On the evening of June 4th – Lok Sabha election results day - I was full of gloom at the prospect of Modi, albeit dwarfed, once again holding the reins of government. Although it was obvious that as head of a minority government cobbled together with the help of the most mercurial allies, he would not be able to go rogue like he did in the last 10 years, a wolf in sheep's clothing at the helm can hardly soothe the nerves and dispel the fears of the governed. While we had barely escaped the tyrant's noose, there was this unsettling feeling of being in limbo, still some distance away from getting back our vibrant, chaotic democracy.

But a month on, the festering bitterness of the last ten years has lifted, and so has the pessimism. Having agonised over the subject and avidly observed what's been happening in the last few weeks, one now has no doubt that the Lok Sabha elections have thrown up the best possible result for the Modi naysayers. Here's why.

In the run-up to the general election, many politicians and social commentators who know the authoritarian and have studied him closely had warned that he would not accept defeat with grace and would use any means to hold on to power. But the country delivered a fractured verdict - a feeble thumbs up for Modi and the NDA, and so we are left to speculate on what might have transpired had he lost at the hustings.

As happens in any autocracy, for the last ten years, Modi and his malevolent Parivar held complete sway over the polity, capturing every institution, including the putative protector of the Constitution – the judiciary. The regime grabbed absolute power not only by abusing its authority but by roping in extra-constitutional agencies to the cause. From being a shadowy presence in the political firmament, an unfettered RSS was all over the place, guiding and shepherding the regime's dangerous majoritarian agenda. Sections of the Hindu clergy became collaborators. In every government organisation, the covert sevaks within and the zealots foisted from the outside by the regime called the shots. A vital auxiliary force was the trishul-waving vigilante mob, which became an extension and lethal enforcer of the state.

The Modi years have witnessed much more than a complete usurpation of political and social power. There has also been a concomitant thrust to supplant our multicultural, tolerant and inclusive ethos with an exclusionary, majoritarian nationalism. It's been said that you can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea. The most dangerous upshot of the Modi years has been the evangelistic propagation of Hindutva – an aberrant distortion of Hinduism- which is nothing but a gospel of hate and communal bigotry that targets the minorities, particularly Muslims for whom the last ten years have been an unremitting nightmare. A toxic creed that was hitherto preached within the confines of the RSS shakhas has, in Modi's watch, become the ideological underpinning for State policy, the CAA and the UCC push among the outcomes of this majoritarian assault. Our resplendent, multi-hued cultural milieu has been tainted by saffronisation. Music, poetry, cinema and even historiography have been commandeered to nourish the Hindutva project.

Given the menacing contours of the power structure presided over by Modi and the deep penetration of Hindutva in our society, it would be foolhardy to surmise that, ousted from power, he would recede quietly into the sunset. This brings me to the first reason for my belated conviction that Modi's anaemic victory-that-is-a-loss is the best thing that could have happened, considering the dire situation in the country. I hold with the maverick Satyapal Malik and others who believe that Modi and his goons would have caused mayhem if the BJP had lost power and made it impossible for an alternate government to function normally. One does not require a stargazer's acuity to visualise riots, street protests, lynchings and uncontrollable chaos as our daily diet in that eventuality. And you can bet your last paisa that there would have been menacing rumblings around the Gyanvapi masjid in Varanasi and the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura. Modi 2.25 has spared us that trauma!

Are we glad that the India Alliance is not in the hot seat! The second rationale for toasting Modi's third term as PM is again reasoned conjecture based on the political developments of the last few years. Had the BJP lost the election, it's plain as day that the India Alliance would have made a mess of running the government and thereby ensured Modi's return to power. We have a historical precedent.

I am ancient enough to remember the heady days in March 1977 when the Janata party came to power, promising a new dawn after the dark night of the Emergency. But in just over two years, the government fell under the weight of its own contradictions and the Janata party was dissolved. The India alliance augurs no better, having coalesced together out of sheer desperation, much like the Janata party in the 1970s. It is undoubtedly a combine of stalwarts with political savvy and capability, but the downside is their giant egos and inability to compromise and work as a team. Like what happened in 1980 when Indira Gandhi returned to power capitalising on the death wish of a brawling Janata party, a fractious INDIA alliance would inevitably have paved the way for the triumphant return of Modi and gang.

But the fragility of the Alliance is not the only life-and-death problem that a possible INDIA government would have had to face. After ten years of Modi's colossal blunders and misrule, the country is in a godawful mess. The 'non-biological being' has whipped up a deadly cocktail of social discord and economic distress. We are a broken people, polarised between Hindu and Muslim, brahmin and Dalit, rich and poor, North India and the South. The fifth largest economy is in severe economic distress, with the rich getting richer and the rest in the doldrums.

Raging unemployment, inflation, macroeconomic instability, a rotten healthcare system skewed in favour of the rich, a grievously compromised education and government recruiting system in a tailspin and a lot more are threatening the well-being of the country. Had the INDI alliance taken charge at this juncture, not only would it have been saddled with an impossible situation but, worse, been held accountable for it, with Modi's culpability all but forgotten. Not without reason is it said that a week is a long time in politics, and the guy in the hot seat cops the brickbats even if he is in no way responsible for the all-round disarray!

Look what's happened in America, the other wobbling large democracy. Donald Trump's faulty policies and mishandling of the pandemic resulted in a high rate of unemployment, growing inequality, stagnant economic growth, immigrant distress due to inhuman treatment, and an increase in gun violence and racism. His successor, Biden, turned the economy around, brought back jobs, invested hugely in rebuilding the infrastructure, lowered prescription drug costs and restored relations with key allies. And yet Biden trailed Trump in most opinion polls, mainly because of inflation caused by the pandemic and Trump's profligate policies. Such is politics! Fortunately for us, Modi is still at the helm and therefore answerable for creating what a leading political commentator calls a "slow-cooking national collapse" and also responsible for cleaning up the mess of his own making.

The last ten murderous years saw the snowballing of the Modi cult, which got so amplified that the man himself, eerily like Julius Caesar, claimed divinity. An abiding tragedy is that a large section of people is still spellbound by this malignant narcissist who has used his power to polarise the country with hate. Another important reason for welcoming Modi's third term as PM is that it provides time and opportunity to completely expose the charlatan who has caused so much suffering and grief. We need to strip the emperor naked and rid ourselves of this craven cult worship once and for all. He set the ball rolling and contributed richly to his own undoing with his vicious and stupid rants about Muslims as infiltrators, about stopping wars, about the Ambanis and tempos, and, to cap it all, about his own deification.

History has witnessed democrats metamorphosing into tyrants, but Modi is in that unchartered territory where he would need to reverse the switch from arrogant authoritarian to deferential democrat, an unfamiliar role that must be killing him. Nothing betrayed more tellingly his diminished status and loss of self-belief than his conduct when Mahua Moitra spoke in Parliament on the President's address. As she began speaking, the 'ek akela sab pe bhari' poseur scuttled out of Parliament even as she mockingly called after him, "daro math Sir!" That priceless vignette said it all! His third term is turning out to be a bed of thorns; his ersatz Superman image is now a pathetic caricature! He is getting his comeuppance, indeed!

Cutting Modi down to size is imperative, but much more vital for restoring the country's sanity and health is the obligation to call out the dangerous Hindutva ideology and its practitioners. Mercifully, the feeble performance of the BJP in the Lok Sabha election has set the cat among the pigeons in the Sangh Parivar.

In his first public statement after the results, Mohan Bhagwat, who was slavishly deferential for ten years, came out swinging, highlighting the need for restoring peace in Manipur, criticising the divisive nature of the election campaign that treated the Opposition as an enemy, emphasising the need to be free of arrogance, and treat "all the country's sons as our brothers". Et tu Brute? Savarkar's spirit must also have bristled at such secular profanity! Clearly, the electoral pushback and coalition compulsions have forced a rethink on advancing the Hindutva agenda of 'One nation, one culture, one religion and one language'.

Not just Modi and Hindutva crusaders but even hardened Modi bhakts have expediently recalibrated and hedged their bets in the changed situation. Madhu Kishwar - yes, the one who saw the rape-cum-murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua as a PDP conspiracy against the Dogra Hindus – has denounced the 'use and throw' genius, 'Sultan' Modi for seeking Advani and MM Joshi's blessings before staking claim as PM for a third time and advised him to retire and meditate on how to 'wash off his many sins'. The TV-General Bakshi, who has been a stentorian apologist for Modi and the BJP all these years, recently flayed the 'disastrous' policies of the government, including the Agniveer scheme. The rodents are scuttling for cover!

A dear friend of impeccable scientific temperament has been driven by the Modi years to seek refuge and succour in astrology. Last week, he informed me that his astrologer had predicted that the Modi 2.25 government would fall in 3 months. I have pleaded with him to intercede with the astrologer to give the government at least a year for all the wheels to come off and for Modi to leave in utter disgrace! Only such retributive justice can secure restorative justice!