‘Modi & India’: Upcoming book analyses 2024 general elections

PTI, Oct 15, 2023, 12:22 PM IST

Will the 2024 election be as consequential for the BJP and India as 2014 was? or Is the I.N.D.I.A bloc going to upset the Narendra Modi juggernaut in the 2024 general election? These are some of the questions that the upcoming book, ”Modi & India: 2024 and the Battle for Bharat”, seeks to answer.

The book, written by journalist-author Rahul Shivshankar and Siddhartha Talya, and published by Penguin Random House India (PRHI), is scheduled to release on November 6.

In 2014, the BJP, under the leadership of Modi, won a clear majority in the Lok Sabha elections. The National Democratic Alliance’s triumph ended a nearly two-and-a-half-decade run of mostly coalition governments.

In 2019, the BJP further improved its tally, cementing its parliamentary majority and its ability to ring in transformational laws and policies.

According to the authors, most of the initiatives taken by the Modi-led NDA have been aimed at positioning Bharat as a ‘Vishwa Guru’ — an exemplar of moral righteousness, a pluralistic democracy led by dharma.

However, they noted that this shift towards India’s Hindu ethos has prompted the Opposition and many allied commentators to fear the rise of a second republic — a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ — moored to an implacable ”ultra-nationalist and majoritarian dogma”.

In this scenario, will Modi get a third term in 2024 and foreground the rise of civilizational Bharat? is what the book claims to find out in its analysis.

”Our book is an intensely researched answer to the most pressing questions surrounding the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The foremost among them being: Are the I.N.D.I.A bloc’s apprehensions around Modi’s reclamation of a Hindu Bharat misplaced? And whether Modi’s alternative Idea of Bharat is constitutionally justifiable?” Shivshankar said in a statement.

Touted to be evocative, anecdotal, argumentative and deeply researched, as per the publishers, the upcoming book chronicles ”the emergence of, and the battle for, a new republic in the making”.

The book, priced at Rs 699, will be soon available for pre-order online.