Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was elected to a third term in office in June, but his Bharatiya Janata Party failed to win a simple majority in the lower house of Parliament, surprising political observers inside and outside the country.
With the B.J.P. winning only 240 of the 543 seats, far short of the 300 that party members had hoped for, Mr. Modi now leads a coalition government.
India and the Allure of Modi, a panel discussion at the Athens Democracy Forum on Oct. 3, addressed this issue, focusing on the appeal — and the shifting role — of this galvanizing figure and the future of Hindu nationalism that had cemented much of his power.
Ahead of the Democracy conference, two of the panelists, Yamini Aiyar and Maya Tudor, were interviewed by video for their take on Mr. Modi’s future and what it portends for the world’s largest democracy and for other democracies facing elections. Ms. Aiyar is a visiting senior fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University and Ms. Tudor is the professor of politics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, and a fellow at St. Hilda’s College, both at Oxford University. The panel was moderated by Jyoti Thottam, senior editor and member of The New York Times editorial board.
The interviews were edited and condensed.
What is the allure of Narendra Modi, and how has it evolved?
MAYA TUDOR Modi came to power in 2014 on the heels of several corruption scandals that had marred the previous governments. He was able to nationalize a strategy he had really honed in the state of Gujarat when he was the chief minister, which was to polarize in places where doing so reaped political dividends.
There is some indication that Modi’s promise of delivery has not been realized. India is growing, but at the same time prices are rising. And I think we saw there were lots of voters in that district who said that, yes, we have a new expensive Hindu temple, but prices are still rising. We still don’t have a great deal of jobs. And bread and butter concerns will trump all of that with time. And that’s what we saw in the most recent election, that some of that allure, some of that golden sheen, has begun to dull a bit.
YAMINI AIYAR Modi is, as all successful politicians are, an extremely charismatic leader — positioning himself as a grass-roots leader, someone from a relatively deprived caste community and presenting himself as an alternative to the elite. The second aspect of his appeal has a lot to do with how he also positioned himself as a strongman leader, but a kind of aspirational oriented strongman leader. Modi very effectively deployed a language of opportunity, of aspirations, of looking to the future, which is very different for Indian politics.
Modi is an extremely clever politician. And while he has picked up from the populist playbook from across the world in terms of how he deals with dissent, how he deals with political opposition, he has also been very effective in deploying the cult of his personality and seeking legitimization with voters.
One of the tools he uses for a country like India at our stage of development has been welfare politics and welfare schemes. He’s very effectively used technology to build welfare schemes through what we call in India direct benefit transfers, which are effectively cash transfers. And what he’s been able to do is to use that as a way of building a direct, emotive connection with voters.
Is there a sense that India’s democracy, since Modi didn’t do a power grab, has a bit of hope?
TUDOR Absolutely there is. I think there’s a big sense in India that something has changed. I wrote an article in the Journal of Democracy titled “Why India’s Democracy Is Dying” and I asked if this can be reversed. And yes, it can be. The key to reversing it will be a political party that develops genuine grass-roots reach that is not the B.J.P. because you need an organization that can mount a systematic challenge to the B.J.P. And for many years, it looked like that simply didn’t exist in India.
It’s also worth stepping back and thinking about what is happening to global democracy and how India epitomizes that. Elections are just one pillar of democracy, and that’s a really important point because the way that democracy is dying around the globe today is not through tanks rolling in the streets and military generals grabbing governments, or through leaders who come to power and cancel elections. Democracy doesn’t die with a bang right now. It’s eroding quietly and slowly.
But the real ray of hope in India is that it has not come to the point where there is a supermajority in Parliament, which, of course, the Modi government was actively pursuing and which would have allowed it to change the Constitution. I think that many people are breathing a real sigh of relief and feel that Indian democracy is in safer territory.
Tell me more about that sigh of relief.
TUDOR Society’s ability to ask probing questions — to raise them and to debate them — that kind of deliberation, as well as the kind of rights and forums and political opposition that enables those questions, is the lifeblood of democracy. Note these rights matter principally when individuals oppose the existing government, because if you’re simply in favor of what the government is doing, then your rights are typically protected. It’s when you are dissenting that the right to speech and assembly really needs to be protected. The partially realized hope is that these rights are once again more protected — both because the coalition constrains the government, but so too do other parties and other state institutions who are starting to timidly reassert a little bit of independence.
Is Modi respecting the process of democracy?
AIYAR Yes he is, but it is more complex than that. The election campaign did not start on a level playing field. In March, every legitimate and not-so-legitimate step was taken to ensure total dominance. And that included freezing accounts of the [Indian] National Congress party and putting senior opposition political leaders in jail. Criminal cases were brought against opposition politicians, curbing dissent of independent voices, as well as complete and total control of mainstream media. All of these were elements of why several of us have argued that democracy was backsliding.
How was this election different for India?
AIYAR I think a really important element of this election was the role of social media. When there was total control of mainstream media, it was social media that pried open spaces for those who were looking for alternative voices. And that played a role in building the narrative that supported an alternative idea or at least reminded voters of some of the challenges of excessive dominance of a single authoritarian — or close to — an authoritarian party.
A politician in India once said to a colleague of mine, “I don’t really worry about inequality. I worry about poverty alleviation. I want all boats to be lifted.” Sure, all capitalism will raise all boats, but if you don’t put checks and balances on its more pernicious aspects, the vast gap between the boats of those that were already rising and the boats of those that are risen have serious implications for the kind of society we are building and the kind of politics that it then enables.
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