In a nation of nearly a billion eligible voters, the idea of the electorate can be amorphous. On rare occasion, though, that amorphous entity speaks in one voice in India. The general election of 2014 that made Narendra Modi prime minister was one such instance, with his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP, winning 282 seats in a 543-member lower house of Parliament—the first time a single party had managed to win a majority on its own in thirty years. The verdict of the 2019 election, which returned Modi to power, was even more emphatic: the BJP winning 303 seats and the opposition Congress party a distant second at just fifty-two.
But that same amorphous Indian voter is also known to cut leaders who dishonour and squander their mandate down to size. That is what happened to Modi on June 4, when the results of this year’s national election were announced.
