The 2024 LS elections are drawing to a close. Regardless of the eventual outcome which we will know on June 4, the common people of India have already achieved a major victory in these elections. The ruling BJP, flush with funds and equipped with massive propaganda power and administrative backing, has been left bereft of any effective jumla or talking point. A desperate Narendra Modi has gone back to his venomous communal demagoguery, giving a Hindu-Muslim angle to everything under the sun, accusing the opposition of Muslim appeasement and presenting himself as the staunchest champion of Hindu interests. The people and the INDIA coalition on the other hand have stuck to the core agenda of livelihood and liberties of the people and the defence of the constitutional foundation of India's parliamentary democracy.
While the angry farmer symbolises the popular mood in Haryana, Punjab and large parts of Rajasthan and western UP, in Bihar and UP the election discourse is driven by a veritable youth unrest over unemployment. With the brazen Sangh-BJP contempt for India's constitution and the right to reservation and adequate representation of all excluded, oppressed and grossly under-represented sections of Indian society coming to the fore, there is also a noticeable trend of spirited assertion and consolidation of Dalits and other forces of social justice movement across the length and breadth of India. Defying the Modi regime's relentless attempt to turn India into a republic of fear, civil society activists and dissenting voices from diverse spheres of life have unfurled the flag of freedom and constitutional liberties in these elections. By all indications, the elections have turned into a veritable people's movement.
Fifty-seven seats spread over eight states and Union Territories will elect their representatives in the final phase of the elections. This includes all the thirteen seats of Punjab, one of the biggest centres of the farmers' movement alongside Haryana, another thirteen seats from the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh where a veritable storm is brewing against the Modi-Yogi double bulldozer dispensation and eight seats in neighbouring Bihar in the Shahabad-Magadh region which had delivered the strongest verdict against the NDA in the November 2020 Assembly elections. As far as the INDIA coalition is concerned, this final phase could arguably be its strongest showing. A decisive push against the faltering Modi regime and 2024 could well produce another 2004-type outcome, signalling the end of the disastrous Modi era and ushering in an alternative government to restore the constitutional rule of law, save India's composite culture and federal parliamentary framework and strengthen the possibility of saving India's resources from corporate plunder. Let the forces of democracy prevail in these elections and put a brake on the fascist assault.
