Elections 2024

The Loksabha elections in India culminated and the results took everyone by surprise. The BJP led by the one and only Mr. Narendra Modi had set a target of 370 seats for his own party and 400+ for his coalition. The exit polls predicted that Mr. Modi and his coalition will more or less reach close to the numbers that they had targeted.

When the results were declared on the 4th of June, Mr. Modi's party did not even reach the majority seats of 273. The BJP managed only 240 seats and the coalition ended up with 293 a little above the majority. The INDI Alliance managed to prove everyone wrong. The Indian National Congress ended up with 99 seats and the alliance 200+ seats.

Mr. Modi had to keep up a good bravado to face his party workers during the "victory" meet. Definitely there would have been an introspection within the party about the state in which they find themselves.

Here are some reasons and suggestions for them to ponder over

1. The Ram Mandir was the biggest bet that BJP was going on. But looks like it did not get them the seats they wanted. This shows that the common citizen is more interested in earning a livelihood than visiting temples. There is a only a small set of people who, if at all, are interested in the Mandirs that BJP promises. The consequence would be that Kashi and Mathura will go to the back burner. It is unlikely that more temples will be unearthed.
2. The attack on Muslims during his speeches are unlikely to have gone down well with the common citizen. The common citizen has now quarrel with the Muslims as such. There is definitely an undercurrent and suppressed feeling of major differences with the Muslims among the Hindus (which is rarely highlighted by the local media) and vice versa (which is never highlighted by the foreign media). Attacking the Muslims openly and brazenly will only end up with loss in votes and seats.
3. The usage of Hindi everywhere will definitely alienate the South of India renaming laws, ranks of military in Hindi or Sanskritised words will not win votes except, if at all in the
   
4. Renaming of places to remove any trace of the Mughals and other are things that will appeal to only a few and not the entire population. The worst was trying to rename India to Bharat. It is already called Bharat in many contexts
   
5. Nationalism was lacking in India, but taking nationalism to the extreme is not going to take anyone anywhere. Extreme nationalism is harmful, linking everything to nationalism or anti-nationalism will make things worse.
   

In short BJP proved the cliche "Pride comes before a fall". All the good work done to boost India's image, all the good work to upgrade railway trains, all the "revdis", even when blaming the opposition for the same fault, (some revdis were necessary) all went down the drain.

There are many thing that needs to change in the approach and strategy of BJP if they wish to win the next elections. They need to tone down many of their rhetoric. Hope they realise their mistakes and change in the right direction it will help India and its citizens.