India: Electoral Lesson for Victorious Modi

The opening of the polls in India at the end of a grueling election process led to a poor result for outgoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi; great for Indians showing their commitment to democracy; great for the world’s perspective, especially for those countries that still have to vote in this very long election year: democracy, wherever it takes root, is hard to eradicate.

640 million Indians voted, 66 percent of those eligible to vote: Hindus, Muslims, Christians, upper castes, lower castes and Dalits, casteless, at the end of a divisive election campaign that reached even the remotest millions of villages scattered across the subcontinent. Long lines of people waited patiently under the terrible heat wave. A result that makes European voters, who have just renewed the European Parliament with negligible percentages, pale and even a little ashamed: a real decline in the democratic process.

What was it like? Modi, the undisputed leader of the BJP party, which is the largest political grouping not only in India but also in the world, with 180 million members, gets his third mandate, as only Jawahrial Nehru, the father of the country, did before him. But for Modi, that was the only good news. In fact, having failed to win 400 seats in the new Parliament, the Lok Sabha – as predicted by the whole colorful universe of opinion polls – got 292, barely enough for a slim majority, very far from an absolute majority. A diverse coalition of opposition forces with a hard-to-pronounce name, but whose acronym, INDIA, impressed voters, emerges victorious with 232 mandates. The revitalized Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi, the sixth generation of the dynastic party, achieved an important victory. If it was unable to create a unified profile, it would lose its relevance. However, it has yet to demonstrate that it can move from “against” to “for.” The road ahead of it is long and bumpy.

More than the victory of the I.N.D.I.A. it was the defeat of the BJP and the Modi Raj, the idea of rebuilding India on a national-religious basis. We don’t like hyperbole, but it’s hard not to see this as a rout for the Prime Minister. Modi and his party have lost ground everywhere, starting with their natural constituencies, the states of the so-called Hindi belt, the states of the North, the less developed states like Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of 240 million people. In Varanasi, where Modi was running, his voter base has shrunk from 500,000 votes in the previous election to 150,000. And that’s not all: 20 government cabinet ministers lost their seats, and the BJP even lost in Ayodya, where the Prime Minister inaugurated a temple of God Ram in February last year, after the previously standing mosque was leveled with the ground. In this district, the seat went to a Dalit.

Traditionally, Indian politics has oscillated between two major themes that define its profile: religious identity and caste. Modi chose to focus on the former, in a country with a thousand aspects, countless ethnicities and religions, and he lost. The grand plan, as he called it, was to make India an entirely Hindu nation, as Mohammad Jinnah had done with Pakistan in 1947, basing it on Islamism.

Calling a referendum on himself – “trusting Modi’s assurances” – building an election campaign on polarization, anti-Muslim propaganda, and the cult of self – one nation, one leader – has failed. The son of a tea seller, hailing from a humble oil-pressing caste, felt obligated to restore India to its greatness, stolen, as he repeated at rallies, by Mughal domination, by colonialism, by federalism. He boasted that he was not a biological man, but a messenger of God and his high priest.

In the previous two mandates, Modi has gradually undermined the foundations of a continental country in which the word “kal” means both yesterday and tomorrow, reminiscent of Orwell’s novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future.” In effect, Modi repeated the mistakes of Indira Gandhi, who in 1975 suspended the Constitution for 21 months and in 1977 lost not only the election but also her seat and was assassinated in 1984. By undermining the foundations of secular India, the government was moving towards a form of illiberal democracy with no respect for the separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, and freedom of the press.

The concentration of power has served Modi well as a launching pad for the Indian elephant that has risen to the top levels of the global economy. But it has not curbed inflation, it has not created the number of jobs needed for a population with a median age of 27-28, and it has not narrowed the inequality gap. Modi’s plan for this election was to mark the transition to the second phase of centralization in an anti-federalist vein, bringing the rebellious and more developed southern states under BJP control, including Talangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, where India’s Silicon Valleys are thriving. In short, create a national identity, based on Hindu supremacy, and change the Constitution on that basis. However, Indians have demonstrated that they want to remain faithful: the old saying that “religion matters less than what you put on your plate” has also proved true for India. And Indians want to find prosperity on their plate because they have too much identity, and it’s as colorful as elegant saris, traditional women’s clothing. And the 250 million untouchables, those once called outcasts who feared losing access to privileged quotas in government jobs, and the 200 million discriminated against Muslims are an integral part of this colorful identity.

So, now what? Modi was sworn in on June 9, beginning his third term, but the search for value will last for months, as strong regional parties raise the price to secure the BJP party’s indispensable cooperation. The support of Naidu and Bihar, Chief Ministers of Andra Pradesh and Bihar, respectively, will be vital to governability: about thirty seats between them, but with a well-known history of fluctuations in recent decades…

Will Modi be able to overcome his limitations as a polarizer and make the necessary compromises that will have to keep his coalition government on its toes? He’s not sure, he’s not a man for all time. Modi, first as Chief Minister of Gujarat since 2001 and then as prime minister since 2014, has never found himself in such a situation, even if it is premature to talk about the end of the cycle. It’s also too early to name any successors, none of whom have the level of a designated right-hand man. Among the most popular is authoritarian Home Minister Amit Shah, a BJP strategist and close to the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Union of Voluntary Servants of the Motherland – ed.), an ideological rather than political movement that acts as an anchor for Modi’s party. Next to him is External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the architect of independent foreign policy who makes choices only on the basis of national interest, and for this reason he is being courted by both the West and Russia. Thus, India is stepping into a phase of political instability, which, however, will also lay the foundations for a more balanced political grammar and more inclusive economic development.

What about the economy? The significance of the Mumbai Stock Exchange’s fall after the election is relative, with the price list actually recovering its value within 24 hours, taking into account the Goldman Sachs forecast: by 2075, India will be the second largest economy in the world with 53,000 trillion dollars (today it is fifth with 4000 trillion), not forgetting that in a decade the Indian middle class will number 400 million people. The guidelines will change, and there will be more emphasis on the trimurti (triad – ed.): unemployment, inflation, inequality. Moreover, the fact that Modi now has to negotiate with coalition partners, with a reinvigorated opposition playing a watchdog role in Parliament, will prevent unilateral measures from being taken and may instead promote necessary agrarian and labor market reforms. Rather, Modi faces a dilemma: if he increases welfare, there will be less availability for aggressive infrastructure programs (ports, airports, highways), which are the magnet that attracts international investment, which in turn fuels the economic boom. Short- or long-term outlook: if those who depend on social security do not have the benefits of development, then stagnation sets in in a country where a billion people are of working age, but only 430 million have permanent jobs – 50 percent of graduates are unemployed, while others float in what is modestly called the informal economy.

There will be substantial continuity in foreign policy: history and geography will remain decisive. This was already evident from Modi’s first foreign visit after his re-election – to Moscow, where he received a warm embrace from Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Modi’s goal is the goal of every ruling class in India: to keep all doors open. With Moscow selling New Delhi much of the oil that Europe no longer buys, Modi makes it clear that China is not Putin’s only interlocutor and presents himself as the leader of the Global South, increasingly capable of changing global dynamics, for whom Moscow is seeking to become an increasingly skilled and active interlocutor. Putin breaks international isolation, and Modi prevents Moscow from falling further behind Beijing: it’s a win-win situation for both. It is useless for the West to harbor any illusions: balancing and the frantic search for national interest is embedded in the DNA of Indian foreign policy. One more time: India shares interests, not values, with the West.

India is trustworthy. We have already recalled in a previous article an old aphorism by author Garcharan Das: “India grows at night.” That’s the way it’s going to be this time. In this, Indians are like Italians: if you let them do it, they give it their best. Many observers praise leaders of developing countries because they make decisions. But the common man in India seems to instinctively understand that pluralism, solidarity, and diversity are preferable in the long run and has demonstrated that they want to remain the democracy they have known since 1947: they do not want an autocratic regime like China’s. In India, growth and freedom feed each other, they are not alternatives.