Against Despair

The electoral victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is spectacular in terms of both scale and margin. However, one should refrain from offering knee-jerk or extreme reactions to it, as it might preclude serious analysis. In any case, such analysis cannot be done in a haste. It, in fact, needs to be carried out

by the stakeholders in inclusive democracy that demand on their part to take a pause and reflectively look at the election results. However, we come across frenzied jubilation from the supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi/BJP and a considerable degree of despair among the opposition. Considering the advantage of resources that the NDA could utilise for producing the victory, fairness demands we focus our attention on the conditions that seem to have led the opposition to develop a sense of despair. Privileging our attention on the post-election state of the opposition is also important particularly for the normative reason that the robust health of the opposition is so crucially important for the very life of democracy.