Tavleen Singh writes: My wish for 2026 is that we somehow manage to get an Opposition party

My wish for 2026 is that we somehow manage to get an Opposition party that will put the Modi government on the mat for its many failures on many, many fronts.(Illustration: C R Sasikumar)

The defining political image for me of the year just ended is Narendra Modi striding into BJP headquarters after the Bihar victory, smiling triumphantly and waving a Bihari scarf over his head. What struck me was how much his body language had changed. Gone was the humility we saw after he failed to win a full majority in the Lok Sabha election in 2024. He had boasted of winning more than 400 seats and ended up without a simple majority. He managed to become Prime Minister for a third time, only with the help of allies. He appeared to sense that India’s voters had sent him a message. They had. They saw him as a better man to lead India than Rahul Gandhi, but seemed to warn that the autocratic tendencies he showed in his first two terms was something they did not approve of. There was even an unsubtle dressing down from the head of the RSS.

So, Modi seemed to become a new, humbler man. Now the old Modi is back, with knobs on. For this, he has Rahul Gandhi to thank. After he was able to win enough seats for the Congress party to become Leader of the Opposition, there was a moment when it seemed that India would finally have an Opposition in Parliament that would act as a check on the government’s power and enable parliamentary democracy to function as it should. It did not take long for that moment to turn into an illusion. The Congress party had a chance to rebuild its broken organisational infrastructure and emerge as a strong Opposition party, but it was a chance not taken. It remains a collection of courtiers and sycophants bowing and scraping at the feet of the Dynasty.

The BJP, for its part, did some necessary course correction after the Lok Sabha near defeat and went on to win Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra and Bihar. After losing spectacularly in these major state elections, the courtiers in Delhi advised their Prince to blame it all on the Election Commission and on ‘vote chori’. So, instead of real introspection, Rahul Gandhi spent his time steeped in piles of voters’ lists, looking for what he called ‘atom and hydrogen bombs’. He threatened that when he exploded these bombs, there would be nowhere for the Chief Election Commissioner to hide. In the ‘H’ bomb explosion, he produced evidence of a Brazilian model having voted in the Haryana election more than 20 times. In fairness, there is some evidence of inaccuracies in voters’ lists, but not enough to steal a whole election.

In between his electoral ‘bombs’, the Leader of the Opposition made trips last year to Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Germany. Wherever he went, he told overseas Indians and sundry foreigners about the Indian Election Commission’s ‘cheating’ ways and repeated that democracy was being destroyed in India. What is puzzling is why he needs to tell foreigners about this. If the situation is so dire, should he not spend more time in India?

There are serious problems here that we need an Opposition party to raise. In the past week, we have seen people die of contaminated water in Indore. This city is considered India’s cleanest. Most of our other cities get listed among the dirtiest in the world and many are in states run by BJP governments. A valid question would be to ask why the vaunted ‘double-engine governments’ have proved so incompetent. The Prime Minister might sincerely believe that we are well on our way to become ‘viksit’ by 2047, but he seems not to have taken a road trip lately and noticed how bad our beloved Bharat Mata looks. Nor does he appear to have talked to businessmen to find out why private investment remains stagnant and why so many rich Indians (and poor) continue to flee to better countries.

We need an Opposition party that would speak up on these issues, and on the consistent and brutal attack on India’s pluralist legacy by thugs who owe allegiance to the Sangh Parivar. The recent attacks on Christmas, Christians, Santa Claus and churches made international headlines. When they did, there was an attempt by Hindutva apologists to blame it all on ‘fringe fanatics’. Not true. It was the Vishva Hindu Parishad who, in a written missive, warned Hindus not to celebrate Christmas and it was its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, that deployed the stormtroopers who spread poison and hate on Christmas Day.

Hate speech has become so much a part of our ‘culture’ that it makes headlines only when Hindutva goons break into a young girl’s private birthday party and start thrashing her Muslim friends. This happened in Bareilly some days ago. And why not, since the state of Uttar Pradesh is already a Hindu Rashtra ruled by a monk in saffron robes. Under that ‘double-engine government’, new highways and airports have indeed been built, but below the glittering surface lie layers and layers of destitution, deprivation and despair.