The Great Shift: How BJP-NDA’s Saffron Wave Is Redrawing India’s Political Map

If you board a train from Haryana to Howrah, you will pass through five Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-ruled regions—Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Similarly, one can now drive from India’s border with China in the Northeast all the way to the border with Pakistan in the West without ever leaving a BJP-NDA territory.

India’s political map is undergoing a transformation. Each state election is adding a splash of saffron, turning the BJP-NDA’s saffron wave into—from a myopic lens—a seemingly near-permanent tide.

It didn’t take too long. In 2014, when Narendra Modi first became the prime minister, he promised a Congress-mukt India. The states governed by the BJP and NDA allies stood in the single digits then. Just 12 years later, after the recent Assembly elections in four states and one Union Territory (UT), the number stands at 22. The PM has been able to keep his promise of Congress-mukt India—the states and UTs ruled by the Congress and its allies now stand in single digits.

The saffron wave, however, has gradually shrunk the political space for an important component of Indian democracy—the regional parties. Not very long ago, they were the kingmakers in many states for decades, making the electoral process fair and multifaceted. They gave tough competition to the national parties, but now, many have been decimated to near-extinction. The remaining are barely surviving, piggybacking on the NDA and the INDIA blocs for electoral wins.

As seen in the map, the BJP and its allies now control a significant landmass of the country and govern a majority of the population, a sea change from just a decade ago.

The next decade is critical. It will determine whether the saffron sweep is just a temporary electoral trend or whether India’s structural fabric stands altered forever.