Why India’s ‘last hope against dictatorship’ is falling apart

The Indian National Congress, the party of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru that has led independent India for most of the seven-and-a-half decades since it won its freedom from British colonialism, has a dire warning for the country’s upcoming general election: if Narendra Modi wins a rare third term in power, India will devolve into a “dictatorship”.

“This will be the last opportunity for the people to save democracy in India. If Narendra Modi wins another election, there will be a dictatorship in the country. The BJP will rule India like (Vladimir) Putin in Russia,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said earlier this week in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar in Odisha.

The problem for Kharge and Congress as a whole is that internal divisions within the party’s opposition alliance – dubbed INDIA – seem to be making more headlines than any concerned statements about the direction of the country under Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP.

When the INDIA bloc was formed out of an unprecedented agreement of 26 disparate regional and national opposition parties in July last year, it was heralded by Kharge as a movement that would “save the country” despite differences of opinion that existed between members.

Yet those “differences” have turned into major faultlines and the alliance is crumbling. Last week one of its best-known figures, the chief minister of Bihar state Nitish Kumar, dramatically abandoned the project and took his regionally powerful Janata Dal (United) party over to the BJP and its own axis, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Losing a household name like Kumar comes as only the latest dent to the INDIA group’s election chances, and even Congress’s own general secretary Jairam Ramesh admitted his exit “doesn’t look nice”.

“The situation could be better … The optics … people are watching. News is coming in that one party is leaving and that it will form a government with the BJP, and that another party is unhappy with us … it doesn’t look nice. It’s not good for INDIA’s image,” says Ramesh.

Hours after leaving the INDIA bloc, Kumar retook his oath as the chief minister of Bihar – this time in alliance with the BJP. And he and his party have immediately aired recriminations about the bloc they have just left.

Kumar told reporters after leaving the bloc: “The situation was not good. So, we have broken ties. I was doing a lot of work. I was trying to form an alliance but nothing was being done on it...”

JD(U) spokesperson KC Tyagi told the Indian Express: “The attitude of the Congress from day one had not been very positive… They wanted to finish all of us non-Congress parties as part of a conspiracy.”

The exit of yet another ally from INDIA has taken the “wind out of the opposition’s sails”, according to Manisha Priyam, a political analyst. She tells The Independent: “It is certainly a blow to the opposition unity.”

Kumar’s exit might be the biggest hit so far to INDIA, but it is by no means the first. Last month another regional leader with nationwide name recognition value – West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee – declared her party would contest the elections alone after failing to agree a seat-sharing deal within the alliance.

Abhishek Banerjee, a nephew of the chief minister and senior politician within her Trinamool Congress (TMC), said the party “had been repeatedly asking the Congress to talk on seat-sharing from the month of June ... It has been seven months. Nothing has happened.”

He adds: “In last meeting, our chairperson (Mamata Banerjee) gave a deadline of 31st December. Now it’s 29th of January. And its still wavering in my mind that which seat I should contest from and which seat my alliance party will contest from.”

Mamata Banerjee cited as the final nail in the coffin of her association with the alliance a grand east-west march by Congress’s Rahul Gandhi – son of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi – across the breadth of the country. The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Uniting India Through Justice march) followed a similar initiative last year when Gandhi walked the length of the country from south to north.

Yet the unity march has only highlighted disunity within Gandhi’s own alliance: both Kumar and Bannerjee have expressed discontent at not being consulted about the route of the march traversing their states.

As Congress continues to attempt damage control, the BJP is enjoying the chaos. Regional parties, including Kumar’s JD(U) and Banerjee’s TMC, accuse the Congress of being inflexible and demanding a disproportionate number of seats in states where these parties are stronger. In Punjab, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has expressed reluctance to ally with Congress and the INDIA alliance.

Priyam says the opposition bloc right now is “agenda-less” and without important politicians like Kumar, who was from the “socialist ilk” and “who has been a credible chief minister of one of the poorest states in India”, the bloc’s “momentum has slowed down”.

She says Kumar was the “original architect” of the idea of a broad opposition alliance.

Ever since the Congress party suffered defeats in three significant state elections in the populous Hindi heartlands of northern India last year, the opposition alliance has been showing signs of strain. Experts say that these losses diminished the Congress’s position as the leader of the opposition and hindered its attempts to negotiate seat-sharing arrangements with key regional parties, including those led by Kumar.

Another concern for INDIA is that Kumar’s exit could spur similar moves by other regional parties that are part of the alliance right now.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh surprised the Congress by announcing candidates for 16 Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) seats in the state, just days after revealing a seat-sharing deal that allocated 11 seats to Congress. This move, seen as a pressure tactic by the SP, has led to tensions between the two parties, with Congress accusing the SP of unilateral decisions that could harm their collective efforts against the BJP.

The SP has defended its early candidate announcement as necessary for election preparations, while still indicating openness to seat-sharing discussions with Congress.

In a separate incident, several members of the National Conference, a party within the INDIA bloc, recently defected to the BJP in Jammu, northern India.

When INDIA was formed last year, Modi already looked a strong favourite to secure a rare third term as prime minister in the elections due by May, despite grumbling concerns around high levels of unemployment and fuel prices. Now, with the opposition cracking and the country riding a wave of Hindu nationalism after the consecration of the long-promised temple to Lord Ram in Ayodhya, observers say it would take a miracle for INDIA to bounce back and mount a realistic challenge after the latest setbacks.