BJP to face real challenges in 2029 elections
India is in the middle of its 2024 general elections and in general the temperature in media, political circles and normal conversations among people is at it feverish high. By all indicators, it is looking like BJP is going to win its third consecutive term in power and Narendra Modi will be in same pedigree of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru to get the distinction of winning three general elections.
In all honesty, the ambitious “Is Baar 400 Paar” (translated as This time 400 will be crossed) looking tough to achieve, but BJP is still in a pretty comfortable position to secure the majority, as there is a positive support for what BJP has achieved in its second tenure that was marred by COVID Pandemic and then suffering the geopolitical twists and turns for past 2 years due to Russia Ukraine conflict and now Israel Palestine issue claiming headlines again.
Indian public has expressed its majority support to Russia and Israel, though for Palestine, there is a swelling empathy and support coming up. Both conflicts have underscored India’s unique stand in supporting different camps than traditional cold war era players, but this post is less about geopolitics but more towards what internally is happening in India and where the next priorities lie.
I know I might be jumping the gun a bit and if I overwhelmingly claim that BJP is coming to power with a thumping majority as there is one small factor that is taking place which BJP may not be very happy about. The population dynamics.
People born in 1991 or later i.e. the generation that came in after India started liberalisation from its old license raj has seen India in a very different light than the population before it. These kids saw the chaotic 1990s as formed their world view based on the chaos originating from then.
They grew up seeing almost equal split of Congress & BJP in power and may have no baggage of history of emergency and mismanagement happened in the past decades. The wars we fought in the past had little bearing to this generation, though the 1999 Kargil conflict still remain in their mind space, as that was a limited conflict and not a full stage war, its impact faded as we travel towards southern states. I personally find people less passionate for Kargil conflict in southern side of India than northern states, but one event that still binds this generation against Pakistan is 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Why I am referring these events? As with every passing decade, and no real ongoing conflict with Pakistan and Pakistan committing own goals in terms of its failing economy and diminished international influence, it is becoming less and less of relevance in Indian general elections than it used to, in the past. Which means the attention is slowly shifting towards second tier issues that once were pushed aside due to clear & present danger of a conflict with a rogue neighbour.
These issues are growth, jobs, education, culture and security. BJP has done well in keeping the growth part on track, with massive infrastructure investments, GDP growth being steady and attracting huge FDI in almost all sectors. BJP has pretty much established its stronghold on cultural resurgence of India in the world too, with yoga and Indian temples and architecture started getting limelight, and also have established India on the security landscape too, by providing net security in Indian Ocean region and by starting to export Indian made arms to the world.
Two areas where BJP needs to change its approach are education & jobs, and this is where the Population dynamics is going to play a massive role going forward.
The unravelling Global Job Collapse
It is not at all implied that BJP hasn’t tried a different approach. In past 10 years, there has been a concerted effort to promote start up culture and encourage youngsters to go and build their start-ups and become job providers instead of job seekers, but it hasn’t translated into the number of jobs created as was originally anticipated.
This challenge is not unique to India, as globally people are struggling with the job losses due to automation and AI adoption, but it becomes acutely pronounced in India due to its high population, young demographics and India’s high reliance on services sector which will be most impacted from the tech automations. Those who want to study global economic data around unemployment can read the report and check the stats on Global Finance Magazine’s April 2024 article for the same. Link is here: https://gfmag.com/data/economic-data/world-unemployment-rates/
The job losses are not limited to tech itself but are happening across the board as general automation, improving efficiency of tech solutions and AI advancements in many fields have achieved to get existing work to be done in much simpler way, leading to less resources needed. This on top of the meek recovery from pandemic levels and not all developed economies have been able to recover from economic slowdown and bring their economic activities to the same 2020 pre-covid levels.
India relied heavily on services sector and Tech is a big piece of that pie. The news that Tech is leading the layoffs is not encouraging news at all for India and only way we can create a cushion for these job losses is by creating local demand for the tech solutions. India is far from realising the tech miracle that we all know Indian engineers are capable to deliver, but the effort to boost tech adoption, reduction of bureaucracy and reach the wonderous levels where China has reaches is still a long way away.
Constant news of tech layoffs create anxiety in investor groups and exposes Indian tech sector to a systemic risk that was never as severe before. In fact, in all past recessions India was the beneficiary of tech outsourcing and cost cuts as more business came to India due to its cost-effective model, but over time Indian talent is no longer the cheapest in the market. Philippines & Vietnam have emerged as worthy challengers and are still cheaper than India.
From Education to Employability
India needs to promote new sectors with fresh funding or scaled up advertising to attract more people into some of the more traditional sectors than just services if job numbers need to reach any sort of parity with the talent available in the market.
The debate of finding the jobs to finding the right jobs to now finding any jobs is somewhat always present in India. I myself had such conversations to understand the job landscape from my dad when he graduated to understand where I stood in 2001. My father graduated from his engineering in 1968 from PEC, Chandigarh and he mentioned that jobs were scarce even then.
In 1960s there was a massive surge in engineers especially mechanical and civil engineers in the market and getting a degree even from prestigious PEC was not enough. As he approached unemployment office, the option given to him was to join as a Mathematics teacher in a school / college till he finds his matching job and he worked as a teacher for a year before he did find a job that suited his profile and matched his discipline of expertise.
When I graduated in 2001, though I chose tech as my degree I landed in the spot where dot com bubble was just burst and market had absolutely no jobs. I had same option of parking myself with an alternate job for some time or pursue higher studies and complete my Masters, I chose latter and by 2004 when I completed my Masters, market was slightly better, still half of my batch was not able to secure a job from campus even after doing masters in tech.
I see the same problem even now, but even at much higher scale as having a B. Tech or even MBA is not enough. This begs the question what has changed. It’s the number of universities have grown from 2013’s 660 to 2021’s 1100+. This also means the number of graduates coming out of these universities have scaled up 70% too. Have we created same 70% extra jobs in this time frame? The emphatic answer is NO.
A major side-effect of this jobs gap is that people leaving India in hopes of landing a job outside India, and the routes many prefer are to join international colleges for Masters to have a locally acknowledged degrees with a hope to get a job there. Economic slump in these western countries have not helped the case for these students much and many now get disillusioned after getting a degree and finding no jobs for them even in western world.
Start-up ecosystem has created massive jobs, but it hasn’t created enough to bridge this 70% extra gap. So, the problem is no longer of education any more, it has shifted to employability. This was also reflected in The Print’s article on employability as well, with numbers showing employability dipping in 2020–2021. The reason could be both pandemic and degraded quality as India added massive quantity of universities off late.
Challenges ahead
With AI creating even more challenges for lower skilled graduates as the work done by them could be on the verge of getting automated, these numbers may look even more horrible in future. This challenge will hit BJP for sure in 2029. No matter how well they perform, if they don’t revolutionise Indian job sector either by finding alternate ways to create jobs, or bring more global manufacturing & services to Indian in next 5 years, they can’t win the election in 2029.
With 15 years in power, there would be a massive amount of generation who would have voted for their first time to third time in BJP rule. That generation would be hungry for opportunities and eager to start earning money. If the Indian govt is not able to give them right opportunities, any ruling party will be sitting on a powder keg with opposition eager to latch all the matchsticks they have with them.
