Who the Prime Minister is would make a significant difference in matters of governance, especially in the mind of the voters.
Scarcely a week from now, the EVMs that are in the custody of the Election Commission will reveal the outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The 2024 Lok Sabha polls is polarized between those who fervently believe in the ability of Narendra Modi to effect transformative change in India and that section of the citizenry who are wanting a repeat of 1977. That year saw an election in which the ruling party was trounced by a political party that was hurriedly formed by Jayaprakash Narayan out of a medley of political parties. Almost all the constituents had a history of opposition to most of the others who merged into what was named as the Janata Party. Indeed, such opposition, now no longer inter-party but intra-party, was visceral, although less than their fear of the return to power of the Congress Party under Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi. If it were not for the southern states, the Congress Party would have been wiped out. Instead, it was exiled to the Opposition benches. During 1977-79, the fiercest critic of the Janata Party was a young bride barely into her 20s who had married into the First Family of the Congress Party. Along with her husband Sanjay, Maneka Gandhi waged a No Holds Barred assault on the Janata Party, in the process bringing out a magazine that provided the most unflattering of stories about the Janata Party and in particular members of the family of Jagjivan Ram. The veteran’s supporters claimed in 1979 that had he been chosen by JP as the Prime Minister of India rather than Morarji Desai, the Janata Party government would never have fallen apart. We will never know, for a powerful leader within the new party, Chaudhury Charan Singh, had made it clear from the beginning that if Jagjivan Ram was made the Prime Minister, he and his followers would exit the Janata Party. Charan Singh’s choice for the premiership was himself, and in course of time, and with a helping hand from Sanjay Gandhi, he succeeded in bringing down the Janata Party government and in briefly taking over as Prime Minister before he himself was toppled by Indira Gandhi. In the Lok Sabha election which followed in 1980, the Congress Party was returned to office, but Indira Gandhi and Maneka soon suffered personal tragedy in the loss of Sanjay in what was described as an accidental air crash involving a trainer single engine aircraft. Sanjay passed on just a few months after the birth of his son Feroze Varun.
After a short while, towards the close of 1980 itself, Indira Gandhi’s elder son Rajiv was initiated into politics from piloting by his mother, and in 1984, after the shock assassination of his mother by her own guards, rode a sympathy tsunami and took over as Prime Minister following a Congress sweep. Given that the Janata Party was stitched together by parties that each had a leader who was certain he would make the best Prime Minister India had had, it was inevitable that it collapsed. When there are a multiplicity of aspiring Prime Ministers within a political formation, even a Prime Minister with the experience of Morarji Desai could not after just a couple of years avoid the fall of the government he headed. Pre-poll alliances are one thing, post-poll alignments quite another.
Spokespersons of the I.N.D.I Alliance say that the issue of who becomes the Prime Minister is of little concern, and that their task is simply to win the polls. In reality, who the Prime Minister is would make a significant difference in matters of governance, especially in the mind of the voters. Since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister’s Office has been the fulcrum of central administration, and it makes a substantial difference in terms of delivery of good governance. Much depends on the direction the PMO under a particular PM takes where policy is concerned, and the speed with which it ensures its implementation. In both UPA I and UPA II, the Supremo of the Congress Party had her hand firmly on the levers of power through members of her party who headed not just the Prime Minister’s Office but the Home Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the External Affairs Ministry. Each of these ministries deals with matters concerning practically all departments of government, and in many cases needs to give consent before a file move to from the stage of suggestion to implementation. If voters decide to elect UPA III in the 2024 polls, it is very unlikely that the Congress Party would have control over all these four crucial ministries. The DMK would certainly be a claimant for at least one of the four, although party supremo Stalin has announced that his choice for the Prime Ministership would be Rahul Gandhi. As for the DMK itself, securing either Home or Finance would be seen by Stalin as both a consolation prize as well as a reward for supporting Rahul in his bid to be the fourth Prime Minister from his family since 1947. Mamata Banerjee may have a different candidate as Prime Minister, a charming Bengali lady with a penchant for slippers and white saris who is presently the Chief Minister of Bengal. As for Akhilesh in UP and Tejashwi in Bihar, they too may not believe that a Cabinet Committee on Security portfolio is beyond what they ought to expect should the INDI Alliance come to power.
In contrast, there is not a scintilla of doubt as to who will be sworn in as the Prime Minister of India in a Modi 3.0 government. It will once again be Narendra Damodardas Modi. Nor that the government will have only BJP ministers in key portfolios, each of whom would enjoy the trust of the Prime Minister in their ability to take on the difficult tasks that would await the government in the coming years. Unlike Rahul, who has never held a job in government, Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat for 15 years and has been the Prime Minister of India for the past 10 years. In a world filled with uncertainty, voters in numbers sufficient to get a substantial majority may decide to place their trust on the certainty of what can be expected from Modi 3.0 on the basis of his record during Modi 1.0 and Modi 2.0 rather than place their bets on an alternative government composed of opposition parties, the leadership of which is yet to be decided upon.