Spare Indian Democracy Please

THE FACTS OF the 2024 General Election are now clear even if interpretations for the results have been muddled, deliberately. This is especially so at the intellectual level where an inability to understand the turn of events since 2014 has been compounded by hostility towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A class of intellectuals—Indian or Indians in the West—have continued to inform the Western press and its representatives on the “truths about India”. Lack of directly gathered information has been compounded by misinterpretation, making India a ‘black box’ for this class of persons: clichés like “authoritarianism,” “democratic backsliding”, and “charisma” have functioned as ‘explanations’ for more than a decade now and they are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This even as ground realities remain beyond the comprehension of the Western press and intellectuals. The choices made by Indian voters and their reasons don’t really matter in understanding political outcomes.

A comparison with the previous General Elections shows that BJP’s vote share fell from 37.7 per cent in 2019 to 36.56 per cent. This negative swing of 1.14 percentage points led to the party getting 63 fewer seats in 2024. At the instrumental level of explanation, it is the design of the electoral system—first past the post—that leads to such large swings with even a relatively small change in the vote share. At the aggregate level, this can serve as an ‘explanation’ but the core of the story lies in the localised effects that have hit BJP. This is not surprising: After 10 years of continuous run in government, a degree of unhappiness can creep into any political system, and certainly so in a democracy as vibrant and noisy as the Indian one.

None of these localised factors make the cut at the ‘intellectual’ level. There the dominant tropes are how “the aura of invincibility” is gone or how the prime minister has been “cut to size”. These phrases have been used on earlier occasions as well, such as in November 2021 when the government was forced to roll back the three laws on agricultural reforms. The expression used at that time was “end of omnipotence”. The reality is that in a democracy, and particularly one endowed with multiple veto points such as India, the idea of omnipotence is more a political slur than an actual description of what goes on in the political system.

Where do these ideas and the inability to understand Indian politics come from? Schematically, these ideas are generated from a two-step process followed by a feedback loop between the two levels. The first level is a direct comparison between Western democracies and the Indian one. This is as if the Indian variant has to conform closely to the Western one. The second step is to use this ‘received wisdom’ and give it an Indian garnish. Thereafter, a degree of looping follows between the two steps, a process that leads to some strange conclusions.

When Narendra Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, the dominant explanation was based on the shortcomings and venality of the previous government. Commentary on BJP specifically was about its organisational prowess and, occasionally, worries about its alleged communalism. At that stage (from 2014-17) the expression “authoritarianism” was used rarely. Then came 2016 and Donald Trump’s unexpected victory. This was followed by the emergence of anti-system parties in Europe and their gradual strengthening there. Most Western commentators, and more so their Indian counterparts, wondered how could India be immune from what transpired in the West. If democracy was under threat everywhere, how would India be an exception?

These ‘fears’ were confirmed when BJP won a second consecutive term on its own in 2019. This sort of single-party majority had not been seen since 1984 and a back-to-back win by a party on its own was last witnessed in the 1970s. Analysts began talking about India’s transition to a “populist and authoritarian” system. It is a different matter that Indian politics was as prosaic as it al­ways had been. BJP continued to win and lose elections at the state level regularly. It was also a known fact that BJP was more successful when it was a challenger party and less so when it was an incumbent one. At some point, these trends were likely to reach the national level as well. They did, partially, in 2024.

The result is that these claims are just a matter of convenience. In the days up to the declaration of results, commentary obsessively focused on the “end of democracy” in India if BJP were to win a third consecutive term on its own. But once the results poured in, the refrain was that India’s democracy had been saved, for now. All within a span of 24 hours between June 4 and 5, 2024. More than explanation, these wild swings proved to be the stuff of mirth.

Are there markers that distinguish the two Modi govern­ments from the ones before it? At one level, there indeed are many differences. For one, state capacity has gone up manifold in the past 10 years. For another, the delivery of services and goods has been far more effective and efficient than they were under any previous government. For yet another one, many insurgen­cies have been quelled and a large number of separatist organisa­tions, especially in the North-East, have signed peace agreements.

Yet, for all these differences, the Modi government has conformed to what can be called the iron law of the Indian political economy: “welfare measures”, or more bluntly, economic populism has continued unabated. A significant frac­tion of budgetary resources continues to be devoted to welfare schemes even if this spending is much less prone to corruption and leakages. Back in 2014, both the opponents and supporters of the new Modi government had thought this spending would come to an end. Those opposed to Modi thought his government would veer towards “neoliberalism” and reduce welfare spending, while those at the free-markets end, too, thought these expenditures would be drastically curtailed. In the event, none of this came to pass: social sector spending has remained a pillar of the BJP government.

But none of this has cut ice with most intellectuals who latched on to another ground for castigating the BJP government. This was based on the so-called Muslim question where it was ar­gued that Modi would initiate “anti-Muslim measures” and that would boost political support for him. This, too, proved to have no substance. A report issued by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (PM-EAC), ‘A Secular Democracy in Prac­tice: Objective Assessment of Amenities Programs in India’ (April 2023) showed there was no discrimination against minorities in welfare programmes. When one strips away all encrustation, the “Muslim Question” remains the core of ‘explanations’ against Modi and his government.Where does this leave ‘intellectual’ explanations about India’s democracy and its politics? In one word: nowhere. India is a complex and diverse country and this diversity has its costs, but it also has its strengths. What it does not allow is simplistic explanations that are based on Western pre­cepts and conceptual apparatus. 2024 is no different from 2019 or 2014. One is yet to get a reasonable ‘intellectual’ explanation for the Modi phenomenon and BJP’s repeated return to power.

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