Modi’s Road to 370

SPEAKING IN LOK SABHA on February 5, Prime Minister Narendra Modi predicted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would win 370 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Modi didn’t just pluck the number 370 out of thin air. The prime minister thinks carefully before making a polit­ical statement. Modi said he wasn’t in the business of mak­ing predictions, but added BJP would win 370 seats and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would win 400.

This was the first time Modi was predicting winning a specific number of seats in a parliamentary election. In the past, he has spoken of winning a majority, never a particular number.

So, why 370? Because it resonates with Article 370, revoked by the Modi government at the beginning of his second term in August 2019? Or, was it a target based on reports BJP’s ground team culls every month?

Five issues will dominate Modi’s electoral campaign over the next three months.

One, liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from the shackles Article 370 of the Constitution bound it by for 69 years.

Two, notification of the 2019 Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) five years after it polarised communities and led to the Shaheen Bagh protest in 2020.

Three, consecration of the Ram Mandir that has unified Hindus across every social and economic class and evoked support from Muslim organisations like the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).

Four, implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in BJP-governed states, following Uttarakhand’s legisla­tion, correcting the imbalance between the codification of Hindu personal law in 1955 and allowing Sharia to contin­ue applying to Muslim personal law.

Five, pledge of making India the third largest economy in the world before the end of Modi’s third term in 2029.

The fifth pledge encompasses a wide array of sub-pledges on the economy, foreign policy and development. As Modi said, the first term was used to fix the ditch he found the economy in, the second term was used to lay a foundation in the ditch, and the third term will be used to build a strong nation on the new foundation for the “next 1,000 years”.

Hyperbole apart, BJP’s combination of development and religion is a winning one. Poverty has clearly fallen in the past 10 years from over 26 per cent in 2014 to 11 per cent today, according to multiple institutions.

Foreign investors are astounded at the rapid pace of in­frastructure growth: airports, sea terminals, highways, bridges, sea links, Metros, and housing. Villages that had never received tap water or last-mile electricity un­der the Congress government or the British colonial ad­ministration now have both. Sanitation has improved. Digitalisation of the economy has enabled small towns to leap over sparse brick-and-mortar infrastructure to join India’s growth story through e-commerce and UPI.

So far, so good. Modi may indeed have 2024 wrapped up. But problems remain. Inequality isn’t falling quickly enough. The affluent 10 per cent— roughly 150 million Indians—lead First World lives. They travel frequently on business and leisure in India and abroad, own cars (71 million collectively on the road in 2023) and two-wheelers (210 million).

The middle-half of the socio-economic

pyramid (750 million Indians) struggles to find well-paid jobs and make ends meet. The real tragedy though lies at the bottom of the pyramid (600 million Indians), many of whom may have escaped absolute pover­ty but live a hand-to-mouth existence.

It is to them that Modi must direct his full attention in his putative third term. Welfare benefits, including free rations to 800 million Indians under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), are necessary till India’s economy grows sufficiently to quadruple nomi­nal per capita income from just under $3,000 currently to $12,000. This requires average annual GDP growth of 8 per cent consistently for over 15 years.

In 1947, India’s GDP was ₹2.70 lakh crore and the popu­lation was 340 million. In 2023-24, Indian GDP is estimated at ₹320 lakh crore and the population at 1.42 billion.

India’s GDP has thus multiplied 120 times between 1947 and 2024; population has grown four times during the same period. Indians today are 30 times better off than they were in 1947 after 190 years of British colonial rule when India’s poverty rate was 80 per cent.

The next 15 years will be decisive. Modi won’t be prime minister at that time but at 88 he will doubtless watch over the plinth he placed on the ditch he inherited in 2014.

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