In almost a week, national politics in India will enter the penultimate year before the Lok Sabha polls of 2024. That also means that seen through national prism, 2023 is going to be far less about that year and more about 2024.

Meanwhile, the assembly polls in Karnataka next summer, and Rajasthan, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram next winter will be decoded for any possible clues for the big battle of 2024 at the centre. Such exercises, however, can’t forget that the state polls outcomes haven’t always been reliable indicators of how India votes in the parliamentary polls. In the last two decades, they have been less useful in foreseeing how the big battle at the centre is shaping up. But, this is unlikely to dissuade news media and a section of political analysts from pitching them as ‘big hints’ and precursors of the 2024 contest.

This is largely because the sense of what constitutes “run-up to the polls” has been redefined by the overcoverage of elections. The proliferation of mass media, legacy and digital, has meant the sense of election as an event now extends to covering the build-up months before. And in case of the Lok Sabha polls, this is even longer, the entire preceding year, and so it makes way for the idea of the “run-up year”.

Content on social media platforms has joined legacy and new media in pushing this idea of a build-up. This year, for instance, the assembly elections in seven states saw media platforms carrying out district election tours and poll-caravan type segments for months before the polls.  In 2023, this would only scale up in setting the stage for the 2024 grand finale of claims to the power corridors at the centre.

At the same time, political parties have also adopted a longer time frame to work on battle-readiness. The sharpening of strategic aspects – the evolving codes of worker and voter mobilisation and the increasing role of professional inputs and technocratic focus – means that parties keep election machines in advanced preparatory mode.

As early as May this year, the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had set up a task force for 2024 polls and party leaders reportedly decided to review the election preparedness every “two or three days”. That combined with the party’s failed attempt at roping in poll strategist Prashant Kishor into the organisation and Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra – covering 12 states in 150 days – show the party’s eagerness to start early for the big fight. The BJP’s famed round-the-year election machine has also been streamlining its efforts for retaining power. Early this year, BJP president J P Nadda drew up a plan to strengthen the party’s weak spots, which means putting more efforts in around 74,000 electoral booths and 144 parliamentary seats where the party has assessed itself as weak. 

That, however, is only a small part of the story that is going to unfold this year. There are many other significant factors that would define the “run-up” process and the resultant momentum – three of them are more visible now.

First, any serious challenge from the opposition camp would largely depend on how anti-BJPism is used to build a national coalition that is potent enough to make the rival BJP-led alliance pay for the current regime’s vulnerabilities on various counts. In the heyday of Congress’s dominance in Indian politics, anti-Congressism itself became an ideological melting pot for political parties of very different ideological streams and regional heft. That’s how the Janata Party coalition of 1977 or even the National Front coalition of 1989 found its way to power, though both turned out to be short-lived stints.

In the prime phase of coalition politics of the 90s, the emergence of BJP as a powerful force to reckon with at the centre meant that two rival alliances formed the core of national politics – NDA and UF (which by 2004 morphed into the UPA with Congress in the steering seat). Clearly the tables had turned, the United Front experiment of 1996 was imbued with anti-BJPism as much as the Janata Party experiment of 1977 was moulded by the appeal of anti-Congressism.

However, using the ideological thread of anti-BJPism to piece together a compact opposition would be easier said than done. That’s why the second factor would be crucial in drawing the battle lines.

Second, unlike earlier coalitions challenging the incumbent alliance, there is no clarity on the lead party of such a potential combine. That’s because the regularity with which Congress has suffered electoral setbacks has diminished its primacy as the national challenger to the dominant BJP at the centre. In the process, an array of parties with region-specific heft and ambitious leaders – ranging from TMC’s Mamata Banerjee to AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal and TRS’s KC Rao to JDU’s veteran Lohiaite Nitish Kumar – are testing the waters to occupy the national alternative space.

This year, the Congress has been alert to the lurking danger of such perceptions slipping too far. It has been keen on being seen as serious about mounting a credible and strong challenge. The media access to its poll strategy sessions and Rahul Gandhi’s mass contact programmes on the streets, for instance, could be seen as an assertion of its primacy as the national alternative, or at least the pivot of such an alternative, at a time when it’s being written off as a national force of consequence. More significantly, the party now realises that a long spell of being written off as a spent force, and with no road to recovery in sight, may mean that, in the public mind, an array of strong regional forces or smaller parties will grab the mantle as the key challenger to the BJP-led NDA. In 2023, the Congress will work further on wresting back its role as the key challenger in 2024, or at least the pivot around which the opposition would mount such a challenge to the BJP-led alliance. 

Third, the BJP may use the opposition’s anti-BJPism mobilisation plank to its advantage. By painting the coming together of  politically disparate and ideologically heterogeneous parties as opportunistic, the party is likely to pitch its ideological clarity. But the party is also faced with the challenge of rebuilding the NDA. The loss of important allies such as the JDU and SAD might hurt, even though it would like to try its strength by charting its own course with smaller allies. In Maharashtra, the party’s damage control bid by allying with a breakaway group of Shiv Sena would need consolidation and navigation of legal challenges. The search for new allies in the southern and eastern states is also likely to engage the party’s efforts in 2023.

Irrespective of these visible factors, all political actors would be alert to any uncertainties that may influence political equations. Serious political contenders are either alert to or wary about the possibilities of shift in momentum. The effects of pandemic, inflation and economic slowdown seem to have neutralised if the performance of the ruling party or parties in different state polls are any indicator. But, a new set of external factors are always a constant possibility, something the parties would not lose sight of. Moreover, national security concerns such as the simmering border tensions with China can always be decisive in influencing voting preferences. That would imply that all serious parties would need to be at the top of their game in communicating their positions on national security issues. 

As the contours of the “run-up year” will loom large over the national political landscape of 2023, it isn’t easy to foresee a poll-delinked political discourse in 2024. As the centrepiece of competitive politics, polls have already been turned into spectator sports by all forms of media. The strategic pressure has also meant that parties are starting early for the big fight. In many ways, the fate of 2023 is tied to the 2024 big show.