ONE BILLION VOTERS — The world’s largest democracy is going to the polls over the next six weeks, as nearly 1 billion registered voters in India can cast ballots in a mind-bogglingly complex logistical effort. The voting will take place over 44 days until June 1 as voters cast ballots for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, with results released on June 4. Popular Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, is projected to win enough seats to easily win a third-term, solidifying Modi’s power over a country that he’s led since 2014. Over 600 million Indians cast ballots in the 2019 elections, a turnout of nearly 70 percent. The BJP won 37 percent of the national vote but won 56 percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha, giving Modi a powerful majority in parliament and making his party the dominant force in Indian political life. India’s elections are some of the most expensive in the world: In 2019, political parties spent an estimated $8.7 billion on the campaign, with that number expected to rise significantly this year. But while some celebrate the elections conducted by the world’s largest democracy, Oxford University professor Maya Tudor thinks that rising signs of illiberalism are undercutting India’s democratic project in ways that mirror trends in democratic backsliding across the world — and could foreshadow developments in the United States. “Because the media and the world focuses so much on elections, the world looks more democratic than if you also focus on civil liberties,” said Tudor, the author of The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan . “But the right to dissent against governments everywhere and to still be considered a loyal citizen is declining almost everywhere, including in the United States. This trend is epitomized by India’s decline.” Nightly spoke with Tudor to learn more about India’s upcoming election, democratic backsliding and what the results could mean for America. The following has been edited and condensed for length. Commentators have called 2024 the ‘Year of Democracy’ and India’s elections have been called the largest free elections in world history. But do you still even consider India a democracy? India today is not a robust democracy, not in my view nor the view of any major and independent democracy watchdog. But accurately answering the question of whether India is a democracy first requires having a clear view of what democracy entails. The average citizen defines democracy as a set of institutions that guarantees citizens voice in government. Of course that means elections, because elections are the clearest moment in which the people’s voice is heard. And India absolutely still holds elections that are free and fair. But Russia and China also hold elections. So elections alone do not make a country a democracy. To be a democracy, one also needs to have genuine opposition candidates, candidates that are able to organize without systematic state harassment, and journalists who feel able to scrutinize the government. India does not have a free media today — indeed it is below Belarus and Hong Kong in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index . It doesn’t have protected civil liberties especially for critics of the government. It does not have a robust parliament scrutinizing government bills. So yes, India still has elections and those elections are meaningful. But Modi has so effectively clamped down on the other pillars of democracy that I would not consider India a full democracy. Tell us more about Narendra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP. What do they stand for and what have they done for India over the last decade? Narendra Modi stands for both economic development and Hindu nationalism. When Modi was first elected in 2014 he was the first Indian prime minister to come to power on an openly Hindu nationalist agenda. He put Hindu national identity at the center of his campaign in a way that no Indian prime minister had done before. Over the last decade while Modi has been in power there has been a greater focus on revitalizing infrastructure and key economic changes. Modi tries to take credit for an economy that’s growing quickly, but it is worth noting that it was growing even faster in the decade before he came to power. Modi is very popular domestically, and one of the reasons for this is that he represents, more than perhaps any prime minister in India’s history, a newly assertive India on the world stage. The youngest generation of voters want India to be aspirational on the world stage and Modi very much embodies that. There is an important parallel between Modi and Trump, who are both leaders that capitalize on the status anxiety of a formally dominant social group. For Trump, that’s a white, male social group. For Modi, that’s the top caste groups who have felt threatened by caste-based affirmative action codified in the Indian constitution, which give lower caste groups privileged access to educational institutions and government employment. Over time, as these lower-status groups got more politically assertive, the previously dominant groups experiencing similar status anxiety voted for a populist nationalist leader reprising those status hierarchies. How have Modi and the BJP attacked democratic norms and harassed political opposition? There are so many examples which together paint a broad picture of a state being used to repress political competition. Many bureaucrats will speak of an overwhelming concentration of power in the prime minister’s office which has de-professionalized the state. Changes in the criminal code that makes it more difficult to get legal representation and redress if the government charges individuals with a crime. The Supreme Court has voted with the government on almost every major political issue. And virtually all major television stations have been captured to such an extent that you will be hard-pressed to find a major television station making a serious critique of the government. Overall these examples demonstrate how the Modi government is using the power of incumbency to tilt the chess board quite strongly away from opposition forces. Trump famously visited India in 2020 and had a rally with Modi. Do you see similarities between the two leaders? Absolutely, especially along the lines of cult of personality. That’s the clearest point of similarity between the two. People are generally casting their vote for Modi the leader and not the party that Modi represents. Just like Trump, Modi has a cult of personality that he assiduously cultivates through social media, and he has a devoted following. The biggest difference though? In the end, Modi also brings along the BJP and a number of well-organized grassroots based organizations tied to his political project. When Trump goes, what will be left behind? But Modi can count on, by some measurements, the world’s most active social organization to back him. So the Hindu nationalist project will endure because after Modi, the BJP and these social organizations will support whoever succeeds Modi. Let’s talk about the outcome of the elections themselves. What choices could you see an empowered Modi making on the world stage? The larger Modi’s majority is, the more you can expect an assertive foreign policy in which India takes an independent line on key foreign policy issues from the United States. As the United States and China de-link economically, India’s relative importance will increase as a kingmaker. If Modi is assured of a large electoral majority at home, you could see Modi making clearer demands for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, for example. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at pschaefer@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @p_s_schaefer .
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