India's longest and most expensive election in nearly 30 years is about to begin.
On April 19, the 18th Lok Sabha (lower house of the Federal Parliament) election will officially begin, which will be held in seven stages and last for 44 days, ending on June 1 and announcing the results on June 4.
More than 2,400 political parties across India are contesting, and about 970 million registered voters will cast their ballots at more than 1 million polling stations, with the election expected to cost 1.2 trillion rupees ($14.4 billion).
India is a federal country, and its parliament is bicameral, divided into the Council of Federation (upper house) and the Lok Sabha (lower house), the Lok Sabha has a total of 545 seats, of which 2 seats are directly designated by the President of India, and the remaining 543 seats are elected by voters. The political party or coalition of parties that wins a majority in the Lok Sabha elections has the right to form a government, and the leader of the majority party generally becomes the prime minister of India.
The general election is dominated by two major coalitions: the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi (BJP) and led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (38 political parties), and the Indian National Congress (India) National Development Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) (26 parties).
Modi has been in power for two terms, and the results of this election will determine whether he can start a third term as prime minister.
01 Full of confidence
At present, the BJP and the NDA coalition have a clear advantage in the election, leading in various polls, and Modi himself is full of confidence.
A poll released by Ipsos IndiaBus on March 5 showed that Modi's approval rating was as high as 75 percent. Indian public opinion generally believes that it is "almost inevitable" that the BJP will win the election and Modi will become prime minister for the third time, but it is just a matter of winning more and winning less. The BJP campaign team is even optimistic that the BJP-led NDA coalition is expected to win 400 seats in the Lok Sabha, and the BJP is expected to win 370 seats, exceeding the two-thirds majority threshold required for constitutional amendments. At present, the Modi team believes that "the outcome has been decided", and has begun to plan for the next term in advance, clearly requiring all departments to formulate a "100-day agenda after re-election" and a "roadmap for the next five years". On April 10, Modi publicly shouted in an interview with the US media, emphasizing that "India-China relations are important and significant, and the two countries should urgently resolve the protracted problems in the border areas in order to eliminate anomalies in bilateral interactions", without the slightest fear that this statement will be attacked by the opposition camp as a "show of weakness to China" and may lead to the loss of votes.
On April 14, the BJP released its "policy platform" called "Sankalp Patra 2024", which painted a "huge pie" for Indian voters and focused on Modi's "vision of leading India to become a developed country in 2047, the 100th anniversary of India's independence." The 2024 Pledge stresses the need to further accelerate infrastructure upgrades, including expanding the high-speed rail network, rolling out "new-age" trains and modern airports, building more highways, and setting out ambitious plans to make India a global manufacturing powerhouse. In addition, Modi pledged to build India into a "commodity nation", a defense manufacturer, a global rail manufacturing hub, a hub for aircraft manufacturing and MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) activities, a shipbuilding base, and a hub for semiconductor, chip manufacturing and biomanufacturing.
02 Where does the confidence come from
First, India's economy has grown rapidly as a result of the Modi government's 10-year tenure with drastic reforms. Since Modi first came to power in May 2014, he has promulgated a wide range of reform measures such as "Toilet Revolution", "Tax Reform", "Currency Scrap Reform", "Prime Minister's Fund", "Digital India", "Make in India", "New India" and "India Alternative", which have deeply shaped India's political culture. At the end of 2023, the BJP won big victories in the parliamentary elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, once again proving Modi's popularity in the "Hindi heartland".
Modi and the BJP team have also focused on breaking down traditional caste barriers in North India by creating the concept of the "New Four Castes" (the poor, the youth, women, and the peasants), vowing to protect the interests of the vulnerable, and countering the traditional caste issues that have been championed by opposition parties such as the Congress. India's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 8.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2023, up from around 6.6% previously expected, according to data released by the Indian government in March. This is the last time India has released GDP data before this year's general election. India's Statistics Department raised its growth forecast for fiscal year 2023-2024 (i.e., April 1, 2023 ~ March 31, 2024) from 7.3% to 7.6%.
Second, the BJP is well versed in "electoral engineering" and has made good use of the "Modi premium" and the advantages of being in power. The BJP has about 180 million members, and its parent organization, the National Volunteer Corps (RSS), has a long history of campaigning for elections, mobilizing a large base of grassroots people to go through the streets and canvass for votes. The BJP is adept at designing election slogans and gaining insight into the psychology of voters. For example, the party has been spreading its slogan of "working together for everyone's growth, with everyone's trust and everyone's efforts" (Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayas), with simple and catchy slogans to capture the hearts and minds of voters. When Prasad, one of the members of the INDIA coalition and the leader of the National People's Party, ridiculed Modi for "having no family", the BJP took advantage of the trend to promote that "1.4 billion Indians are Modi's family" and easily earned a wave of traffic.
The BJP also took advantage of Modi's popularity to portray him as a demigod of "the patron saint of Indian interests", placing portraits of Modi in various scenic spots and areas with more young people in various places across the country for people to take photos and check in.
Third, the BJP focuses on Hindu nationalism and has won the support of nearly 1 billion Hindus in the country.
In the past decade, the two currents of thought "India as a Hindu country" and "pluralistic, unified and secular India" have collided fiercely in India, with the former gradually gaining an overwhelming advantage, and Indian society becoming more and more "Hinduized". The Modi government has spent huge sums of money to build a temple dedicated to Hindu nationalist leaders, and has been constantly rewriting the history of Indian civilization from the perspective of "Hindu identity". Indian primary and secondary school textbooks have omitted the history of the Mughal Empire, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Hindu extremists, and the riots in Gujarat.
In May 2023, Modi's new parliament building was unveiled, which houses a map of the "Great Bharatan Empire," one of the core obsessions of Hindu nationalist forces. At a rally, Bhagwart, the leader of India's National Volunteer Corps, openly declared that India would realize the ideals of the "Great Bharata Empire" in 10-15 years. At the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023, the Modi government officially used the new name "Bharat", emphasizing that the new name is conducive to downplaying India's colonial history and recreating the glorious ancient history and cultural traditions of ancient India.
On January 22 this year, Modi inaugurated a controversial Hindu Rama temple in the northern city of Ayodhya. This Hindu temple was built on the ruins of a mosque. While fervent Hindu nationalism worries some 200 million Muslims and other religious believers in India, it has plunged the whole of India into a euphoria of "Hindu supremacy," especially in an election year.
03 There are many hidden dangers
Regardless of how the Lok Sabha seats are distributed after the election, Indian society will surely further transition to the "BJP system" in an all-round way. Indian scholars generally believe that the "BJP system" has completely replaced the "Congress party system" at present, and the BJP may dominate Indian politics for a long time in the next 30 years, at least until the 100th anniversary of India's independence in 2047.
At the same time, despite the fact that the BJP is "certain to win" in an all-round campaign, the BJP is also trying to prevent a repeat of the 2004 NDA coalition election, which was widely favored before the election and was defeated, given the volatile electoral politics in India. At present, the BJP faces the following challenges: First, there is a gap between Modi's propaganda of "bright economic data" and the sense of public gain. During Modi's second term, inflation and unemployment were high and government debt soared. Over the past seven or eight years, the Modi government has peddled various "Make in India" initiatives, but the share of manufacturing in India's GDP has fallen from 16% in 2015 to 13% in 2022. The IMF has warned that India's total government debt, including federal and local state government debt, could exceed 100% of the country's GDP by fiscal year 2028.
Over the past decade, India's working- and middle-class personal consumption has stagnated in fast-moving consumer goods, entry-level cars, rail travel, and more, and India has fallen short of expectations in attracting Western investment. Recently, Indian farmers have once again "advanced into New Delhi" to pressure the government to increase farmers' incomes. Second, the BJP may encounter some backlash and challenges in southern India.
In Maharashtra, for example, the BJP's allies, the Shiva Army, were divided internally, and some party members set up their own doors, weakening the influence of the NDA coalition in Maharashtra. In Karnataka, despite the fact that the BJP holds 25 of the 28 seats in the state's local council, there have been opposite results in national and local elections. In 2004, Vajpayee's NDA coalition unexpectedly lost the election, mainly because voters in southern India suddenly switched to the Congress party, which caught the ruling NDA coalition off guard in the overwhelming "Shining India" propaganda. Even if Modi is able to start a third term after this election, his governance and reforms are likely to continue to be held hostage by regional parties in South India.
Third, Hindu nationalist fanaticism will pose a great threat to India's social stability. Regardless of the outcome of this election, the accumulation of religious contradictions in India, especially between Hindus and Muslims, will inevitably become a major hidden danger in Indian society.
The issue of religion has always been the "invisible bomb" of Indian society. During the Congress administration, the problem was selectively suppressed and less serious. In the 10 years since the BJP came to power, Indian politicians have often made openly anti-Muslim and anti-secularist remarks, but not only are they not condemned in India, but they have been able to strengthen their political influence and completely break the political norms that have long been followed by Indian society. In recent years, the BJP has launched various Hindu nationalist agendas and promoted the so-called "Four Ones" (one nation-state is Bharat, one is a combination of national and state elections, one language is Hindi, and one religion is Hindu).
Indian critics have pointed out that the reconstruction of the temple of the Hindu god Rama on the site of the Ayodhya Mosque artificially erases the traces of Muslim regimes in India's history and draws "an indelible deep scar" in the hearts of as many as 200 million Indian Muslims.
In December 2023, India's Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Modi government's decision in August 2019 to repeal Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants a high degree of autonomy to the "Jammu and Kashmir region," and downgraded the region to a "Union Territory." Critics in India see the ruling as another ploy by the BJP government to crack down on India's only Muslim-majority region, and that "the removal of the region's high degree of autonomy is a direct pandering to voters in other Hindu-majority states."
In addition to Muslims, there are also contradictions between Hindus and other believers. In May 2023, the Hindu Meitei people of Manipur wanted to be granted the status of a "scheduled tribe" in order to receive preferential treatment in terms of land, loans and job opportunities, sparking protests from the predominantly Christian Kuki. The protests then escalated into mass riots and violent clashes. Indian media estimate that more than 130 people were killed, 200 were injured, 35,000 people were displaced, and 1,700 houses were burned down. Although the unrest in the state has subsided for the time being, there is a risk of violent clashes in the future if the parties to the conflict are unwilling to engage in constructive dialogue on the equitable distribution of resources.
In addition, in recent years, the contradictions between the Indian government and the Sikhs have become increasingly troublesome internationally. After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the original princely states in South Asia were incorporated into India or Pakistan, and the dream of some radical Sikhs to establish a state was shattered, and the "Khalistan Movement" was launched, demanding the autonomy of Punjab in India, and a sizable Sikh community was established in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and other countries. The Indian government views the Khalistan Movement as a terrorist organization and its activists as thorns in its side. In February 2023, the Indian government cut off the network of 27 million people in Punjab in order to capture Sikh leader Amripal Singh. In June 2023, another leader of the Khalistan movement, Hadeep Nijjar, was assassinated in Canada, and a serious diplomatic crisis erupted between India and Canada. In November, federal prosecutors in New York City indicted an Indian official as the mastermind in an attempted assassination attempt in the United States against Sikh leader Gulpatvant Pannon. As a result, new suspicions have emerged in US-India relations.
Some Indian scholars have pointed out that the internationalization of the "Kalistan Movement" is essentially a manifestation of the spread of ethnic contradictions in India overseas, and that the movement is not so much a separatist organization as it shows the anger of the people of Punjab against the poor governance of the BJP government, which has led to the long-term accumulation of religious contradictions.
To sum up, the 2024 Lok Sabha election in India is by no means a routine general election in the ordinary sense. To a certain extent, this election can reflect the direction of India's social ideology, the value orientation and overall tone of its domestic and foreign policies in the next 5-10 years, and whether the world's most populous country can continue to maintain stability.
Source: "Wu Zhi Guan See" WeChat public account
Author: Lan Jianxue
Editor: Hu Liang
[Statement: This number is an official public welfare account to serve the decision-making of governments at all levels, enterprises and institutions, and this article is reprinted for the purpose of conveying more information. If there is a source labeling error or other inaccuracies, please contact us. We will correct it in a timely manner. Thank you]
(The author is Lan Jianxue, director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies.) The original article was published on Xinhuanet, "Wu Zhiguan See" WeChat public account, April 18, 2024)