This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump.
Muscular nationalism doesn t work against the backdrop of China s successive inroads into Indian territory.
Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment.
This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com does a deep dive into four elections when Narendra Modi resorted to anti-Muslim fervour and points out that Hindu-Muslim politics does not necessarily mean victory for the BJP.