India election result: What does Modi’s victory mean for the south Asian giant

Analysis: PM has bet his legacy on building India’s economy and developing its infrastructure – but many BJP supporters have other priorities

Modi arrives at the BJP headquarters on Tuesday (AFP/Getty)

“This is the dawn of a new India,” proclaimed jubilant party worker Chandar Triparti as he celebrated an improbable victory for Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s general election on Thursday.

There is a sense here in India that this result, with the BJP winning an even larger majority than it did in the landslide of 2014, gives an unprecedented mandate to an incumbent prime minister to continue and build on the work of his first term.

Voters across the country told The Independent they backed Mr Modi and his achievements so far, and even those with doubts largely said they were willing to give him one last chance.

Mr Modi’s team spent much of Friday thanking world leaders who had congratulated him on his victory, while the man himself started talks on forming a cabinet that will include – but not rely upon – a coalition of allies who together command an extraordinary 350 of the 542 lok sabha (lower house of parliament) seats.

The prime minister also instructed ministries to begin drawing up plans for the first 100 days of the new administration. But in truth these efforts started months ago, according to leaks from officials, as pre-election polls always predicted the BJP would win – just not by such a margin.

Mr Modi has long said his priority is the economic development of India – his most enduring slogan has been “sabka saath, sabka vikas”, meaning “collective efforts, inclusive growth”.

With unemployment at its highest rate in decades, the economy slowing, and major infrastructure like the railways in a sorry state, the BJP knows it needs to be seen to be delivering more if it is to cement its place at the top of Indian politics for many years to come.

After some rogue assembly election results in December rattled the party’s confidence, Mr Modi made some big promises in the hope of winning over any hesitant voters.

They include a pledge to double farmers’ incomes, to make India the world’s third largest economy by 2030 and to spend more than £1.1 trillion – four times the country’s annual budget – on improved infrastructure.

“The programmes Mr Modi has promised in the past, even those seen as successes like Clean India and the provision of cheap cooking gas, have huge shortfalls, and it would be prudent for the government to plug the gaps and see them mature,” said political scientist and author Ajay Mehra, currently working on a book on the prime ministers of India.

Settling for consolidation isn’t in the prime minister’s nature, however. “Modi himself likes to roll out these schemes with fancy names and his image on the poster – then whether they are implemented or not is another matter. They [the BJP] might say that this huge mandate shows the acceptance of the people – whether these programmes have actually reached them or not.”

While Mr Modi might want to focus on the challenge of the economy, that’s not the main reason many of supporters voted for him.

Asked what she wants to see from this second term, BJP Delhi worker Pinkesh Rana said her first priorities were “articles 35A and 370”.

It’s a reference to the rules that give Jammu and Kashmir special status in the constitution, allowing the state to restrict who it allows to become a permanent resident and thereby maintaining its unique demography as the only Muslim-majority state in India.

The BJP has promised to do away with the articles – and this is just one of its social policies that invoke the fervour of its Hindu nationalist base and leave the country’s 180 million Muslims feeling under threat.

Ms Rana’s second priority? “I hope he works in the next five years to build the temple,” she says, meaning the temple to Lord Ram that many Hindus want to see built in Ayodhya on the site where an important mosque was pulled down by right-wing rioters in 1992.

Mr Mehra says the “minuscule” opposition will struggle to stand up for India’s founding secular ideology and stop the BJP pushing its Hindu-first agenda on others.

“They will be able to say that minorities are just that, we are the majority, and what we say goes. So if they say nobody should eat beef, nobody will eat beef. If they say there should be no cow slaughter, then it will be so. And if they say that cities with Muslim names must change, then they will.

“They have been doing this [for five years], and now they will keep doing it with greater assertion.”

And what about that opposition? This election has provided yet another miserable result for the Grand Old Party of Indian politics, the Congress, which has ruled the country for the majority of the years since independence but now seems to be in freefall.

Congress won just 52 seats in Thursday’s results, up only eight on its historic worst-ever performance in 2014 – and that despite supposedly having anti-incumbency sentiment in its favour.

The final blow, it seems, has been the failure of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to secure his home constituency, Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, where the scions of the Nehru-Gandhi family have ruled for generations.

Mr Gandhi offered to resign as party president in the aftermath of the results but looks set to have his offer rejected.

Yet if he stays on, and if efforts continue to promote his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as a successor, then it is difficult to see how the party can shake off its image, hammered home in BJP messaging, of being simply a vehicle to empower one political dynasty.

For while BJP workers say the win was “100 per cent Modi”, behind the figure of one strong leader is a team of well known and well liked politicians all pushing in the same direction.

If Congress cannot rediscover its base of support and establish itself as a party with more credible leaders across the nation than just the Gandhi siblings, then it is difficult to see how the party can offer an effective nationwide opposition going forwards.

The problem with Indian politics is that elections come thick and fast – four states are due to hold their legislative assembly polls later this year. After this trouncing, Congress doesn’t have long to conduct a post mortem and bounce back – if it can do so at all.

“Now is a time for very serious introspection [for Congress],” said Mr Mehra. “I would not write the obituary of the party just yet, for me the idea of the Congress is not yet dead. But it is in very bad shape at the moment.”