The ghost of 2004 haunts Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters, who see its spectre looming large again. Ever since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, every minor setback has been seen as the road leading to another 2004-like debacle. To be sure, the BJP faces a tricky pitch in 2019, as I have argued. Nonetheless, analysing 2019 through the prism of 2004 is likely to lead us astray. In 2004, “India” may have been shining but “Bharat” was clearly struggling and voted National Democratic Alliance (NDA) out. Now, India is not shining, but whether Bharat is doing well cannot be discerned from a discourse that is urban-centric and that tends to project rural experience from the concerns of urban India. What we do know is that rural consumption is gathering steam, monsoons are forecast to be normal in 2018, and the government has increased minimum support prices.

Moreover, the present NDA government’s efforts have been heavily focused on rural India and the poor — electrification, toilets, financial inclusion, direct benefits transfers, etc. Whether these have made a tangible enough difference to tilt the outcome in 2019, remains to be seen.

While there are some similarities between 2004 and the present, the differences are substantial.

The Economy

My parsimonious model of the election forecasting suggested that the 2004 loss was hardly a surprise and that the NDA’s reelection prospects in 2019 appear to be much better, albeit still challenging. The five-year growth rate (I am using a five-year period because that is the normal term for a government) in 2004 was actually one of the weakest in the post 1995 era. In contrast, the present government appears to be in better placed. More important, there is still more than a year left till the elections, and the economy appears to be accelerating.