevant

At Jagannath Temple in Odisha, Amit Shah, BJP’s master strategist, vowed his party would capture every state, “from panchayat to parliament.”

BJP and its allies now control 17 out of India’s 31 state legislatures, together representing more than 60% of the country’s people. Not surprisingly among the opposition, alarms are sounding. Latest bell rang on April 26th, as results emerged from voting in Delhi’s three municipal corporations. The BJP won all with two-thirds majority. AAP, the feisty upstart in Delhi, was left sputtering nonsense.

Mr Modi’s party is tenacious and aggressive. It enjoys unmatched discipline and organising power; but it can also play rough in the contact sport that is Indian politics. It has out-witted Congress to resurrect NDA government in many states like Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Manipur. It has out-muscled the AAP, through scores of lawsuits, police raids and investigations, to send a message to its loud and brazen leadership.

"On many counts, BJP stands apart from the opposition." Though it has built a personality cult around Mr Modi, it is not a party of dynasty. Most of its top leaders have spent long apprenticeships as volunteers with Hindu nationalist groups before entering politics. BJP is different because it believes in something. It wants India to be strong, and to abandon the legacy of secular socialism and embrace a greater national Hindu identity.

All too often India’s opposition parties have scored own-goals, by way of lack of development, bad governance, corruption, minority appeasement, messy defections or simply failing to join forces to stop the juggernaut. Another is the emphasis on personality over principle. This has seen Left parties floundering for relevance once their exalted leader dies.

Some are regarded as mere vote-getting machines that do not stand for anything. Trinamool Congress of West Bengal, ruled with an iron-fist by Mamata Banerjee, is based on an insubstantial mix of populism and Bengali pride. In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, power has alternated between two parties that display very similar ideologies.

Saffron surge: Defeats, defections and disorganisation: Why India’s opposition is nearly irrelevant