«Athey grew up with golden spoons, I grew up selling tea on train platforms” said o Narendra Modi in the 2014 elections, denouncing the nepotism and corruption of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty that ruled India for decades. Coming from a humble family and from the bowels of Hindu nationalism, Modi defeated his opponents in two consecutive contests, while in a few days he will claim a third term as the Prime Minister of India betting on the card of nationalism, the confrontation with Islam, the rise of the indicators of the economy and in making India a space power by sending an unmanned spacecraft to the Moon.
India, with its 1.43 billion inhabitants, took the title of the world’s most populous country from China last year. The elections are held with a unicameral system, in seven consecutive stages per regions. They start on April 19th and will end on June 1st. 968 million citizens have the right to vote (190 million more than the 2019 elections) and the results will be announced on June 4.
The decline of the Gandhis
Polls predict a comfortable victory for the ruling People’s Party (Bharatiya Janata – BJP) which controls 303 (353 with its allies) of the 543 seats in the outgoing Lower House, while government officials are optimistic that it will now increase its strength to more than 400 MPs. In contrast, the social democratic National Congress Party and its allies (INDIA coalition) are expected to take 150-160 seats, while some opinion polls give them less than 120 seats. In the outgoing parliament, the Congress Party has only 52 seats, after its electoral failures Rahul Gandhi, who not only failed to get the prime ministership but drove the historic party’s ratings to the brink. 54-year-old Rahul is the son of the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (assassinated in 1991), grandson of the former prime minister Indira Gandhi (assassinated in 1984) and his great-grandson Jawaharlal Nehru (first Prime Minister of India). His mother, Sonia Gandhi, of Italian origin, has for decades played an important role in the political life of the country, in the foreground and behind the scenes. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is not related by family to the “father” of India, Mahatma Gandhi. The opposition accuses the government of tactics to exclude Raul Gandhi from political life. His sentence of two years in prison for defamation was finally overturned by the High Court last August.
A defining factor in the 73-year-old Modi’s omnipotence in the country of vast inequalities is his support from the poor nationalist north, which balances his lesser appeal in the rich tolerant south. The most populous states are located in the North and elect a larger number of MPs. Uttar Pradesh, with a population of nearly 240 million, elects 80 MPs and Bihar, with a population of 130 million, 40 MPs. Because of the mountain range running across Central India, the North was introduced to Islam through wars of conquest and its population is more vulnerable to nationalistic religious passions than the South which was introduced to Islam mainly through trade. In order to rouse nationalists, Prime Minister Modi inaugurated a Hindu temple last January in Ayodhya, northern India, on the site of a 16th-century mosque demolished by Hindu fanatics in the bloody riots of 1992.
Nationalist passions, which sometimes reach extreme levels against the Muslim minority (14% of the population) and the Christian (2%), even overshadow the survival struggle of over 100 million over-indebted small farmers. India has made leaps and bounds in industry, trade and services, but farmers are saddled with debt and high interest rates and are killing themselves by the thousands every year. With massive and bloody protests, farmers blocked three of the Modi government’s land reform laws demanding debt relief and guaranteed floor prices (not only for government purchases but also from traders). The Communist Party of India, which is part of the opposition coalition against Modi, plays an important role in the protests.
Scandals and conflicts
The elections are also being held in the shadow of the scandal of party financing with electoral coupons. Business groups, pharmaceutical, construction and mining companies and even a major gaming company have for years bought the vouchers from India’s central bank and given them to politicians to cash in, securing government contracts, preferential treatment and immunity at the central and regional levels. . It was only last February that the Supreme Court banned the practice as unconstitutional. From the investigation so far, it appears that the ruling party took the lion’s share of “donations”, which in total exceed 1.7 billion dollars.
Modi promised to crack down on corruption while at the same time accusing his opponents that, in addition to being “thieves”, they are also national underdogs because in order to oppose him they adopt Pakistan’s arguments in the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir (where parliamentary polls will be held for the first time since the abolition of the region’s limited autonomy by his government in 2019). India and Pakistan, which have gone to war four times and on the brink of conflict as many times over Kashmir, are among the world’s nuclear powers. Despite the extreme poverty that plagues large sections of their populations, each country possesses 160-170 nuclear warheads.
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