India’s election, the world’s largest democratic exercise, may have delivered a stunning surprise by denying Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party an outright majority in parliament, but this setback is unlikely to affect the stability or direction of his third-term government.
The primary reason is that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, contested the election in alliance with several small political groups, with the coalition winning a majority of seats in parliament’s ruling lower house.
Still, the BJP’s loss of its commanding majority in the lower house represents a blow to Modi’s political standing, including puncturing his air of invincibility. After stacking up political win after win, an overconfident Modi had predicted even before the campaign formally began that the BJP would secure more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house.
The BJP’s failure to win a simple majority on its own, however, is unlikely to have a direct bearing on Modi’s national agenda or foreign policy. The allied parties Modi will depend on are provincial groups with no national vision or ideas.
Moreover, while the fragmented opposition may have unified to stop Modi’s juggernaut in the election, it lacks a common agenda or leader, which raises the question of whether its unity will endure. In fact, the combined number of seats won by the multiple parties in the opposition coalition is slightly less than what the BJP secured on its own.
Modi, 73, is entering a second decade as prime minister, despite a strong anti-incumbency sentiment in Indian society. Only one other Indian leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, secured........