The chain of events that have rocked India’s national capital, and indeed the entire nation, show that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has lost its biggest edge—its ability to swiftly read the ground mood and tailor a reaction to it. The outrage on the streets of New Delhi that seems to be spilling over to other parts of the country is a clear reflection of how the BJP—once supremely astute, pragmatic and connected to the ground—now seems to be losing its touch, with hubris and complacency overtaking all else. The party is so drunk on years of power and popularity that it seems to think it is invincible and fully insulated from any public ire.

What started off as relatively low-key youth protests led by an online satire platform, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over the NEET paper leak (a highly competitive nationwide exam for those seeking admission to medical colleges), quickly snowballed into a national headline with activist Sonam Wangchuk joining the cause with an indefinite hunger strike. The situation was further aggravated when Wangchuk was forcibly removed by the government from the protest site and shifted to a hospital.

Things reached a crescendo when a Chalo Sansad protest announced for July 20 witnessed massive crowds running into several thousand—far, far more than anybody had anticipated—and the state reacted with a brutal police crackdown on youth protestors. The image of the police ruthlessly resorting to lathi charge, tear gas shelling and violence against protesting students shook a large section of the country. Visuals of the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi being dragged away unceremoniously by the police while protesting the next day only made matters worse.

The Modi government, however, continued to react with brazenness, refusing to sack Pradhan or to accept real responsibility for all that had transpired. Essentially, the BJP allowed the narrative to slip out of its control, a rare misstep by a party that has since 2014 mastered the art of perception management.

BJP track record

The BJP under PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah has been an election-winning juggernaut, a feat achieved through a bouquet of carefully crafted strategies, a key one being its ability to promptly and accurately read sentiment on the ground and react to it with alacrity and shrewdness.

For example, soon after it first came to power nationally in 2014, the BJP government attempted to dilute the Land Acquisition legislation (which essentially defines how the government can acquire private land for public projects while legally mandating fair compensation) to make it more industry-friendly and less tilted towards farmers and rural landowners. The move, which the government attempted to bulldoze through, invited much criticism from the rural poor, with the Congress campaign of suit boot ki sarkar (a government of the rich) gathering much traction. With its ear to the ground and realising the extent of resistance and resentment against the move, and the danger of being labelled as a ‘pro-rich’ regime, the Modi administration withdrew the decision and quickly dropped it as if it were a hot potato.

No ego. No false sense of complacency. No hubris.

This served it well, with the pivot quickly establishing it as a government of all sections, especially of the poor, and taking the winds out of the Congress campaign’s sails. The BJP has since gone on to win election after election, while the Congress has been in free fall.

The government similarly backtracked on the issue of new contentious farm laws in 2021 after a massive and sustained protest mounted by farmers threatened to damage its image and electoral fortunes. To be sure, the backtracking in this case took much longer, but eventually, it did happen.

Essentially, these examples show how this government has in the past displayed the ability to read the room and tweak its approach in response to public sentiment of a certain scale.

That, however, no longer seems to be the case. Buoyed by 12 years of election wins, including its ability to unseat difficult opponents, Modi’s BJP seems to be drowning in hubris and smugness. Unbridled power hasn’t spared the ruthlessly ambitious and astutely pragmatic Modi-Shah duo either, resulting in a situation where conceit seems to be getting the better of it.

Losing its touch

PM Modi has been a widely and wildly popular leader, and under him, the BJP has seen a sharp rise to near-absolute dominance. But the party and its leaders would do well to remember that it now has 12 years of incumbency behind it, which invariably brings with it some public fatigue, disillusionment, questions and even anger. No political player is insulated from these, not even this BJP.

The current mood among the nation’s youth should greatly worry the party. It has allowed things to escalate purely because its ego and arrogance overtook not just a sense of right and wrong, but also sheer practicality. All it needed to do initially was get the education minister to resign and own accountability for the rot in the education sector. For decades, ministers in the country have resigned over lapses in their sectors, most notably railways ministers after accidents and tragedies.

Modi-Shah, however, thought they could brazen it out and perhaps did not anticipate the scale of youth discomfort. What is happening today is nothing short of an uprising. Neighbouring Nepal’s example should tell the BJP how the youth can be a powerful harbinger of change. The state’s unforgivable violence against protesting youngsters is an image the nation is unlikely to forget or forgive soon. By allowing the matter to balloon to such an extent, the BJP has now boxed itself into a corner since any climbdown would now seem like a war lost to its opponents. And anything else other than full compliance with the demands of protestors will just seem like a cop-out and a case of very little, very late, including the PM’s attempts at outreach.

The youth is genuinely angry. The youth is disenchanted. The youth is seeking accountability. Modi’s BJP would do well not to continue dismissing these protests as manufactured anger or an orchestrated movement. The youth has been among BJP’s most crucial vote bank, lapping up its promise of vikas. But the younger generation that stood by Modi in 2014 and 2019 is no longer young. The youth today is a very new generation that perhaps has barely voted before and on whose mind the image of an unaccountable, intolerant BJP behaving like a tyrant is being imprinted.

PM Modi’s BJP has pushed it too far this time. This is not just a youth movement. This is an uprising.