The Decibel - The stakes of India’s election as Modi seeks third term

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

With nearly one billion eligible voters, India is the world’s biggest democracy. Beginning April 19, with voting staggered over six weeks, they will decide their leader for the next five years. Narendra Modi aims to consolidate power with his third term as prime minister, as a coalition opposition looks to unseat him.Sanjay Ruparelia is an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Jarislowsky Democracy Chair explains why India’s elections matter for democracy – and the balance of power for the rest of the world.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

On Friday, April 19th, India will begin its national election to choose the country's prime minister. With nearly a billion eligible voters, this election is being held in seven phases over the course of 44 days. The current prime minister, Narendra Modi, is up against a coalition of opposition parties. Modi is seeking a third term as he continues to shore up and centralize power. Dr. Sanjay Ruparelia is an associate professor and the Jaroslawski Democracy Chair at Toronto Metropolitan University. He joins us to explain how India has changed under two terms of Modi, the state of the opposition, and what's at stake in the world's biggest election. I'm Mainika Ramanwilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. reasons. One, India matters in the world. It's the most populous country. It's the world's fastest growing economy. Again, just the sheer weight of India in the world, demographically, economically,

politically, it just matters. It's also one of the great experiments in the history of democracy. We sort of think the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and I would call it the Indian Revolution of 1947, independence and the creation of a democracy in really unprecedented historical conditions. It matters for Canada. We have a very long history with India in terms of people-to-people relations over a century. Today, as you probably know, one in five new immigrants is from India and Canada. The largest share of our foreign students, our international students, are from India. In media, in politics, in the academy and the arts, in every walk of Canadian life, many leading figures are from the Indian subcontinent. So when Ottawa unveiled its Indo-Pacific strategy over a year ago, it described India as a linchpin in that strategy to contain what we see as risks and challenges emanating from China.

That was always going to be a complicated relationship to manage. And as we've seen with allegations of a targeted killing on Canadian soil, we've had the biggest diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and New Delhi in decades. And so understanding India well is the prerequisite to managing those relations and improving them. So let's talk about India specifically then. So Narendra Modi has been Prime Minister of India for the last 10 years. That's two terms. He's now running for his third term. How would you describe his time in power? So for 25 years, for a quarter century, India was governed by coalition governments. And Modi's rise broke

that era. It signaled a new phase in the party system and in the politics, because he was a prime minister like India has never seen. He comes from a very humble, lower caste background. He is a bachelor, totally committed to politics. He was very charismatic. I mean, he could really hold the attention of mass rallies. Something about his persona and personality really struck a chord with many Indian voters, particularly those who are younger. So he was a very decisive political actor, somebody who kind of changes the scene. He has become incredibly popular despite setbacks and frustrations and so on under his rule and concerns and worries, but he's still remarkably popular. How much support does Modi currently have in India? Do we know?

Well, it depends on the surveys you look at and what year, but let me give you an example. After the pandemic, India actually suffered a very serious pandemic. Its first wave was terrible. The second wave was catastrophic. Even after that, India suffered its worst recession since independence. Popularity was still over 75, 80% for Modi nationally. They saw him as a decisive political leader, somebody who was bold, who was willing to take risks, even when some of those actions actually may have caused damage or harm and so on. So let's talk about some of the changes that we've seen in India that have happened under Modi. I guess let's start with the Indian economy, Sanjay. What have we seen there?

So Modi came to power promising to modernize the economy. And there were three important planks. One was to expand public infrastructure, roads, ports, airports, electricity, so on and so forth. The second was to create millions of good manufacturing jobs in India. And he wanted to transform India into a digital society, a digital economy. So there were all these modernist flagship schemes called Digital India, Smart Cities, Make in India. So digital technology was at the heart of his economic vision. And what we've seen is actually in his first term, economic growth was actually starting to decline. Private investment was starting to decline. The number of jobs in

the manufacturing sector declined in that first term. But what he did do, and which he got a lot of credit for, was he did expand public infrastructure, which included bank accounts for millions of citizens who previously didn't have bank accounts. He also expanded cash transfers for social entitlements. They were sent to these bank accounts and they were authenticated by a controversial biometric ID program called ADAR. Now, all of these schemes had actually been introduced by the last government, the Congress. But what Modi and his government are very successfully doing is really scaling things up and implementing them. And so, in 2019, when he was reelected with even more votes and a greater number of seats in parliament, the surveys we have suggest that voters, even though the jobs promise had not been met,

even though growth was in decline, economic growth was still growing at 4% or 5% a year, but it wasn't growing at 8% to 10% a year like you promised. They were receiving benefits. And very carefully and cleverly, like a lot of populist politicians are able to do, he was able to stamp these benefits with his own image, his own approval. Like literally, these schemes are called Pradhan Mantri, whatever. Pradhan Mantri meaning the prime minister. So people are associating it with him specifically. That's right. Almost like it's a gift from the prime minister. And the BJP is a very powerful party. It has reportedly over 100 million members, and they reach right down to the grassroots.

It's now the fastest growing large economy in the world. The Indian economy in the last decade has almost doubled in size. It is now ranked the fifth largest economy in the world. The Indian economy in the last decade has almost doubled in size. It is now ranked the fifth largest economy in the world. The stock market is booming, but jobs are not being created, but social welfare benefits have been delivered more effectively. All right. So that's the economic side of things. But Sanjay, what about socially? Like how has Indian society changed under Modi? Right. So India is a multi-religious society. The Congress regime under Nehru and successive administrations were favoring minorities. It's very interesting. The BJP's line was always that India was pseudo-secular. They always had a majoritarian understanding of what it would be

to treat people equally. And so for a long time, they had a number of initiatives that were very important to them, creating temples on disputed sites where mosques stood, removing special privileges for minority communities in the constitution. So for instance, special powers that were given to the state of Jammu Kashmir, which is Muslim majority, introducing a uniform civil code, which would overrun or basically do away with special family laws for minority religious communities. So these are always on its agenda. And what we've seen since 2014, and especially since 2019, is two levels of change. One is socially. A lot of social campaigns that Hindu nationalists have pursued, for instance, in cow protection against the conversion of Dalits and Adivasis to Christianity. They want to reconvert them back to Hinduism, a campaign to stop interreligious relationships or marriages.

So what we've seen is a lot of Hindu nationalist organizations and followers essentially take the law into their own hands to try to impose a new moral code. So we've seen these social campaigns, which have really threatened the fabric of everyday social life in India, because minorities of various kinds feel under pressure. We've also seen legal and constitutional changes, and there's a few that are really important to understand. After the BJP won again in 2019, it annulled an article in the constitution called Article 370, which granted special rights to Jammu and Kashmir. The second thing it did was pass a controversial law, which on the face of it was a humanitarian gesture called the Citizenship Amendment Act, which granted a path to citizenship for migrants

from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh who were fleeing religious persecution. But tellingly, the law excluded Muslims from that path to citizenship. And then most recently, literally a couple of months ago, it's been on their agenda for decades. One of the state governments has introduced a uniform civil code, which would do away with special family laws for minority communities. But the concern has always been that the uniform civil code that the ruling party might push through is based largely on Hindu personal law, and perhaps not the most progressive interpretation of Hindu personal law. We'll be back after this message. So we've talked about Modi and we've talked about his government.

What about the opposition, Sanjay? What is the state of the opposition in India? So the opposition is wide and diverse. The main opposition party is the Congress Party, which ruled India for most of the first few decades. It was out of power, but it came back to power and coalition with other parties. So it still feels around just under 20% of the national vote. The BJP scored 31% in 2014, 37% 2019. India, like Canada, has a winner-take-all system. So the BJP has many, many more seats than the Congress. The Congress is penalized because its vote share is distributed across the country and it falls below a certain threshold. So we've seen this in Canada as well. The NDP has anywhere from 18 to 20% of the vote share, but not nearly as many seats in parliament.

So that's what's penalized the Congress. The number of parties in India is extraordinary. How many are we talking? In the range of 25 to 35 parties in parliament. So the vote for the opposition is splintered across many parties. So the way to think about it is the BJP won 31% of the vote in 2014. That means two thirds of the country voted for another party, but it voted for many other parties. In 2019, the BJP won 37% of the vote. So still almost two thirds of the country is voting for another party. But again, it's splintered across many parties. So the BJP is dominant because it's at least twice as popular as a Congress and many times

more popular than any other party. So what we see is the vote is fragmented across many parties. And so what they have to do is they have to come together in an alliance. And they've struggled to do that. They've tried. They've tried to create a coalition, right? But it hasn't worked out. That's right. They've created a coalition because they really feel an existential threat to themselves, as they rightly should. It's called India, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. It's meant to signal that this is a secular coalition that's dedicated

to the constitution of India, unlike a Hindu nationalist. And so it's been bedeviled by two issues. One is leadership ambitions. The leaders of these different parties have rival claims to who should lead the coalition and should become prime minister if they were to win. The second is that many of these regional parties contest for power in just one state. Imagine the Canadian Federation, and there's 28 states in India, right, as opposed to our provinces. So triple the number of provinces, and then turn many of the provinces into analogs of Quebec. By that, what I mean are culturally distinct, linguistically distinct. So many of these parties contest for power and

are very competitive in their own state. They don't work in other states. The Congress, however, tries to have a presence in all of these states. So one of the disagreements that is happening in this coalition, like previous ones, is there are rival claims about who's more popular. Because to defeat the BJP, you have to put up a single candidate so that you don't splinter the vote. So then you can imagine the discussion is, well that is rallying it is that the BJP is trying to tilt the electoral playing field in ways that are very controversial. This sounds like a really important point here, Sanjay. Is the opposition able to operate freely in India? What's happening there? Yeah, so that is the big story. Since 2014, we've had two national elections and we have many state elections, so 28 states that are going to the polls. The opposition has won and displaced the ruling

party in quite a few. So you do have a transfer of power at the state level. But what we have also seen the BJP do is tilt the playing field in lots of ways. And they've done it through a number of mechanisms using investigative agencies of the state to pursue alleged cases against opposition politicians for allegedly violating some law, usually tax law or financial contributions of some kind. And what we've also seen is a lot of evidence showing that a lot of these politicians, if they're willing to cross over to the BJP side, suddenly these cases disappear. So there's a sense in which the investigative agencies of the state are being used to coerce politicians to adopt a line that's favorable to the ruling party. So there are a number of maneuvers that are taking place that are creating an unequal playing field before the election takes

place. So the election itself may be free and fair on the day, but there are concerns in the run-up to the election whether people can campaign. Another very popular opposition party leader, the chief minister of the state of Delhi, has just been arrested, again, on alleged financial irregularities. I think many people would agree that there's been growing illiberalism in India over the last decade. Again, like in many other democracies, when you look at the United States, you could look at Brazil, you could look at Turkey, you could look at Israel, the list goes on. Up until now, you could say the opposition has a chance to defeat the ruling party in the States, and presumably at the center as well. That's suddenly something that people are now deeply concerned about. So given all of that, Sanjay, how would you describe the state of India's democracy then?

It is facing severe challenges right now. International surveys have downgraded India's standing in democracy league tables in the last 10 years. The Indian government, of course, doesn't take this kindly. But even observers of India of longstanding have been really concerned about the erosion of civil liberties in India, the decline of space for criticism and dissent and opposition in civil society. But because India is the largest, because it has such symbolic power, I think we need to pay more attention to it.

So if Modi were to be reelected, if he does win in the spring election, what does that mean for India? And I guess also, what kind of message does that send to the rest of the world as well? So the BJP has been the dominant party in India for the last decade. If Modi wins in 2024, many observers would say that now we've entered a really hegemonic phase of Hindu nationalism in India. And if Mr. Modi wins, we're going to see a deepening intensity and acceleration of a Hindu nationalist agenda. It also sends a signal to the world that a strongman leader can be elected through the vote and then be rewarded by the populace at large. And that will send a signal to others that this is something that can be done. And I think the stakes are really high because the international order is going through unprecedented shifts with the relative decline of the West, the rise of China and other powers in the South. India was always seen as a counterpoint to China. And many Indo-Pacific strategies in the West are predicated on India being its key ally.

But the world is getting messier. And if Modi were to win again, it's going to be very challenging for India and it's going to be very challenging for other countries as well to recalibrate their relationship with India to see how can you pursue areas of common interest and mutual concern, public health, climate change, the state of the global economy, while shoring up all of our democracies, which are facing challenges everywhere. Just very lastly, let me ask you specifically about Canada then, Sanjay. We touched on how strained Canada's relationship with India has recently been. If Modi is re-elected,

what does that mean for Canada's relationship with India going forward? Canada has to recalibrate its relationship with India, regardless of whether Mr. Modi wins or not. I think there've been a number of strains in the Indo-Canadian relationship. The Punjab question, the Sikh separatist question has bedeviled Indo-Canadian relations for decades. And I think this is something that whatever government comes to power in New Delhi, and whatever government comes to power in Ottawa in the next couple of years, I mean, there's a lot of spade work to be done. Some of the tensions that we've seen in the last year are definitely exacerbated by a disagreement or very contrasting worldviews between a Hindu nationalist prime minister,

for instance, and a liberal prime minister. But there are deeper tensions at play that go beyond the parties. India sees itself as a great power in the making. Canada is going to have to adjust its relationship with India and find a new modus vivendi, regardless of who comes to power. It's going to take a much greater effort to understand, you know, India and all of its complexities in many policy domains. Sanjay, thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through this today. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. This episode was produced by our intern, Manjot Singh. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is

our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.