India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the crowd after his party won the state assembly elections in the Uttar Pradesh state, at the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) headquarter, in New Delhi, on March 10.ANUSHREE FADNAVIS/Reuters
Sanjay Ruparelia is the Jarislowsky Democracy Chair at Ryerson University.
The five state elections that recently concluded in India confirmed the deepening political dominance of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – even as its ideological hegemony, mishandling of the economy and mounting geopolitical dilemmas pose growing risks for the world’s largest democracy.
The BJP, which has governed the country since 2014, returned to power in four of these states. The most significant was Uttar Pradesh, the largest in the union with a population that exceeds 200 million. Basking in victory, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already projected his BJP to win the 2024 general election.
Three factors underpin its electoral performance.
First, notwithstanding the emphatic victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab, opposition parties could not match the superior organizational muscle, financial resources and media dominance of the BJP. In a political culture that increasingly lionizes dominant leaders, none compare to the Prime Minister.
Second, the BJP delivered various social benefits to households, from food rations and direct cash transfers to cooking gas cylinders, and branded them as gifts from Mr. Modi. Some analysts believe that led a shift in the female vote toward the BJP, reversing the propensity of women historically to favour other parties.
Finally, the BJP continued to polarize the electorate along religious lines. Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a former monk who champions Hindu supremacism, routinely stigmatizes Muslims as terrorists and opposition parties as anti-national forces. His divisive claim that 80 per cent of Uttar Pradesh supported the BJP implied that only Muslims, who comprise 20 per cent of its population, supported the opposition. (In reality, the BJP only received about 41 per cent of the popular vote in the state.)
While hate speech has risen dramatically in recent years, the government stopped collecting data on hate crimes in 2017, making it impossible to know their exact numbers.
This religious polarization reflects a wider suppression of civil liberties, media freedoms and political rights over the past decade. The use of security laws and new surveillance technology to criminalize dissent rarely leads to convictions. But prominent social activists are languishing in detention without bail. A strong plurality of voters increasingly define political authority and state power in terms of democratic majoritarianism and raw coercion.
Yet, the BJP’s electoral prowess cannot hide its disappointing economic record. With its Make in India campaign, the BJP vowed to boost domestic arms production, create 100 million jobs in manufacturing by 2022 and increase its share of GDP from 15 per cent to 25 per cent by 2025. And infrastructure has improved, notably the expansion of highways, renewable energy and bank accounts for the poor.
But annual economic growth has declined, from roughly 8 per cent in 2016-17 to 4 per cent by 2019-20. Private investment and domestic consumption have steadily fallen. The ratio of manufacturing to GDP has barely improved, while its share of workers nearly halved between 2016-17 and 2020-21, from 51 million to 27 million. Youth participation in the labour market has actually declined. India’s demographic advantage risks turning into a nightmare.
The government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated these trends. A brutal lockdown stranded millions of migrant workers during India’s first wave. The premature lifting of public-health protocols and delayed mass vaccination unleashed a brutal second wave. The economy contracted 6 per cent in 2020-21.
Since then, an estimated 25 million people have lost their jobs, while more than 75 million have fallen into poverty. The medical journal The Lancet estimated that India has suffered more than four million cumulative excess deaths from COVID-19 between January, 2020, and December, 2021, the highest in the world. India’s economic growth is expected to lead the world this year, but it would largely return the economy to its prepandemic size.
Lastly, India’s geopolitical ambitions face growing constraints. Given its traditional defence of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, New Delhi opposes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But its decision to abstain in recent UN votes condemning Russia has disconcerted observers in many quarters. Several factors drive the Indian government’s position, from persistent qualms about the post-Second World War international order defined by Western powers (given their own role in subverting governments and fomenting wars since 1945) to continuing reliance on Russian armaments.
The situation at the Sino-Indian border, which saw violent clashes two summers ago, also remains tense, leading to concerns in New Delhi about Russia and China’s tightening ties. Washington acknowledges its security dilemma, but reports that India will increase its imports of Russian oil will seriously test New Delhi’s balancing act with the U.S.
The BJP vowed to turn India into a great power. But these geopolitical dilemmas, on the back of its democratic backsliding and faltering economic transformation, have lessened the country’s strategic autonomy.
Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.