Understanding India’s 18th Lok Sabha Election Outcome
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/23210230241294260 |
| Author | Suhas Palshikar |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
Understanding India’s 18th
Lok Sabha Election Outcome
The importance of elections and their outcomes need no repetition. That makes it only natural for Studies
in Indian Politics to devote a special section to the discussion of the outcome of the latest elections. This
is in continuation of similar special sections/sets of articles following the 2014 and 2019 elections to the
Lok Sabha.
In the case of India, parliamentary elections not only produce new governments, but they are often
purported to have given a ‘mandate’ to some party and/or leader. Since the rise of the Narendra Modi-led
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, this idea of the mandate has become all the more glamorous
because of the deep effect leadership had on the outcome and also because of the return of single majority
governments after a gap of three decades (the Congress government elected in 1984 was the last one with
a majority of one party, until in 2014, the BJP achieved that feat). It is another matter that elections in
democracies do not offer a mandate—at least not often. More often, elections only offer different choices,
locally and nationally, to the voters and thus allow the formation of a new government. With the electoral
contest becoming more intense and the campaign showing signs of a more competitive election, the 2024
election was keenly watched for the extent of support the BJP could retain/garner. As it turned out, the
election did prove to be far more competitive than the previous two parliamentary elections. Moreover,
it was certainly not an election that ‘gave a mandate’.
Even then, the 18th parliamentary elections held critical importance for three reasons. First, after
10 years of relative weakness, the Congress party was again making an effort to survive deadly blows
extended by the previous two elections. This was coupled with the efforts to proffer a semblance of an
alternative bloc to take the place of the BJP. This had implications for the party system. Second, the BJP,
the ruling party for the last decade, was making a pitch for expanding its political reach across states and
social sections. It sought to entrench itself as the truly dominant party of India. This too had implications
for the continuation of the ‘second dominant party system’ (Palshikar, 2017) that emerged post-2014. Third,
after Jawaharlal Nehru, for the first time, a prime minister was looking forward to winning a third term
under his leadership in a consecutive third election. In doing so, Narendra Modi did not only want to make
history but to ensure that he continued to be the only leader today to win an election for his party. In other
words, his personal ability to fetch votes against all odds was at stake in the 2024 election. But more than
personal ability and fame, this had relevance to the way people were expected to make choices. The
popularity of Modi meant that limitations of governance would be ignored by the voters and also that ideas
represented by Modi—whether development or Hindutva—would matter more than anything else.
From an entirely different perspective, 2024 was an important moment in India’s democratic politics
because of ongoing discussions about the narrowing of democratic space in the country. These debates
dovetailed with the broader global concerns over the health of democracy and the rise of strongmen as
leaders. On the one hand, the rise of personal leadership as the central factor has been a dominant theme
for many societies. This theme subsumes—is dominated by—the idea that such leadership often tends to
be populist and inclined to employ an authoritarian style to sustain its popularity. On the other hand,
Introduction to the Special Section
Studies in Indian Politics
12(2) 204–207, 2024
© 2024 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23210230241294260
journals.sagepub.com/home/inp
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