After nearly two months of electioneering and voting, over seven days, India's mammoth general election has finally ended. With all the votes counted, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won a majority in the 543-seat lower house of parliament.

Modi, 73, who first swept to power in 2014 by promising growth and change, became only the second prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to win three straight terms.

Though Modi's BJP remains the largest party, having won 240 seats, it lost more than 60 seats compared with the 2019 election (303 seats), a far weaker result than he had predicted. Modi had predicted that the BJP would win 370 seats and his alliance would command 400 seats.

The loss of seats means that Modi will depend more heavily on his coalition partners in the NDA to form a government, and the results give these smaller parties more leverage.

However, with a narrower victory this time round, Modi's next tenure will face a wide range of challenges, including implementing the "One Nation, One Election" proposal and achieving his "Viksit Bharat 2047" economic vision.

Modi's challenges

"One Nation, One Election," proposed by Modi's party, recommends elections to India's state assemblies and national parliament happen at the same time, every five years. Currently, elections in each state and the national election happen at different times, even though both state assemblies and the national parliament have the same five-year term. For example, the last election of India's Gujarat state was held in December 2022, while Haryana state's last election occurred in October 2019. 

With the reduced margin, and protests from some opposition parties who fear the move could sideline smaller regional parties, help national parties dominate the narrative, and create a presidential type of government, experts say this move is unlikely to see the light of day for now.

As for Modi's "Viksit Bharat 2047" vision to make India a developed country by 2047, as well as his promises to maintain high growth and low inflation, experts say the prime minister will have a tough balancing act in his third term.

According to Oxford Economics, India's GDP needs to grow by at least 8 percent annually from 2023 for the country to become developed by 2047, while data shows the government has never achieved this rate. India's GDP accelerated to 7.7 percent in 2023, up from 6.5 percent in 2022.

Besides, Modi will have to generate more jobs to control the high unemployment rate, which is his biggest economic challenge. India's official data shows that nearly 16 percent of urban youth in the 15-29 age group remained jobless in 2022-23 due to poor skills and a lack of quality jobs. Estimates by private agencies are much higher. According to the Center For Monitoring Indian Economy, the youth unemployment rate is as high as 45.4 percent.