The Importance of Opposition
Rohan Rajesh
Recently, India held provincial elections in a number of states, the biggest prize among which was Uttar Pradesh (UP), the most populous state in the country with more than 200 million people. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government gained a decisive victory, single-handedly bagging 255 seats out of 403, more than enough to form a government on its own while increasing its popular vote share from 39% to 41%. The Grand Old Party of India, the Indian National Congress (INC), faced an electoral drubbing, winning just two seats. In recent elections, the principal opposition parties to the BJP have been regional parties. With the collapse of the communists, there are only two major parties with a national focus in the opposition ranks - the INC and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The INC and the AAP control the chief ministership (the Indian equivalent of a US Governor) in just two states each. In the powerful lower house of the Indian Parliament, the opposition is in such a state of disarray that, since 2014, no opposition party has gained enough seats (10%) to even have a Leader of the Opposition.
This state of affairs is concerning for the state of Indian democracy, regardless of the ruling party, as it would be for any democracy. India started off without any opposition from the formation of the republic in 1950 well into the 1970s. Then, the INC dominated the national government. Jawaharlal Nehru’s mass-popularity aided the INC in gaining crushing victories. Nehru was a visionary who largely focused on building up the country’s institutions to secure its democracy. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, however, was a different story. She too was wildly popular but was always in a more precarious position because of her differences with the old party leadership. Her embrace of socialism alienated many constituents who began flocking to the opposition, and her policy goals were stymied by the country’s institutions, most notably the Supreme Court. She then went on a campaign to gut any institution that stood in her way, including the courts and the internal democratic processes of her own party, to build a cult of personality that would allow her to retain power. After another decisive victory in 1971, however, the Allahabad High Court invalidated Indira Gandhi’s individual election victory in her district on the grounds of electoral malpractices, leading to her declaring an Emergency. That period, when Indira Gandhi essentially ruled by fiat and crushed institutional and political opposition, was the darkest moment for Indian democracy.
Eventually, effective opposition did come, first in the Janata Party and then in the BJP. For a period between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, control of parliament flipped between the BJP-led and the INC-led coalitions. While not everything was perfect, such effective opposition ensured that both parties moderated their stances on socioeconomic issues. India was less polarized and the economy grew at such a rate that many analysts figured India would follow the same route as China. Since 2014, (for a variety of reasons including endemic corruption and nepotism) the opposition has collapsed. This has also coincided with increased polarization and reduced pre-COVID economic growth. While one would think that the INC’s constant electoral losses since 2014 would have inspired some change within the party, disappointingly, the INC has reverted to its old sycophantic patterns for the increasingly unpopular Gandhi family. The only hope for effective opposition in India will have to come after the 2024 elections.