Will Modi Ask Gyanesh Kumar To Go?

Easing Gyanesh Kumar out would create a hazardous political precedent because forcing out a top official, due to public pressure, projects an image of reactive, defensive governing.
Furthermore, making a high-level official like the CEC to hand in his papers would validate Opposition claims that Constitutional referees have been compromised, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.

In slightly more than two months since Prime Minister Narendra Modi yielded ground to public protests and secured Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation as education minister, he and the Bharatiya Janata Party have been unable to extricate themselves from the compounding political turbulence, it hit in May, when Chief Justice of India Surya Kanta used the cockroach metaphor as a flamethrower.

Unprecedented outrage was triggered by the remark, comparing unemployed youth and activists to 'cockroaches' and 'parasites'.

Students' rage resonated with the youth too, for this tapped into deep-seated anxieties surrounding youth unemployment, exam paper leaks, and near-certain guarantee that the young shall not find suitable employment despite passing out from expensive institutions with glossy degrees.

In almost ten weeks since Modi was forced to give in, more demographic groups reacted similarly, by staging angry protests, even though the issues they picked up were poles apart from what was initialled flagged by the born-in-satire Cockroach Janta Party.

From infrastructural state of schools, to gang rape of young women in government-managed public parks, to the demand for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign, nothing remains beyond the brief of a newly-politicised generation.

A section of the youth and students has so far bypassed traditional Opposition structures. This remains a continuing process and the protestors present a unified, highly meme-able voice to Gen-Z discontent.

Importantly, another section of the same demographic community continues to add to the numbers turning up at the call of Opposition leaders, most importantly Rahul Gandhi.

Modi and his party remain out of depth when evolving counter-strategies with these parallel protests.

In the early days of the 'Pradhan must resign' protest, Modi tried to brazen it out. But when the movement gathered momentum, secured support from the political class and began spreading across the country, Pradhan was asked to quit.

His exit underscored that even the most formidable executive armour could be made to bend by sustained public pressure.

By then however, it was too late and Modi's image of leader who does not succumb to public protest, was tarnished beyond imagination.

He now faces a similar moment with the demand for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation, gradually acquiring the character of a countrywide movement.

Easing Kumar out would create a hazardous political precedent because forcing out a top official, due to public pressure, projects an image of reactive, defensive governing.

Furthermore, making a high-level official like the CEC to hand in his papers would validate Opposition claims that Constitutional referees have been compromised.

In practical terms, it would trigger numerous agitations calling for scrapping various several state elections since 2024.

Contrarily, retaining him will enable the Opposition parties -- now more united than in the past and civic groups like the CJP -- to keep the issue alive and escalate the protest.

Opposition Eyes 2029 Lok Sabha Battle

Such a decision will also enable the Opposition to secure support for its contention that the Election Commission's electoral integrity has been compromised over several years and administrative heavy-handedness has become the norm, at times directed even at dissenting voices from within the poll body.

These may remain doomed to fail, in terms of getting the demands met. However, the process will enable Opposition parties to launch the campaign for the 2029 Lok Sabha, with the call for unity across parties and even with forces like the CJP.

Even though Modi and the BJP face an unprecedented challenge to its political and electoral hegemony, party leaders, especially with Modi at the helm, have successfully woven structural resilience into its political engine.

Despite disagreements with the leadership because the duo at the top have extensively personalised the party, the cadre ensures that the BJP does not fritter away its extraordinary character of being a disciplined electoral organisation, with supervision seeping down to every page of the voters' list.

After having been in office for twelve years, Modi finds himself without his most potent tool -- absolute, unyielding control over the national narrative.

It must be recalled that whatever the political climate, since 2014, the executive possessed an extraordinary ability to set the agenda, frame the terms of debate, and relegate opponents to a position of perpetual reaction.

Now this is being done by the once-disparaged Rahul Gandhi and a couple of political newbies in the CJP.

Paralysis, the word or part of phrase that Modi flung at the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government in 2012-2014, now grips his regime.

From being unable to force the return of fear in the minds of citizens, and inability to insulate the so-called Gen-Z from damaging facts emerging about the bureaucracy, Modi and his aides find themselves navigating a political terrain where its traditional tools of damage control no longer seem to work, like they did in a not-so-distant past.

Yet, the Opposition's tactics and the current handicaps of Modi and his aides, does not ensure that visible civic anger will convert, with certainty, into an organised electoral shift away from the BJP.

For that to happen, the Opposition will require sustained organisational networking at the grassroots, especially in the rural hinterlands across every state.

So far the movement against the government has primarily been an urban phenomenon and this could weaken the opposition's prospects.

Despite that, Modi's inability to give narrative spin to the increasing red lines on its answer sheets, carry the threat of accumulation of negative perception.

From a time when the government did not have to weather widespread protests, it is now trapped in a terrain where frustration is being articulated loud and clear.

Modi Faces Growing Trust Deficit

Modi is India's second PM after Jawaharlal Nehru to navigate a third successive term.

Although reasons and intensity was different, the PM who Modi wishes to outlast -- notice, for instance, his publicists ignoring Nehru's tenure from 1947 to 1952 when propagating that Modi is now 'India's longest-serving elected prime minister', Modi faces the risk of India's public discourse getting inverting when compared to the period from 2014-2024.

The regime is now no longer faced with just the challenge of out-manoeuvering rival political parties within Parliament and outside it.

Instead, it faces the arduous task to regaining the confidence of a generation that is becoming increasing concerned about its future and credentials.

Given this, the modification in the process for enrolling first-time voters in the electoral list, carries the potential of alienating this demographic group.

In time, the government may even succeed in securing Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to appear before the media, along with Gyanesh Kumar with the 'all is well' banner pinioned on their chests.

But that may not restore the Election Commission's badly ravaged neutrality.

Modi has won all elections, whether in Gujarat or at the national level, mainly on the basis of trust that people had on his promises, besides of course his commitment to Hindutva.

But now, he is up against a trust deficit and public scepticism has shifted from ordinary political debates to the foundational institutions of the Republic.

The weeks in the run up to the winter session of Parliament shall determine whether Modi and the BJP are able to conjure counter-measures to citizens' rediscovery of politics of protests.

Failure to do so will hamper preparations for the next parliamentary polls.

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay's latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project. He is also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. His X handle is @NilanjanUdwin

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff