The swearing in of HD Kumaraswamy as the new chief minister of Karnataka was a ceremony full of symbolism. It marked the revival of regional political alliances in India ahead of the 2019 federal elections, in which prime minister Narendra Modi was the clear front-runner till a few months ago.
But in a model first flaunted by bitter regional rivals Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, a united and desperate opposition has demonstrated that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is not invincible, even in its heartland of northern India. That model was successfully repeated in the aftermath of the hung assembly in Karnataka — and the swiftly forged alliance of the Congress party and the Janata Dal-Secular managed to wrest back power from the two-day old BJP government.
Indian opposition has realised that unity is paramount, but exactly how that will be achieved will widely vary from state to state. The Congress, India’s grand old Party, must accept its role as a secondary facilitator in many states and sacrifice some of its regional strongholds. For Modi, who stormed to power on an unprecedented mandate in 2014, the message from the Indian electorate is clear: focus on agrarian economic reforms, creation of adequate jobs, social uplift and communal harmony should drive the government’s re-election agenda to avoid an electoral upset in 2019. Modi has so far led a corruption-free government, but his party has been widely accused of engineering social violence and indulging in divisive sloganeering. With even the united opposition beset with an equally formidable set of challenges, the 2019 national elections in India will be one of the most hard-fought in recent history.
