New Delhi (CNN) Ahead of India's general election next year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing an unexpected image problem: he's starting to look weak.

It's a dramatic shift in the way he's been perceived ever since a history-making general election victory in 2014. For years, political observers in New Delhi spoke with awe of the "hawa," or political wind, that lifted Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power.

Each subsequent triumph -- such as the BJP's 2017 election victory in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, and its successes in the country's northeast -- was seen as further proof of the potency of the Modi "hawa."

The Prime Minister, his party's star campaigner at all levels, was seen as unbeatable, riding the political wind to transform the BJP into India's natural party of power after years of struggling to catch up with the Congress Party.

But there are signs the wind is abating. This month the BJP lost a number of key state-level elections, with Congress grabbing clear majorities in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and ousting incumbent BJP governments. In a third race, in Madhya Pradesh, Congress fell just short of an outright majority in the state assembly but nevertheless ended a decade and a half of BJP rule.

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