India will fight
as one.
India will win
as one.
India
home to the world’s biggest election.
1.3 billion people
people 900 million eligible voters were voting lasts for more than a month
and happens at more than a million polling stations across the country.
The scale of what's happening is huge.
But why does it matter?
What's at stake?
And who might be the next leader of one of the most important nuclear powers in the world?
India is a republic that means everyone gets a vote
it has a parliament that means the political party that wins the most seats
picks a prime minister who runs the country there are literally thousands of
political parties but to get a sense of who might be the next prime minister in
2019 we'll looking at the two frontrunners the current Prime Minister
Narendra Modi's party is the Bharatiya Janta Party or the BJP the guy with the
best chance of pushing him out is the leader of the Indian National Congress
or a Congress party Rahul Gandhi no relation to Mahatma if the BJP has been
politically divisive the Congress party is campaigning on the idea of bringing
everyone back together but we have to start with Modi he's been in charge for
five years with a majority in parliament Modi came to power promising to stamp
out corruption create jobs and boost the economy but he's come up a little short
India's economy hasn't stopped growing but it hasn't met expectations that
people had of candidate Modi in 2014 and Prime Minister Modi has done a few
things that could cost him votes this time a few years after he took over Modi
demonetised the Indian rupee a government scheme to take big bills 500
and 1000 rupee notes out of circulation it was a plan to stop bribery corruption
and counterfeiting but the timeline was so tight and the process so unplanned
that not everyone got to swap out their notes at the bank
overall analysts say the whole thing actually
hurt the economy and caused more unemployment.
In the economic domain I think one of his big initiatives
which is called monetisation has also led to a lot of turbulence and
particularly those at the lowest end of the socio-economic ladder
were hit very badly.
Farming an industry that employs more than half of the
country's workforce was hit hardest this year that could mean a lot of angry
voters unemployment is a big problem too especially among young people the
government is trying to keep a lid on official numbers but some reports
suggest that India's unemployment jumped in the last few years to more than 6
percent that's the highest it's been in 45 years the BJP has promised to invest
nearly 1.5 trillion dollars on infrastructure projects something Modi
says will help create jobs for millions of young people in the years to come
now you can't talk about Modi without talking about Hindutva a nationalist
ideology that puts Hindus at the top of the pecking order in India nearly 80% of
the country is Hindu and even though minorities account for hundreds of
millions of people the BJP has emboldened Hindu nationalists and given
oxygen to some of the most extreme viewpoints in the country and minority
communities have often paid the price for it some with their lives
I think mr. Modi made no bones about the fact, or the BJP has made
absolutely no bones about the fact that this is a party of Hindus this is a
Hindutva to our party and and therefore there's a sort of tried everything in
order to make sure that this particular ideology the Hindutva ideology
is mainstreamed in the Indian political discourse and this has implications for
India's minorities Muslims in particular.
It has to be said
violence against minorities has gone up on Modi's watch the government's own data shows that
communal violence went up 28 percent in the years immediately after Modi was
elected one of the ways that's played out on the street is so-called
cow lynchings Hindus consider cows to be sacred and their slaughter is forbidden
in most of the country vigilante mobs have viciously attacked and even beaten
people to death on suspicion of dealing in cow meat victims are mostly Muslims
or Dalits, lower caste Hindus. According to Human Rights Watch report
between May 2015 and December 2018 at least 44 people 36 of them Muslims were killed
across 12 Indian states hundreds of people have also been injured in dozens
of incidents across the country now Modi himself has condemned cow lynchings but
according to Human Rights Watch political leaders of Hindu nationalist
groups including elected BJP officials defended the assaults.
I would say that those people who have
engaged in such acts have interpreted this as the
equivalent of the tacit approval of the political leadership in India and
therefore the impunity the index of impunity has increased.
Demonetisation, unemployment, communal violence
these things might hurt Modi's party at the
polls but what might help is his tough take on you guessed it security when in
doubt the best friend of any leader in trouble is to play the tough guy card
and that's exactly what Modi did when a suicide attack killed 42 paramilitary
troops in indian-administered Kashmir in February India blamed Pakistani back
fighters tensions went up at the border yet again between two nuclear rivals
India carried out an airstrike on Pakistani territory Pakistan shot down
an Indian plane an Indian pilot was taken prisoner and then returned all
this in the space of a few days both sides spun the story their own way but
for Modi it was high stakes military and political drama and he made a meal of it.
Modi has also announced that if reelected his government would strip special rights
from the residents of Indian-administered Kashmir this
includes giving non-residents the ability to buy property there that could
change the demographics of the region and sparked further unrest.
Modi's Kashmir policy and being tough on Pakistan plays perfectly to his base but
it might be a perception versus reality thing because experts say if the goal of
security is to stabilise Modi hasn't actually done so well.
The Indian part of Jammu and Kashmir the violence if you look at the trends in
violence since 2014 when he took charge of the prime ministership in
Delhi it has spiked drastically in many ways
you're also looking at ceasefire violations between India and Pakistan
having gone up so drastically in the last four and a half years.
In the end all that might not matter just looking tough might be enough to get Modi
re-elected and if Narendra Modi is the man with everything to lose in this
election his main rival Rahul Gandhi has everything to gain Gandhi is the son
grandson and great-grandson of Indian Prime Ministers the scion of a political
dynasty the leader of a progressive party controlled by one family the last
time Congress party won his mother was leader and hand-picked the prime
minister so Gandhi is banking on the language of inclusiveness to help him
get his party back on top
Gandhi is promising jobs, healthcare, justice for hate crimes, gender equality
even more military spending but demilitarising
Indian-administered Kashmir focusing instead on dialogue as a pathway to
stability the list goes on all to sell the idea that the Congress' ideology
of celebrating India secularism and diversity instead of demonising
minorities is what the country is all about.
The Congress party has released at least its manifesto and it's a very very
progressive forward-looking manifesto I must say.
But will voters buy what Gandhi is selling?
The Congress as a party has not been able to infuse that kind of
enthusiasm and confidence in the Indian voter that they are a credible alternative.
If Congress does manage to win they'll be inheriting a country
primed for more sectarian violence after all Hindu nationalism has enjoyed
half a decade on the main stage celebrated by a party that leaned into
the things that made Indians different if Modi and the BJP come back to power
it will likely reinforce Hindu nationalists who'll have the chance to push
their ideology for another five years but at the end of the day this election
is probably going to come down to the same thing that elections all over the
world always come down to the economy if you think about it millions of people
living in the world's biggest democracy can't find jobs can't feed their
families can't see a bright future millions are staring down the road
seeing nothing but abject poverty for generations to come so those folks are
probably going to be thinking at the voting booths which one of these guys is
going to help me put food on the table and money in the bank