After much anticipation, the Election Commission of India set the ball rolling on the festival of democracy which in recent years has turned increasingly rancorous.
Although Indians are rarely objective when it comes to politics, they would concur that the election for the seventeenth Lok Sabha is a make or break moment for the two leading players – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress President Rahul Gandhi.
Modi often told me from when he was an aspiring satrap, to when I was researching for his biography, that “in politics, there are no full stops except those ordained by destiny.”
Despite apparent triteness of the statement, there was an element of profundity in his observation. It is therefore evident that a defeat for either would not permanently halt their careers.
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Yet, there is no denying that it would nonetheless put a long pause on their onward march. But, while Gandhi has the benefit of age to come out of the setback, Modi has a greater struggle on his hands to make a comeback. This will stem from two reasons.
First, he is not, temperamentally, a Leader of Opposition the way several previous BJP stalwarts were. Modi is an archetypal control-freak and revels in setting the political discourse.
This is not possible from the opposition benches except when the incumbent is on terminal decline. Such occurrences happen only in the later part of the tenure of the governments and not immediately after assuming office.
Second, despite his present iron grip on the Sangh Parivar and its leadership, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates are multi-layered and more prone to internal dissent and hierarchical upheavals when compared with the Congress party.
It may therefore be difficult for Modi and the present RSS leaders to remain pivotal players, in their organisations in the long-run, in the event of a defeat.
The chances of a loss for the Bharatiya Janata Party have, however, greatly receded after the inter-related Pulwama terror attack, the air strikes on the terrorist facility in Balakot, and release of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman. These developments have acted like god-sent opportunities for Modi and benefited his fortunes in two ways.
