HIGHLIGHTS
- 2018 was a mixed bag for the BJP, strong finish by Congress
- Recent poll results ensure 2019 will be a fascinating battle
- Here's your guide to what happened in Indian politics in 2018
No one does politics like India. A teeming parliamentary democracy with enough diversity to make a continent blush? Come on. The rest of the world never stood a chance. 2018 was proof.
Late-night drama, protests by fancy dress and counting day vicissitudes: the year was too jam-packed with political action to fit into the distance you can cover with a few scrolls. But we've managed to break it all into six mini-stories. Add to that some of the best photography from the year, and you have yourself quite the three-minute odyssey. Buckle up. This was 2018 in politics.
Is it finally Rahul Gandhi's moment? Will Jawaharlal Nehru's great-grandson, who's been Congress president for a year now, lead a united opposition into election season? As a prime ministerial candidate? In Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam certainly seems to think so. Others, including parties represented at the event above, aren't showing their cards. A "democratic compulsion" may have caused Chandrababu Naidu to let bygones be bygones and grow pally with the Congress, but even he doesn't agree with Stalin. "Post-elections, we'll decide," Naidu explains. The question remains: Who among the star invitees at Sonia Gandhi's March dinner party will be clinking glasses with Congressmen at, say, a strategy meet two months from now?
One thing's for sure: "Rahul pradhaan mantri," certainly isn't K Chandrashekhar Rao's view. The Telangana chief minister wants regional parties to put a third plate on the election buffet: something new, something that's neither Congress nor BJP (although he's been accused of being the "B-team" of both). "KCR" is meeting such influential satraps as Naveen Patnaik and Mamata Banerjee (who also attended HD Kumaraswamy's oath-taking ceremony). Will a federal front cut into Team Rahul Gandhi's vote?
Before we move on, here's another "victory" pose -- albeit one with a difference. Guess when this was taken.
Unlike the Bengaluru photo-op, where everyone was rejoicing at the BJP's defeat at the hands of an opposition coalition, one of these three men had good reason to sulk in a corner. But at Kamal Nath's swearing-in ceremony, Shivraj Chouhan decided no one was partying without him. If only such bonhomie would translate into bipartisan goodwill in public life.
2. Heartland blue (and blues)
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot of the Congress shaking hands after the declaration of the Rajasthan election result. (Photo: Purushottam Diwakar)
When the BJP steamrollered its rivals in the state election in Uttar Pradesh last year, few would have dared predict what was to happen in three Hindi belt states by the end of the following year. Although it was only in Chhattisgarh that the Congress well and truly trounced the BJP, strong losing performances (in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh) are not enough when you're India's most formidable election-winning machine. Was this just a flash in the pan for the Congress, or will the BJP's blues perdure? The two rivals won an assembly bypoll apiece in Gujarat and Jharkhand this weekend, and the BJP swept mayoral races in Haryana a few days earlier. Neither of these results will change the bigger political map: where there was only saffron, saffron and saffron, there's now a hearty splash of blue.
3. A Hug In The Time of Washouts
YEH DOSTI...?: The bear hug that stunned India on July 20, 2018. (Photos: PTI)
Opposition leaders are rarely compared with teenage movie stars. But Rahul Gandhi, it may safely be said, stepped beyond the bounds of the usual and the ordinary when he surprised Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a bear hug in Parliament. When he was caught winking on camera moments later, the debate raged on social media: Was it better than Priya Prakash Varrier's in Oru Addar Love? (Modi later re-enacted the fluttering of Rahul Gandhi's eye with his fingers.)
Rahul Gandhi's attempt at one-upmanship dominated a day's news coverage (By the way, the government won a trust vote that day. Just saying. That happened too.). But the flavour of the year, as far as Parliament news was concerned, was the washouts. Not that there was anything palatable about these stalemates. Paralysed proceedings, sources said, caused Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu to cancel an Andhra dinner for Rajya Sabha MPs in March. A research body said this year's Budget Session was the least productive since 2000, but its assessment of the Monsoon Session was more heartening: the most productive for the Lok Sabha since 2000. Then the Winter Session came. Could the disruptions have been far behind? Sigh. No.
4. Protest Nation
AAP KI SLUMBER PARTY: From left, Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, Arvind Kejwial and Gopai Rai. What are they doing? Read on to find out. (Photo: Twitter/@munishkindian)
2018 began with a protest. When one person was killed in clashes in Pune on January 1, on the 200th anniversary of the Koregaon Bhima battle, Dalits and Marathas took to the streets across Maharashtra the following day. There have since been protests over just about every issue you can think of: farmers' marches, agitations sparked by the row at the CBI and the Rafale deal, and "Bharat Bandhs" against rising fuel prices and a Supreme Court ruling that diluted the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. In June, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his ministers crashed on Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal's sofa to convince him to meet their demands (see photo).
SEEING RED: Farmers marching towards Delhi's Ramlila Ground during a protest rally demanding a complete waiver of debt and fixed assurances on crop prices, on November 29, 2018. (Photo: Reuters)
Let's not forget the reaction in Kerala to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a ban on women of childbearing age at the Sabarimala temple. It's a rare issue on which the BJP and the Congress find themselves on the same side. Both have protested against the Left Democratic Front government -- which has found it difficult to implement the court's order. Not a single woman from the age group previously banned has been able to enter the Lord Ayyappa shrine.
5. Modi wave 2.0?
A SPRING IN HIS STEP AGAIN SOON?: Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Parliament on December 11, 2018, the first day of the Winter Session. (Photo: Reuters)
Last year Nitish Kumar, chief minister of Bihar, dumped a "mahagathbandhan" in his state to return to the NDA. In recent months it is the BJP, the head of that national coalition, that's getting used to saying farewells. First Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party quit the NDA, frustrated by Andhra Pradesh's long wait for Special Category Status (Ram Madhav, a senior BJP leader, says he did it to hide his own failures in Andhra Pradesh.). Then the BJP said sayonara to the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party in June, and the ruling coalition fell apart. Now, Upendra Khushwaha, chief of the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, has left the NDA for the UPA (Congress et al).
The BJP hasn't exactly breezed through 2018. It was the single largest party in the Karnataka election, but lost out to a post-poll coalition that battled determinedly to form a government. It lost bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, the state with the highest number of Lok Sabha seats, where it won an assembly election a year ago -- handsomely. The opposition's onslaught has been relentless: the Rafale deal, the row within the CBI, the autonomy of the RBI, you name it. And of course, there's also the trio of reverses in the Hindi heartland.
SUCCESS STORY: Modi and BJP president Amit Shah with Biplab Kumar Deb, the chief minister of Tripura. (Photo: PTI)
But it wasn't all bad news. Take the Northeast, for instance, where all seven states are now governed by the BJP or one of its friends (It managed to unseat the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Tripura, where it had just 1.5 per cent of the vote share in the previous assembly election.). And even in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the BJP lost, the margins weren't exactly spectacular. Make no mistake. 2019 will be no cakewalk for the opposition. Expect Team Modi and Shah to come out all guns blazing.
6. Farewell to stalwarts
A STATESMAN FADES INTO LEGEND: India bid farewell to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a beloved three-time prime minister and a renowned orator and poet, in August this year. (Photo: PTI)
Few politicians receive the kind of farewell India gave the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who served three terms as prime minister. He would have been 94 tomorrow, on Christmas Day. "A gentle giant", was how President Ram Nath Kovind described the BJP icon in his tribute. Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked behind his funeral hearse to the Rashtriya Smriti Sthal in Delhi, where he was cremated with full state honours.
TAMIL TILL THE LAST BREATH: MK Stalin, now the chief of the DMK, standing beside the mortal remains of his father Karunanidhi at Rajaji Hall in Chennai. (Photo: Jaison G)
A few days before Vajpayee's death plunged the nation into sorrow, Tamil Nadu lost its "Kalaignar". M Karunanidhi's passing was the end of an era in Dravidian politics; his arch-rival Jayalalithaa died in 2016. The supremos may be gone, but the DMK and the AIADMK still rely on their legacy.
We lost other stalwarts of Indian politics too. Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee died in August. ND Tiwari, who governed both Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand as chief minister, died in October.
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