The message from Telangana for I.N.D.I.A partners is brutal

You will surely live to fight another day if you focus hard on your own states and their voters. Going 'national' and 'international' between now and April 2024 could mean catastrophe in your own home turf.

- YASHWANT DESHMUKH & SUTANU GURU

Every possible postmortem of the verdict of the five recently concluded Assembly elections has been done by all possible pathologists, ranging from seasoned pundits to opinionated social media warriors. Even the surprise choice of the chief ministers in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have led to paroxysms of frenzied analysis of the real intent and strategy of the BJP.

Most have concluded—including the authors—that barring some dramatic change in the next four months, the BJP is in clear pole position for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. A diverse range of reasons have been offered, the majority focusing rightly on the weakness of the Congress in direct face-offs with the BJP in central, north and western India.

But there is another elephant in the room that seems to be going unnoticed by analysts. That is the loud, clear and jarring message for regional parties from the verdict in Telangana.

The message is simple: You will surely live to fight another day if you focus hard on your own states and their voters. Going “national” and “international” between now and April 2024 could mean catastrophe in your own home turf. This is not fancy stuff.

Both contemporary and historic data supports this hypothesis that the first priority for regional parties is to protect their home turfs and win enough Lok Sabha seats in them.

If that means almost certain loss for I.N.D.I.A in 2024, so be it.

Look at contemporary data. In the 2018 Assembly elections, the TRS led by K.C. Rao won a massive second mandate with almost 47% of the vote share and 88 seats in an Assembly of 119. The once mighty Congress was reduced to about 28.5% of the vote share and 19 seats.