Half of India’s population will now experience life under a single-party government for the first time. In 1984, the Indian National Congress won more than 400 seats riding on the sympathy wave triggered by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Since then, no party has held a majority on its own in Lok Sabha.
By comfortably sliding past the half-way mark and winning 282 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party has put an end to 25 years of coalition governments. BJP supporters claim its majority will usher an era of decisive rule. “The resounding mandate has given NaMo the necessary elbow room to choose his dream team without being forced into needless compromises,” columnist Swapan Dasgupta said on Twitter.
But it is not merely a simple majority that the Narendra Modi government will command. Its pre-poll allies have pulled in enough numbers for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance to occupy six out of every ten seats in the Lok Sabha – a ‘super majority’ as some have called it, even though less than one-third of voters have backed the BJP and and not more than 40% have voted for the NDA.
The rest of the votes are fragmented between more than a dozen parties. The largest of them, the Indian National Congress, has not even mustered enough seats to be entitled to the formal position of Leader of Opposition. A party must have 54 seats – one-tenth of the strength in Lok Sabha – to qualify for the position, say constitutional experts. Since Independence, six out of 15 Lok Sabhas have not had a Leader of Opposition. The position is not merely ceremonial. The Leader of Opposition serves on several parliamentary panels that participate in policy-making and keep a watch over its implementation. The vacuum in the opposition ranks has led to worries over unfettered power for a Modi government.
As journalist Siddharth Varadrajan points out in this piece, “Taken together, MPs from national parties like Congress, the Left and the Aam Aadmi Party will barely add up to 60. Regional parties like the AIADMK, the TRS and the Biju Janata Dal, which are non-ideological, or the Trinamool Congress, which veers towards populism but is essentially Bengal-centric, are unlikely to show much interest in, let alone challenge, the Modi government on a large number of crucial areas of policymaking.”
So, who will provide the much-needed opposition to a super-majority government led by Modi?
As always, Twitter had some answers.
On a more serious note, for now it appears the political opposition to Modi’s super-majority in the Lok Sabha will emerge from the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP has just 46 of 230 seats. All legislative bills, barring money bills, need to be passed in the Rajya Sabha before they can become law. In addition, the Constitution cannot be amended without a majority vote in the Rajya Sabha. (For matters relating to the election of the President, appointments of judges and relations between Centre and states, ratification is also required from not less than half of the state assemblies). This would limit the BJP's ability to act on some of its controversial promises like abrogating Article 370, which gives a measure of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir.
While the judiciary will be looked upon to provide institutional checks on abuse of power by the executive, the greatest challenge to Modi, however, might come from the court of public opinion. Large numbers of people might have cast their weight behind him, but they could well turn against him if he does not live up to their expectations and fails to deliver the economic miracle that he has promised.
What distinguished the coalition era was not a lack of decisiveness but the ease with which governments could evade responsibility for their decisions. It was always possible for Manmohan Singh to blame recalcitrant allies. The Modi government would have no such exit route.
Counter-intuitive as it may be, the possibility of Modi's failure calls for more and not less vigilance by his critics. Invoking parallels with the Rajiv Gandhi regime, Varadarajan writes, “In December 1984, Rajiv Gandhi won 404 seats barely a month after his Congress party presided over the mass murder of Sikhs in Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro and other north Indian cities. Rajiv was an attractive figure for young voters who embodied the same kind of technocratic promise that Mr Modi does today. The mandate Rajiv received was even more decisive. He ran a government with virtually no checks and balances, and was the darling of the corporate sector. But as his failures mounted, the temptation to create diversions and play the politics of vote-banks proved irresistible. This is the future an India under Modi must avoid at all costs.”
By comfortably sliding past the half-way mark and winning 282 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party has put an end to 25 years of coalition governments. BJP supporters claim its majority will usher an era of decisive rule. “The resounding mandate has given NaMo the necessary elbow room to choose his dream team without being forced into needless compromises,” columnist Swapan Dasgupta said on Twitter.
But it is not merely a simple majority that the Narendra Modi government will command. Its pre-poll allies have pulled in enough numbers for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance to occupy six out of every ten seats in the Lok Sabha – a ‘super majority’ as some have called it, even though less than one-third of voters have backed the BJP and and not more than 40% have voted for the NDA.
The rest of the votes are fragmented between more than a dozen parties. The largest of them, the Indian National Congress, has not even mustered enough seats to be entitled to the formal position of Leader of Opposition. A party must have 54 seats – one-tenth of the strength in Lok Sabha – to qualify for the position, say constitutional experts. Since Independence, six out of 15 Lok Sabhas have not had a Leader of Opposition. The position is not merely ceremonial. The Leader of Opposition serves on several parliamentary panels that participate in policy-making and keep a watch over its implementation. The vacuum in the opposition ranks has led to worries over unfettered power for a Modi government.
As journalist Siddharth Varadrajan points out in this piece, “Taken together, MPs from national parties like Congress, the Left and the Aam Aadmi Party will barely add up to 60. Regional parties like the AIADMK, the TRS and the Biju Janata Dal, which are non-ideological, or the Trinamool Congress, which veers towards populism but is essentially Bengal-centric, are unlikely to show much interest in, let alone challenge, the Modi government on a large number of crucial areas of policymaking.”
So, who will provide the much-needed opposition to a super-majority government led by Modi?
As always, Twitter had some answers.
On a more serious note, for now it appears the political opposition to Modi’s super-majority in the Lok Sabha will emerge from the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP has just 46 of 230 seats. All legislative bills, barring money bills, need to be passed in the Rajya Sabha before they can become law. In addition, the Constitution cannot be amended without a majority vote in the Rajya Sabha. (For matters relating to the election of the President, appointments of judges and relations between Centre and states, ratification is also required from not less than half of the state assemblies). This would limit the BJP's ability to act on some of its controversial promises like abrogating Article 370, which gives a measure of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir.
While the judiciary will be looked upon to provide institutional checks on abuse of power by the executive, the greatest challenge to Modi, however, might come from the court of public opinion. Large numbers of people might have cast their weight behind him, but they could well turn against him if he does not live up to their expectations and fails to deliver the economic miracle that he has promised.
What distinguished the coalition era was not a lack of decisiveness but the ease with which governments could evade responsibility for their decisions. It was always possible for Manmohan Singh to blame recalcitrant allies. The Modi government would have no such exit route.
Counter-intuitive as it may be, the possibility of Modi's failure calls for more and not less vigilance by his critics. Invoking parallels with the Rajiv Gandhi regime, Varadarajan writes, “In December 1984, Rajiv Gandhi won 404 seats barely a month after his Congress party presided over the mass murder of Sikhs in Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro and other north Indian cities. Rajiv was an attractive figure for young voters who embodied the same kind of technocratic promise that Mr Modi does today. The mandate Rajiv received was even more decisive. He ran a government with virtually no checks and balances, and was the darling of the corporate sector. But as his failures mounted, the temptation to create diversions and play the politics of vote-banks proved irresistible. This is the future an India under Modi must avoid at all costs.”
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