Two years is a long time when it comes to new winds blowing in national politics. Yet, the fact is also that time is running short for the Modi-led central government. It has just two years left before the next parliament elections are called in 2024. When Modi started his innings in 2014, he had said he aimed at two terms in office. The people granted him a second term too with a thumping majority in Parliament to enable him to change the fate of India for the better. The Covid pandemic came as an excuse for the loss of steam for Modi’s performance in his second term. The reality is that India has not changed in any significant way in the two terms of the Modi government.
Questions have begun to be raised about the future course of politics in the run-up to the 2024 general elections. The fact on the ground, now, is that the BJP has grown itself into an unassailable political force, a view reinforced by the results of the five-state assembly polls. Four states went into its kitty with the lone exception of Punjab. The mood is palpably downbeat not just in the Congress but also in the camps of regional chiefs Mamata Banerjee and Chandrashekar Rao, who at different levels were hoping to unseat Modi and grab the gaddi in Delhi. This takes the nation to the question as to the likely complexion of the next central government. A year after 2024, Modi would cross the age bar of 75 he set for BJP leaders to be holding positions in public life. He had prescribed a Margdarshak Mandal for those leaders who crossed this bar, to which were packed off veterans like LK Advani, MM Joshi and Jaswant Singh in 2014. By the same token, a similar fate might await Modi too. This however is not to say that Modi is reaching his political expiry date. He could still bring votes to BJP by loose invocations of the nation’s poor, the way Indira Gandhi courted or fooled such large segments of the population.
It would be premature to hazard a guess as to who could, in the event, fill the PM shoes for the BJP after the 2024 polls. Curiously, in the reckoning in the national capital’s discussion circuits this week is a new name, Yogi Adityanath, who took charge as UP CM for a second term. This is not to ignore the veterans in Modi’s own team, but to stress that the wind could blow in a different direction too.
