The victory of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Indian general election 2019 is indisputable. It may be unsettling and worrisome for a number of political actors within India, in the region and around the world but the verdict is loud and clear. The most frequent comparison that this victory has drawn is with Nazi success in Germany in the 1930s. But drawing empirical parallels from history is always problematic. It makes the analysis easily digestible but leaves out vital details wherein hides the ‘devil’.

Let’s first have a look at some details of the results of these elections. The BJP’s tally of seats in Lok Sabha has now risen from 282 to 303 and its share in votes has improved from 31.4 percent in 2014 to 37.6 percent in the latest elections.

The party’s victory has not only been big, it has been thorough as well from many aspects. It has won across the states in the vast country that India is. It gained ground in states that had historically been out of bound for it and has maintained its hold over the ones that it had won over in recent times.

The party had undone the Mahagathbandan (grand alliance) in Bihar and won back its old ally, Janata Dal United in time for LS elections. The alliance had gathered regional parties that have strong appeal among lower castes and Dalits. The BJP took the other Mahagathbandan, this one in Uttar Pradesh, head on in elections and defeated it. This alliance of the parties that have dominated the politics in state with most LS seats (80 of 543) for the last two decades was being projected as the biggest challenge for the BJP in these elections but at the end it proved to be no match.

The BJP surprised the Telengana regional party that had won a whopping 88 of 119 state assembly seats just four months ago but could not stop BJP from snatching a reasonable number of Lok Sabha seats from under its nose. And for Trinamool Congress of West Bengal, it was a rude shock. The party lead by Mamta Banerjee had won 34 of the state’s 42 seats in 2014 while BJP had just 2 which it took to 18 in a single stride. Trinamool Congress had come to power in West Bengal in 2011 after defeating Communist Party (Marxist) which had ruled the state for 34 years. BJP rode into Bengal on the back of cadres of CPM. In terms of political theories, it is like mixing fire with water but the BJP managed it successfully.

The performance of the other members of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has been mixed. Shiv Sena has sustained its power in Maharashtra. But Akali Dal in Punjab lost two of its four seats while the BJP ally in Tamil Nadu (AIADMK) has been wiped out by its rival and ally of Congress, DMK. The loss in south, however, has been neutralised by the gain by Janata Dal United, the BJP ally in Bihar.

Overall the number of seats of the National Democratic Alliance has improved from 336 to 356 and the alliance’s share in votes has jumped from 38 to 45 percent. The increase, however, is almost exclusively contributed by the BJP which makes it even stronger within the alliance as well.

The only solace for the traditional brand of politics, that is avowedly liberal and secular, came from Kerala where the Congress-led United Democratic Front swept 19 of the 20 seats. It is more than symbolic that Congress chief, Rahul Gandhi, lost his home seat in Amethi, UP but won a place in the new parliament from Wayanad constituency of Kerala.

What makes the BJP victory perplexing is the fact that it has come despite its performance on the economic front being graded from disastrous to lacklustre by most critics. The annual GDP growth rates in past five years fell short of those witnessed during the decade long Congress-rule (2004-14). The ‘notebandi’ (demonetisation of higher denomination currency notes) by BJP in 2016 was a big setback for small businesses and the current unemployment rates are the highest in the past four decades though the BJP had promised crores of new jobs in its last election campaign.

Has then the performance of political parties on economic front stopped playing a crucial role in determining who the electorates vote for or have the voters started giving priority to some other factors over their own economic well-being while casting ballots? A more nuanced rephrasing of the same question will read like this -- is the quest for identity more important for the voters now than their struggle for economic progress?

A yes answer would earn a frown from most political theorists but a no will be denial of the realities of results of general elections 2019. As a definite answer is too risky, many are claiming positions in the grey.

A rather simplistic recourse is to blame the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and take the line that the election results have been manipulated by hacking EVMs. While this cannot be technically ruled out, there is no way to practically prove anything of this sort, especially as the election authorities had added Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines to the EVMs this time to counter such suspicions.

A more erudite line of argument hits at the first-past-the-post (FTPT) election system where the candidates with the highest number of votes take all despite the fact that they may not have secured votes of the majority. The votes polled by the losers get wasted (remain unrepresented) in any case. This criticism does carry some weight and there are countries that have adopted alternative systems, like proportionate representation and single transferable votes. But unluckily the politics in these countries has not been any different from the ones practising FTPT system, especially in recent times. At the end it is not the electoral system that determines the nature of politics in a big way. It is the other way round and that makes the debate on systems akin to beating about the bush.

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Yet another important response is to point finger at the outlandish loads of money that are now spent on ‘electoral circuses’. The money oils a gigantic media machine to churn out innumerable images and sound bites that drown debates, occupy imaginations, hijack aspirations and ‘manufacture consent’. The narrative making machine works in tandem with electoral assembly line that ultimately ekes out the results that the moneyed class wants it to. This makes elections look like a big investment gala for venture capitalists, if not outrightly a ponzi scheme.

This line of argument is apparently quite convincing. Money has undoubtedly come to play a bigger role than ever in each passing election. But can we say that it is the money alone that has shaped India’s latest verdict? Mind it that we are talking about results of an election that is participated by every eighth adult living on earth. If the collective verdict of such massive scale is proven to be a purchased commodity then the whole concept of rule by the people becomes a farce.

Elections are the main vehicle through which democracy is exercised but have they started giving birth to the monsters that can defeat the very purpose the electoral democracy was instituted for? This will be equivalent to the sci-fi nightmare where robots created by humans start ruling over them or the all too familiar Frankenstein story.

I would rather reassert my faith in electoral democracy’s capacity to take us forward and would want deeper and more thorough intellectual efforts to look at the politics of the new millennium in a semi-globalised world from angles hitherto unexplored.