India's Narendra Modi and Indian democracy

With the EU Parliament elections going on through Sunday (May 9), there will be a lot of news and speculation around what the results mean.

India just had a national election with the results that Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost seats. Modi will remain as Prime Minister. But he will have to rely on a coalition to form the new government.

Full results from India’s marathon election, which began in mid-April, were released Wednesday. The BJP won 240 seats, well below the 272 needed for a majority in a stunning outcome. Together, the parties in the NDA [National Democratic Alliance] coalition bagged 293 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament. (1)

Given that Modi’s government has show authoritarian tendencies with his ethnonationalist-Hindu politics, the loss of his seats at least indicates his support is slipping.

CBS News report on the India election (2):

But whatever level of “populist” appeal his ethnonationalist pitch has, his policies have certainly not been focused on reducing the power and influence of India’s oligarchic elites:

A few weeks before the election that weakened Narendra Modi’s grip on India, the rich, powerful and beautiful descended on his home state of Gujarat. The occasion was what one Indian writer described as “likely the most ostentatious pre-wedding ceremony the modern world has ever seen”.

In March, to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Ivanka Trump flew in. So did the entertainment: Rihanna and Akon. The airport near the venue was supposed to be reserved for India’s armed forces but the media reported that the authorities had granted special permission for non-military jets to land.

“When it comes to helping out his rich industrialist friends, prime minister Modi is willing to do anything,” Jairam Ramesh, a leading opposition politician, posted on X at the time.

After a decade in power that has, according to a recent study, left 40% of wealth in the hands of 1% of the population, the inequality that Modi’s favoured tycoons personify may help explain the shock loss of his majority in parliament this week. [my emphasis] (3)

In this case seems to illustrate that economic issues like radical concentration of wealth, those issues for which TINA (There Is No Alternative) are supposed to apply in the neoliberal gospel, may actually matter in India. A lot.

India still obviously has competitive elections in which the ruling party is not guaranteed to win. “About 642 million voters cast their ballots [in the India election] in the staggered seven-phase polling over six weeks, the largest election in history.” (4)

With nearly 970 million people eligible to vote in the 2024 elections, India has once again broken its own record. The 2019 elections had 900 million registered voters, with a turnout of 67% – which means 615 million people cast their ballots in a single election. (5)

Those numbers are worth recalling if the US ever comes around again to seriously considered switching to a nationwide popular vote for President. The difficulty of counting that many votes are one of the arguments always brought up against the idea. But if India can manage with 970 million eligible voters, the US can surely find a way to pull it off with only a fraction of that many voters, around 240 million in 2020 with 66% or so actually voting that year..

Chietigj Bajpaee writing for Chatham House also judges that economic performance issues were central to Modi’s reduced vote this year:

While the BJP government had tried to leverage India’s rising global status and its Hindu nationalist credentials during the election campaign, local livelihood issues ultimately proved decisive for voters.

The BJP’s often divisive Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) rhetoric failed to resonate in large parts of the country, particularly those with a more cosmopolitan and secular outlook, and parts of the country with strong regional identities, such as the south, as well as with India’s religious minorities.

Its messaging on the economy, promoting India as the world’s fastest growing major economy, also fell flat in a country facing high levels of inequality and youth unemployment. Although India is seen as a potential beneficiary of the West’s push to de-risk or diversify supply chains away from China, manufacturing as a share of GDP has stalled while foreign investment inflows have declined. (6)

Shruti Kapila sees Modi's results this year as a real setback for his authoritarian project: "The scale of Modi’s loss may appear meagre – his vote share dropped from 37.4 per cent to 36.6 per cent – but its effect is monumental." And: "Overnight, the pall of suffocation created by a decade of Modi’s strongman style, which demanded total obedience to him and his authority, has lifted." (7)

Despite the current US and European narratives about democracy vs. autocracy on the world scene, the US Democrats have exactly treated Modi as being on the Other Side of that dichotomy from the US. Liza Featherston noted in 2023:

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who is on a state visit to the White House this week, is one of the most significant far-right leaders in the world. His persecution of religious minorities has troubled even the US State Department, which has taken note of the problem in its annual Religious Freedom Report. His administration has passed discriminatory laws against Muslims that have helped lead to a horrifying rise in violence against Muslims in India. Modi has also jailed journalists and activists and attempted to use the judicial system to suppress a BBC documentary critical of him. He was denied a US visa for years because of his role in a 2002 anti-Muslim riot in which more than a thousand people, mostly Muslims, were slaughtered. [my emphasis] (8)

Avantika Chilkoti in the CBS report above also mentions this balancing consideration.

Biden in 2023 praised Modi’s democratic credentials rather enthusiastically:

During their joint appearance Thursday, President Biden not only did not mention any of the human rights problems with Modi’s regime, he heaped explicitly misleading praise upon it.

“Equity under the law, freedom of expression, religious pluralism, diversity of our people — these core principles have endured and evolved,” said Biden, in direct opposition to the evidence about Modi’s record, “even as they have faced challenges through both our nations’ histories.” (Featherstone)

As power-balancing goes, we can give Biden credit for realizing that he needs to have good enough relations with India to be a balancing element against China. The same power-balancing logic would indicate that the US should be working to dial back tensions with Russia. But the Biden Administration hasn’t approach Russia with the same set of priorities.

Still, democracy does matter, however much it may complicate the power-balancing game. And Narendra Modi has not been a great friend of it.

Notes:

(1) Pathi, Krutika (2024): India’s Modi elected as leader of coalition and set to form new government. AP News 06/08/2024. <https://apnews.com/article/india-modi-bjp-nda-lok-sabha-election-parliament-bf7dfcb6149c127892d5201f147fad3a> (Accessed: 2024-08-06).

(2) What India's election results mean for Modi. CBS News YouTube channel 06/06/2024. <https://youtu.be/o05bThzCP_Q?si=WOHeqFdjLPHhO-Yv> (Accessed: 2023-23-06).

(3) Burgis, Tom (2024): Muted election win for Modi may usher in new era for India’s oligarch class. Guardian 06/07/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/07/muted-election-win-for-modi-may-usher-in-new-era-for-indias-oligarch-class> (Accessed: 2023-23-06).

(4) Kiyada, Sudev & Katakam, Anand (2024): How India conducted the world's largest election. Reuters 06/06/2024. <https://www.reuters.com/graphics/INDIA-ELECTIONS/gdpzmqgrmvw/> (Accessed: 2024-08-06).

(5) Jacinto, Leela (2024): India’s mammoth elections: Nearly a billion voters, 44 polling days. France 24 04/13/2024. <https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20240413-india-s-mammoth-elections-nearly-a-billion-voters-44-polling-days> (Accessed: 2024-08-06).

(6) Bajpaee, Chietigj (2024): India’s shock election result is a loss for Modi but a win for democracy. Chatham House 06/06/2024. <https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/06/indias-shock-election-result-loss-modi-win-democracy> (Accessed: 2024-08-06).

(7) Kapila, Shruti (2024): India chooses political instability over Modi New Statesman 06/05/2024. <https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/06/india-election-chooses-political-instability-over-narendra-modi> (Accessed: 2024-08-06).

(8) Featherston, Liza (2023): Why Did Democrats Embrace th eFar-Right Narendra Modi? Jacobin 06/23/2023.<https://jacobin.com/2023/06/narendra-modi-democrats-biden-far-right-bjp-state-visit-human-rights> (Accessed: 2023-23-06).