On April 19, the first phase of India's general election, the 18th election of the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament), was held. This marathon election, which lasts about a month and a half, will determine the direction of India for the next five years. Modi, 73, is widely expected to win the election and begin his third term as prime minister. However, the outside world is worried that under Modi's rule, India will abandon the "non-alignment" policy and quickly turn to the US "Indo-Pacific strategy", which may have a further impact on the regional situation.
India's marathon elections are in full swing
Modi's victory may be a certainty
According to the arrangement, the elections will be divided into seven phases, ending on 1 June. India's general elections are not only extremely time-consuming, they are also extremely expensive. India's 2019 election cost $8.6 billion, and the Center for Media Research predicts that figure will rise significantly to at least $14.4 billion this year.
Election workers inspect electronic voting machines at polling stations before the first phase of the election, in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, April 18. Source: Reuters
The Indian Parliament is bicameral and is divided into the House of Federation (the upper house of parliament) and the Lok Sabha (the lower house of parliament). Lok Sabha elections are held every five years, and the party or coalition of parties that wins a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha elections has the right to form a cabinet. This year's general election in India is contested between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NLD) and the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance, led by the Indian National Congress Party.
It should be pointed out that the Indian elections have also adopted some new methods adapted to national conditions. For example, since a quarter of the population is illiterate, the Election Commission allocates common items such as "ceiling fans, combs and mangoes" to each political party as a symbol to distinguish them. According to the Press Trust of India News Agency, the Election Commission of India said that as of 5 p.m. New Delhi time, the turnout in the parliamentary elections was close to 60 percent.
A poll released in March by Ipsos IndiaBus, an Indian polling agency, showed that Modi's approval rating was as high as 75 percent. If Modi wins this election, he will also become the second Indian leader to be re-elected three times, after India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Indian public opinion generally believes that Modi's third term as prime minister is "almost inevitable", and it is just a matter of winning more and winning less. The BJP campaign team is even optimistic that the BJP is expected to win 370 seats in the Lok Sabha alone, exceeding the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.
Lin Minwang, deputy director of the Center for South Asian Studies at Fudan University, said that on the whole, Modi and the BJP have a great advantage, because the current support rate of public opinion is about 75%, which is quite rare. A BJP victory in this election may not be a suspense, but the BJP may not win as many seats, and it may not be able to reach the 370 seats or even 400 seats that the BJP itself exaggerated.
Modi poses at a campaign rally in Tripura, India, on April 17 Source: Reuters
Why does the BJP have high support ratings?
According to the Indian media, the biggest "signboard" of Modi's support is to develop the economy. A striking figure is that in 2014, when he first came to power, India's economy was the 10th largest in the world, but last year, India had moved five places to the world's fifth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that India will overtake Japan to become the world's fourth-largest economy by 2026. Standard & Poor's believes that India could overtake Germany as the world's third-largest economy as early as 2030.
However, the Press Trust of India believes that Modi's "Make in India" has created a lot of wealth, but the current uneven development is also very prominent. Between 2022 and 2023, India's richest 1% of the population grew in income and wealth share to 22.6% and 40.1%, respectively, reaching an all-time high. The lack of a sense of gain among ordinary people led to a protest that turned into violent clashes in February this year when a large number of farmers in northern India drove tractors to the capital, New Delhi.
Source: Reuters
In addition, the "Make in India" industrialization of India is not as expected, and the country's manufacturing sector will account for only 13% of GDP in 2022, even down 3 percentage points from 16% in 2015. Moreover, Modi's governance, with its distinctly Hindu nationalist character, has torn society apart while gaining the support of more than 80 percent of the country's Hindus.
This line of thinking has also had a negative impact on India's diplomacy. Last year, the assassination of Nijjar, a Canadian, an Indian-origin Sikh leader, in broad daylight sparked outrage in Canada, with the two countries expelling as many as two-thirds of their diplomats from each other.
Lin Minwang told Shenzhen Satellite TV that if Modi is re-elected, the biggest reason is that he has injected more religious colors into India's politics, which will actually affect India's entire democratic political system. As analyzed by some Indian scholars, this Indian general election is the last general election, which means that if Modi and the BJP win more than 370 seats in this Indian general election and occupy more than 2/3 of the seats in parliament, the BJP's advantage will be consolidated from the system, which means that it will be difficult for the opposition parties to oppose in the future.
India abandons "non-alignment"
And then what?
On the other hand, with the help of the "Indo-Pacific" strategy of the United States, India has abandoned the traditional foreign policy of "non-alignment" and quickly turned to the United States, which has also made India a "sweet spot" in the eyes of developed countries. India has not only purchased advanced weapons from the United States on a large scale and developed military ties with Japan, but has also intensified its participation in US-led joint military exercises in an attempt to infect the waters through the "quadrilateral security mechanism" of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. As for China, it has been constantly provoking on border issues and economic cooperation issues, and constantly suppressing the investment of China's IT industry in the country.
Singapore's "Lianhe Zaobao" analysis pointed out that if Modi can be re-elected this time, it is likely that he will continue his foreign policy. Since Modi came to power in 2014, he has gradually deviated from India's cautious diplomacy of "balancing power" to emphasizing "Indian-led" aggressive diplomacy.
It is worth noting that Modi took the initiative to mention the Sino-Indian border issue again in an interview with Newsweek on the eve of the election. He described the differences between the two countries on the issue as "protracted" and said that a stable and peaceful relationship between India and China is important not only for China and India, but for the entire region. As the diplomatic "operator" of the Modi government, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar devotes a special chapter to "the way to get along with China" in his new book "Why Bharata Matters", and criticizes China when referring to China-India relations on many international occasions, while declaring that he wants to change relations with China.
In response, the Chinese Foreign Ministry recently said that healthy and stable China-India relations are in the common interests of both sides and are conducive to peace and development in the region and the world at large. The border issue is not the whole story of China-India relations, and it should be properly managed in its proper position.
Spokesperson Mao Ning pointed out that at present, China and India are maintaining close communication through diplomatic and military channels on resolving issues related to the border situation and have made positive progress. We hope that India and China will work in the same direction, grasp bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, persist in enhancing mutual trust, persist in dialogue and cooperation, and properly handle differences, so as to promote the development of bilateral relations along a sound and stable track.
Author丨Niu Yulong, the chief writer of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News