As India continues to get back to normalcy, slowly definitely, but hopefully, steadily in the coming months, Saturday marked one year when news channels across India flashed the most important news in a while.
There was a lot of talk prior to this day, but on the 23rd of May 2019, it became clear that the National Defence Alliance (NDA) and it’s most popular party-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)- was to be elected for a second term and its most popular face- Narendra Modi- would have another five years at the helm as India’s Prime Minister.
The victory in the general elections was bigger than 2014, affirming that despite the emergence of other leaders in the five years the public continued to trust Modi.
The political observer would say with utmost frankness that the months leading up to the elections played a key role when India reverted back to the attacks in Pulwama in early February but many months prior to that were filled with a mixture of positivity and negativity owing to the decisions made by the government.
The second term came with a renewed set of challenges for Modi and co. but sitting here 12 months on, nobody could have expected the present scenario and how the economy has seen changes like never before.
But the corona virus hasn’t been the only major cause of worry. Before that, the controversial CAA ruling crated an uproar in India. This succeeded the revoking of section 370 in Jammu & Kashmir.
Now, term one under Modi saw similar such incidents but in the middle phase- one was demonisation in November 2016 and the other was the passing of the GST bill in June 2017.
The latter’s effects have been felt with passing time but the former had a big impact on the common man, with lines ranging from medium to colossal but never small outside ATMs.
The interesting part is in both cases, the decisions have come in short space of time. So the impact was a bit difficult to measure in the short term.
In seven state elections post the general elections, the BJP won one and formed a coalition with two others. But the intriguing part is that in areas where they were not in power before elections they could only come to power in one state- in Sikkim where they formed a coalition with the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha.
There is no clarity over how state elections will be held for the remainder of 2020 but what can said if the BJP find a way to sort out the pandemic issue in states that are slated to go to poll then you could see their chances rising there.
States that are not under the control of the BJP have been praiseworthy of the central government’s efforts to ensure India’s numbers did not go beyond where they are now, but now that the larger control is in the hands of the states, their role in ensuring that the centre remains in power could take precedence.
Largely, it’s been a 12 months to forget for Modi and co. Hopefully the next 48 prove to be different.
