NEW DELHI, May 22: While a hat-trick by the Narendra Modi government is considered to be the most probable outcome of the current Lok Sabha elections, the American political scientist and global political risk consultant Ian Bremmer on Wednesday predicted that the BJP would win 305 (+/- 10) seats.
Mr Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia Group, a risk and research consulting firm, also said the Indian general election, from a global political perspective, was “the only thing that looks stable and consistent. Everything else (including the United States election due in November) is problematic.”
“… We have an enormous amount of macro-level geopolitical uncertainty and the future of globalisation is not going the way companies want it to. Politics is inserting itself into the global marketplace… wars, US-China relations, and the US election are all a big part of that,” he said. “All of these are not being managed well and these pressures are more negative. In fact, the only thing that looks stable and consistent, politically, is the India election. Everything else looks problematic.”
Asked about his prediction for the Indian election, which is spread across seven phases and began on April 19, Mr Bremmer said Eurasia Group research suggests the BJP will win 295-315 seats.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, bidding for a third consecutive term, won the 2014 election with 282 seats (336 including its NDA partners) and the 2019 with 303 (353 with NDA allies).
The BJP is expected to complete its hat-trick this year although the Congress-led INDIA bloc is seen as mounting a strong challenge. Domestic political analysts believe the 2024 battle could come down to one big factor – can the opposition eat into the BJP’s fanatical voter base in the Hindi heartland? Mr Bremmer, though, stressed that his interest is not in the numbers.
“My interest is that of all the elections in the world (which includes polls in the European Union and, possibly, a national election in the United Kingdom) India, which has the largest democracy, has the smoothest transition. There is not lot of uncertainty about the Indian political system” he declared.
Mr Bremmer also hailed “free and fair, and transparent” Indian electoral process. “Modi is almost certainly going to win a third term on the back of pretty strong economic performance and consistent reform (and) that, in the grand scheme, is a very stabilising message.”
On India’s economic future, Mr Bremmer said, “The world has seen that India has underperformed for decades. India has incredible demographic weight and very strong intellectual capital… so many American CEOs come from India. Yet India, as an economy, underperformed.”
“Now we see growth picking up. We see India becoming the fourth largest economy in the world, likely next year, and the third largest probably by 2028. But we also see India becoming more powerful in terms of defining its friendship with rest of the world.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
