Christophe Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King's India Institute, London, and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He offers valuable insights on South Asian politics, particularly the methods and motivations of the Hindu right in India.
Moment of the strongman
Liberal challenge is to show that coalitions and collegiality are more effective than one-man shows.
After its recent setback in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, the BJP will probably rely even more on what has been its trump card since 2014: Narendra Modi. The party is already arguing that it has at its helm a strong leader whose authority is undisputed, whereas the Congress-led Opposition neither has a strong leader, nor is cohesive enough to govern the country at a time when external threats, including China’s expansionism, are mounting.
Certainly, India’s governance has been affected in a not-so-distant past by unstable coalitions. Between 1989 and 1999, five prime ministers were not necessarily in a position to conduct consistent policy. But things changed with the making of formal coalitions, the NDA and then the UPA, which have resulted in a near bipartisan restructuring of the political system. Even before that, some of the governments which made the most significant reforms were not led by strongmen: Narasimha Rao started one of the most ambitious transformations of India despite the fact that he had no clear majority in Parliament.
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