Dear Express Reader, Perhaps the language of politics in India has always been a bit overblown. But maybe it is becoming more spectacular, almost vaudevillian, ahead of the big contest in 2024. This week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood in what looked like a golf cart-turned-chariot to take a sort of a lap of honour with visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese before the start of an India-Australia cricket match in a stadium re-named after Modi. This week, too, on the other side of the political fence, former deputy chief minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, in jail for alleged irregularities in a subsequently-rolled back excise policy, likened his own predicament to those who fought for the country's freedom: "Saheb… the British rulers also troubled the freedom fighters but their spirits did not break…" What is common to Modi's image and Sisodia's message is the political actors' crossing of the line into exaggeration, even caricature. The PM who won't miss any opportunity to pose on any stage, strut on any field. The Opposition leader whose view of his own situation will not be tempered by a sense of proportion or humility. Of course, there is more to the image and the message than their apparent excess. PM Modi's performance in the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad, co-starring Australia's PM, was carefully choreographed to touch an important electoral chord, press a crucial emotional button. Ever since 2014, the theme of India-conquering-world, or Indian-leader-rubbing-shoulders-with-world-leaders, has become a critical part of the BJP's election campaign and pitch. It is not as if foreign policy is discussed in any substantive or meaningful way in elections after 2014 - it wasn't earlier, and it still isn't. But more and more, it figures in feel-good, emotive ways - as a viral photo-op, touched up to make "India" look good. The dressy chariot ride in the cricket stadium, a prominent foreign leader by his side, is a card Modi is likely to play in the 2024 election as well, at the end of the year of India's G20 presidency, to embellish the "India Rising" story. So far, in a young electorate seeking a larger canvas, and a sense of belonging and participation in an ambition bigger than themselves, this has played a significant part in balancing out, and also papering over, the dead-ends and exclusions of the BJP's political project. At the same time, the BJP is not a one-trick pony, it has a larger plan. According to a report in this paper this week, contours of its 2024 campaign are already taking shape - at least 100 rallies by the PM, announcements of mega projects in states where it is weak, pointed outreach to women and minority groups as labharthis or beneficiaries of government schemes, and a focus on southern states, Odisha and West Bengal. A committee has been formed for overall supervision, and ministers assigned responsibilities of monitoring these programmes of outreach. While the BJP's coordination and micro-management is nowhere as well-oiled as it is often made out to be, the party does have a multi-layered election plan in-the-making - and the Ahmedabad bonhomie will fit right into it. On the other side, Sisodia's arrest may not be as consequential a turning point in India's history as the AAP and Sisodia himself might paint it to be, but it is a significant marker of the politics of vendetta unleashed by the ruling party at the Centre against its political opponents. Notwithstanding the merits of the case, it is part of a pattern of perfect convergence - of the BJP's political agenda with the selective action by central agencies that its government controls. But while the BJP's photo-op in Ahmedabad is part of a larger whole, Sisodia's victimhood, for all its symbolic power, remains an isolated, even lonely, image. For one, the AAP has nowhere near the BJP's communicative firepower and dominance. And then, there is little coordination by Opposition parties on this matter, scant pooling of outrage. There was no Congress leader, for instance, in the list of signatories to the letter written by nine Opposition leaders to the PM pegged to Sisodia's arrest. The Congress is beating its own drum separately, elsewhere - Rahul Gandhi's dire statements on the decline of institutions and cramping of freedoms, do not mention Sisodia's arrest. On the contrary, Congress has publicly spoken out against AAP on at least two occasions after Sisodia's arrest (which, of course, may well be payback for AAP's refusal in the past to extend a hand to it). Moreover, be it Sisodia or Rahul Gandhi, be it AAP or Congress, leaders of the Opposition seldom amplify and illustrate their arguments against the BJP with incidents from Ground Zero - like the lynching in Bihar, or the latest encounter in UP. The second encounter by UP police in a week in the same case has revived serious questions about the rule of law, or its hijacking, by vigilantes in uniform, on the watch of the Yogi Adityanath government. The BJP is not in government in Bihar, but the lynching of 56-year-old Naseem Quereshi on the suspicion of carrying beef in Saran district, speaks of an intolerance that has been encouraged and emboldened by the party. The problem with the AAP, as with other parties of the Opposition, is this: There is little or no attempt, so far, to make coalitions, connect platforms, pool energies and issues against a formidable opponent who is far ahead of them electorally. With the countdown having already begun for 2024, and the BJP already on the go, they must find a way to do this, and that's the challenge. Till next week, Vandita | 
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