Coalition Rule

India’s Lok Sabha elections in June ended a decade of single-party majority rule for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). With the BJP winning 240 seats, down from the 303 they won in 2019 and short of the 273 needed for an absolute majority, the ruling party must now rely on its regional allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in order to govern. While the elections have been considered a setback for Modi, the BJP still won twice the vote share of its next-largest competitor, the Congress Party. And importantly, Modi’s reelection as prime minister marks only the second time in India’s history in which a ruling party has been elected to a third consecutive term.

Critical questions remain for India’s central government over the next five years. How will the BJP’s new reliance on regional allies shape—or constrict—its political agenda? What is the future of the party’s Hindu nationalist agenda—central to the 2024 campaign, especially after Modi presided over the inauguration of the Ram Temple on the site of a destroyed sixteenth-century mosque? And what will be the impact of a revived national opposition in the Lok Sabha, led by Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party?

We spoke to Rahul Verma to discuss the early days of the new coalition government, and how political developments since the election will shape Indian democracy in the near- and medium-term future. Rahul Verma is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and a Visiting Assistant Professor in political science at Ashoka University. His research explores voting behavior and party politics in India, and his 2018 book, co-authored with Pradeep Chibber, Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India, examines party formation and multi-ethnic politics in India. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

An interview with Rahul Verma

Sanoja bhaumik: It’s been two months since India’s Lok Sabha election, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi must now govern as part of the NDA coalition with other parties. What are the implications of the new NDA coalition for Modi’s government?

rahul verma: The election results were a surprise. Exit polls had predicted a landslide for the BJP-led government. While some gains for Congress were predicted, few expected that they would reach almost 100 seats. It’s important to note that from his time as the Chief Minister of Gujarat to his tenure as the Prime Minister of India, Modi has never run a coalition government. One may call the BJP-led government in 2014 and 2019 an NDA government because there were allies, but those allies did not have a significant bearing on government formation. As the BJP has lost a significant number of seats from 2019 and is now running a coalition, multiple pressure points have emerged, and they will continue to have a bearing on the government. 

First, between 2019 and 2024, it seemed like Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were in total control of the party. They called the shots. But at the same time, to some extent, we are likely to see a much reduced imprint of Modi and Amit Shah—such as in the choice of Chief Ministers, the next BJP party president, among others. I don’t think this would have occurred if the BJP won the majority. 

Second, I think there are going to be some pressure points that will emerge from the larger BJP ideological family. Over two terms, and especially from 2019 to 2024, Prime Minister Modi was able to create a new ideological arc in India’s political landscape. Many of the demands of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-BJP—which has been there for the last seventy-five years—were fulfilled: the abrogation of Article 370 that granted autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, the construction and inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Registry of Citizens (NRC), and a debate on a uniform civil code. But now, we’ve seen RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and certain leaders within the RSS-BJP ideological fold making comments about the BJP becoming overconfident, not listening to workers, and so on. I don’t think anyone in the RSS-BJP questions the ideological commitments of Modi. But I do think there could be disagreements around the concentration of power within the hands of Modi and Shah, and questions around a government that’s largely run by the Prime Minister’s office. 

The third pressure point, of course, is that the NDA coalition needs allies to run the government, and it also needs help outside the alliance to be able to pass any bill in the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Parliament), where the current NDA alliance does not hold a majority. 

Fourth, we’ll see a much more aggressive opposition, both within the House and in civil society, as opposition numbers and strength have increased. This is what we’ve seen in the recent budget session, where the opposition took the government to task on many issues. Before, you didn’t have an official leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. Now that leader is Rahul Gandhi. I also think you’ll see more voices from media and businesses, which were perhaps not as vocal in previous terms.  

However, we must remember that the BJP is the anchor of the new coalition. The party won 240 seats, one of the highest proportions that any coalition anchor has won in the past twenty-five years. The party has insisted on projecting an image of continuity—“business as usual.” They may have lost some seats, but that’s what comes with ten years of incumbency. At the top level, most ministers have remained unchanged from the previous government. There are fewer new faces than expected. Although there were rumors that the BJP would have to give certain key portfolios and positions to allies—like the Lok Sabha speakership—this hasn’t been the case.

This is also not a historical anomaly. Throughout Indian history, it was only Prime Minister Jawarahal Nehru who returned a third consecutive time in 1962. And when you step back and look at the global picture, incumbents are facing serious challenges all around the world. Some aspects of this story are therefore not exclusively reflective of the state of the BJP or its policy history.

Sb: Who are the main actors in the NDA coalition?

rv: In India, you need 273 seats in the Lok Sabha to reach a majority. The BJP has 240, and the two largest allies are the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), led by Chandrababu Naidu from Andhra Pradesh, which has sixteen seats, and the Janata Dal-United, led by Nitish Kumar of Bihar, with twelve seats. There are also smaller parties with one and two seats each, bringing the current NDA tally in the Lok Sabha to 293. In that sense, both Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar are extremely critical to the BJP’s survival as a government.

Both politicians have been in and out of the BJP alliance for the last twenty-five years, even before Narendra Modi came onto the scene as prime minister. Their ability to shift between party alliances also points to their political opportunism and ideological malleability.

Nitish Kumar was earlier part of the Vajpayee-led BJP government between 1998 and 2004. He first quit the BJP-led alliance in 2013, and over the past decade, he has moved in and out of the alliance multiple times. Ideologically, Nitish Kumar is a vocal supporter of caste census—a nationwide survey of household caste status which would have large implications for the nation’s affirmative action and caste-based reservation policies, which in part draw on the last nationwide caste census undertaken during the British Raj in 1931. Kumar conducted a caste census in Bihar, which found that dominant castes comprised only 15.5 percent of the total population, thus intensifying demands for increased reservations for marginalized castes in the state (reservations currently account for approximately 50 percent of government jobs and seats at public universities). The BJP remains non-committal on the issue, as its Hindu nationalist ideology aims to surpass caste divides through a unified Hindu identity. 

Kumar’s Janata Dal-United has been in power since 2005, promoting a vision of “growth with justice” in India’s poorest state. In his first six years in power, he managed to create a very positive image of development and governance. The social base of Kumar’s party comes from lower castes—mostly numerically smaller jatis within the Other Backwards Castes (OBC) and scheduled castes (SC).  His party in its earlier avatar did rely on a substantial chunk of Muslim voters. That no longer seems to be the case, since he is in alliance with the BJP, which has very low support from Muslim voters given the party’s Hindutva ideology. But Kumar does make on-and-off statements posturing on the question of secularism. In fact, he was one of the prime movers of the opposition alliance in 2022 around state assembly elections in 2023. But in December 2023, he decided to walk out of the opposition alliance over some internal differences. The BJP had great results in that month, where they won in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. In Kumar’s own calculation, he might have bet that the BJP was likely to come back to power. 

It’s a similar case with Chandrababu Naidu, who has pursued a pro-development, pro-liberalization, increasingly technocratic government in Andhra Pradesh. Like the Janata Dal-United, the TDP has also moved in and out of the BJP alliance for many years. The TDP was part of the BJP-led government under the Vajpayee regime and allied with Modi in 2014. But in 2018, the TDP walked out of the alliance over the issue of giving special status to Andhra Pradesh, which would entail financial assistance and incentives for development from the Centre following state bifurcation and the loss of Hyderabad to Telangana in 2014. In this election cycle, Naidu had been desperate to forge an alliance with the BJP from August 2023, likely due to the party’s recent electoral successes. Modi, in turn, signaled an alliance with Chandrababu Naidu very late into the campaign season.

The allies may have greater weight and influence in the coalition government than before, but one has to remember that each of these parties came into the BJP fold when the party seemed invincible—the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, especially with the inauguration of the Ram Temple. At this time, it seemed that the BJP would even improve on its 2019 seat share. So the allies walked into the BJP camp knowing the BJP’s ideological position around Hindu nationalism. 

While ideological differences could be used as a pretext for leaving the alliance, I don’t anticipate we will see huge disagreements in this regard from the allies. But I do think we’ll see more concerns voiced from these parties. For example, the Kanwar Yatra religious pilgrimage is taking place in North India, and the government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) passed a law that any eatery on this route would have to display the names of the owners and their religion. Many allies expressed dissatisfaction with this policy, and the Supreme Court later rejected it. These are the types of disagreements that may come up. Some allies like Kumar might voice concerns over the caste census, but at the end of the day, they know what they’ve gotten themselves into when it comes to the NDA coalition. 

Sb: How has the opposition—and in particular the Congress Party, fared after the election?

rv: The Congress Party has experienced a revival in this election. The Congress-Samajwadi party alliance in UP in particular did the maximum damage to the BJP, which had tried and failed to repeat their past performance in the country’s most populous state. 

The opposition effectively pushed back against the BJP’s narrative on development and India’s rising image globally, instead centering their own narrative with questions of unemployment and economic anxiety. They used the BJP’s clarion call of Abki baar 400 paar (“We will get more than 400 seats in the parliament”) to stoke fears about the ruling party’s desire to change the Constitution and take away reservation benefits from lower castes if they received a majority. The opposition was also able to reap the benefits of any anti-incumbency sentiments. 

What happens going forward will depend on the actions that the government takes. How many mistakes will the government make? Will the opposition be able to mobilize people on the ground for these issues? Looking at the past decade wouldn’t give you much confidence about the opposition’s ability to take advantage of the BJP’s mistakes. But I think the last four months paint a very different picture—things have changed significantly since the start of the year. Part of the opposition’s gains were taking advantage of the BJP’s mistakes, their overconfidence which reached a level of hubris. The BJP attempted to cast a sort of psychological domination, saying they would win over 400 seats, indicting opposition leaders with charges of corruption until they joined the BJP, and finally, arresting two sitting chief ministers—Hemant Soren of Jharkhand and Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi. These moves created a sense of unease in an important segment of the population, and the opposition was able to capitalize. 

Sb: The Union Budget for 2024–2025 was released in late July. What are your initial thoughts on the budget proposal? Does it reflect some sort of response to the election results?

rv: I’m not an economist or someone who tracks the budget for a living, but my political reading is that you could see the implications of the 2024 elections in the budget. Firstly, the two allies’ states—Andhra Pradesh and Bihar—received special packages in tens of thousands of crores of rupees. In some ways, the budget is placating these allies, who made some demands to ministries that were not given. Instead, they received a very substantial allocation in the Union Budget to pursue developmental projects in their states, such as the development of Andhra Pradesh’s new capital in Amaravati and road projects in Bihar. 

The budget also demonstrated that within the government, there is a realization that unemployment and economic anxiety are serious issues. As an example, the proposal allocates money for an internship program to equip students for the job market. But overall, there wasn’t a huge shift in favor of welfare schemes—the government hasn’t suddenly become more populist. Budgets are political documents in a certain way, but the government is still projecting the message to industry, business, as well as the larger electorate that not much has changed. The BJP remains fiscally conservative and on the side of fiscal consolidation, with more allocation for capital expenditure. 

In this budget session, we’ve seen several speeches from the Congress Party and other opposition leaders cornering the BJP. Rahul Gandhi spoke about the caste census and bringing in more representation of marginalized groups. Abhishek Banerjee of West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) accused the speaker of being partial towards the government, especially around allegations against opposition leaders. These interventions indicated the nature of the political shift that has followed the 2024 results. The relationship between the Treasury and opposition bench has changed—first because of the size of the opposition contingent, and second because of the renewed confidence in the opposition camp. 

Sb: Over the past decade, and in the past five years in particular, the BJP has faced significant criticism for its authoritarian tendencies. Do you think the coalition government will lead to a shift?   

rv: What we had between 2014 and 2024 was a single-party majority government. That was different from what most of us had seen in our lifetimes from 1989 to 2014, where we had coalition governments. Even if we had a big Congress Party government between 1991–1996 or 2009–2014, these regimes were largely dependent on allies, so they were more “give and take” compared to the BJP. But Modi’s BJP also had a tendency of unilateralism, where those at the top would make decisions and move ahead without a consultative process. There was mutual animosity across the aisle. The opposition doesn’t trust the Treasury, the Treasury doesn’t trust the opposition. Between 2014 and 2024, there was a greater polarization at the top compared to the past, and I think the government should bear the larger blame for this polarization. At the end of the day, it’s their responsibility to run the house. Now, I’m not sure if this will change, but I think the changes will be minor to begin with, especially given that the government has projected the message of “business as usual.”

Nonetheless, politics continues to be dynamic. Every three to six months, the balance of power within the pressure points I highlighted will change. In a few months we’ll have assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Jammu & Kashmir—states which look very difficult for the BJP. If the BJP doesn’t do well, then the perception of power slipping further away from Modi and Shah will become slightly stronger. But if they can turn things around and win more than two states, then the opposite would occur. 

Of course, the balance of power doesn’t only depend on electoral results. It’ll also depend on the reactions to any government scheme or policy measure. If you have a scheme like three Farm laws, stemming from a unilateral decision that spurs anger on the ground, then I’m not sure that the BJP has the political capital to deal with uprisings as they have done in the past, especially between 2019 and 2024. 

Sb: The Ram Temple inauguration back in January was viewed by many as the launch of the BJP campaign. What do you think the election means for the future of the RSS-BJP Hindu nationalist project?

rv: I think there has been a significant shift in India’s political culture. The BJP has seen a setback, but if they continue to lose election after election, then that’s when we’ll see a different trajectory in the BJP’s ideological project, which saw some success over the past ten years. But if the BJP manages to correct course, then you would see another trajectory. This will also depend on how long the coalition government survives. Will they manage to complete a full term? What if the government calls for a snap poll? Will Modi lead the BJP in the next election, or would he step aside? What kind of succession battles will we see within the BJP, and what impression will the RSS have? These all will shape the future of BJP’s ideological project. And let’s remember that the RSS completes one hundred years in 2025—an important marker for their expansion efforts to claim India as a “Hindu rashtra”—a Hindu nation. For them, it is important for the BJP to be in power at that time.

The bigger challenge will not come only from the electoral side, but also from the economic front. I don’t think anyone has easy solutions to the issue of poverty and unemployment. Then we also have challenges on the governance front, especially around regional imbalances in  growth, as well as tensions around “law and order.” There are certain regions where the BJP is weak and the opposition is strong, but the balance of power between the states and center has changed drastically over the last ten years in favor of the central government. 

Finally, the most significant challenge for the BJP is ideological and organizational. They’ve fulfilled some of the demands that have been there for decades. Now, what new version of this project will they put forward, and what traction will it get from the general public? In the past ten years, the party has inducted hundreds of leaders from opposition parties, and many of them may not share BJP’s ideological project. What if they start raising concerns once the party weakens electorally? These are some of the unknowns for the next two to four years. 

Sb: Do you think this moment constitutes some sort of regime change or shift in India’s party system overall?

rv: I am trying to write a paper on the same topic, which is whether 2024 signals the end of India’s fourth party system—characterized by BJP dominance—or not. The short answer is I don’t know, as there are certain things that are not very clear. For one, the BJP in its defeat has become a much bigger tent in India. While their vote shares have declined by 1 percent or so, and while their seats have come down in comparison to 2019 from 303 to 240, even in defeat, the party has been able to reach some sort of threshold of vote shares in southern states where they were not previously present. Even with their defeat in West Bengal, the BJP remains the principal opposition party, and that’s not going to go away. The BJP managed to win Odisha for the first time. In that sense, the BJP has become a pan-India party, and it is twice as large as the Congress party at this moment—Congress has somewhere around 20 percent of the vote share, while the BJP has around 37 percent, and Congress won 99 seats. The BJP is running the government at the center and in many states. The changes that the BJP has brought to the political culture and ideological map over the past decade cannot be whisked away. A new government won’t be able to transform things overnight. 

Some of these changes will be permanent. Even if the BJP continues to lose elections, what happened between 2014 and 2024 will have an afterlife. But if the BJP course corrects and returns to power, even in a coalition, this system gains another lease on life. This will all become clearer in the next two to three years. However, the challenges that await the BJP are enormous. The ground beneath its dominance has been shaken. It would require a new thinking on BJP’s part to turn the rising tide. It would be too early to say that defeat in 2024 suggests the end of the BJP-dominant system, because the imprint laid down in the last ten years will take some time to fade away.