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BJP’s West Bengal win doesn’t mean 2029 Lok Sabha election is in the bag

If elections change so many state governments – West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu – it means that India’s electoral democracy remains quite vigorous. Government turnovers are the best antidote to the idea of electoral autocracies.

It is important to avoid easy generalisations, however tempting such generalisations may be. The BJP’s victory in West Bengal, undoubtedly hugely significant, does not imply that the 2029 Lok Sabha elections already have a foregone conclusion. 

Seven Assembly elections are coming up in 2027, including Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Punjab. If the latest round of polls provides some political learning, it is more likely to be applicable to state elections next year than to national elections in 2029. State elections are not national elections, and possibilities and proclivities are not certitudes.

So what have we learned? Let me present four analytic scenarios.

Good news for democracy

First, the recent Assembly polls again show that India is not an “electoral autocracy”.  That is what V-Dem reports, the most widely read annual assessments of democracy worldwide, have said for several years. If elections change so many state governments – three out of four in the latest round – then it must be concluded that India’s electoral democracy remains quite vigorous. Government turnovers are the best antidote to the idea of electoral autocracies. 

But India’s democracy may not continue that way if the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal becomes a template for elections in the coming months and years. By disproportionately excluding Muslims, whose vote for the BJP has generally hovered around 8 per cent since 2014, SIR in Bengal sought to control electoral competition by “tilting the electoral field”, or what is called “voter suppression” in US politics. This is roughly how Republican governments in American states “gerrymander”, making Black people, who rarely vote over 10 per cent for Republican........

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