Run up to 2024: The BJP and INDIA seem to have skipped the semi-finals

Three factors make it a challenging election for Modi and BJP: Opposition alliance with a well-defined core, consolidation of the anti-BJP vote and a changed geopolitical situation

There are about eight months left for the first round of voting in the next general elections, and full-blooded campaigning has already broken out. We see it in all the moves, utterances and speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his lieutenants and key apparatchiks. It also shows in some of the prime minister's critical foreign policy moves, to which we will return in a bit.

Besides an earlier start, what's distinct— about this buildup is the display of common purpose and action by the Opposition as well. It is in the DNA of electoral democracies that an Opposition always sees