Is India a Neo-Populist Disorderer or a potential Orderer?
And are its elections actually free and fair?
On April 19 India starts the six week process of electing a new parliament and new Prime Minister. Like in Hungary or Russia the electoral process will likely amount to something of a coronation of the incumbent, Narendra Modi. Yet as concerns India neutral think tanks like Freedom House or the Carter Center declare that the vote is largely free and fair.
Is this really the case? It is true that a large swath of the Indian electorate love Modi and he has delivered many steps forward economically for many. But simultaneously, hasn’t Modi just used his popularity to consolidate the media and banned his opponents from running? How exactly has Modi and his BJP consolidated a gargantuan amount of power in India and what has he used it for?
To grapple with these questions, much of the geopolitical analysis universe is pivoting their gaze to India. FP is even running a full issue of their magazine focused solely on the country.
Such focus is warranted. India is arguably the world’s only rising great power. As the world’s largest democracy and soon to be third largest economy it is the globe’s most serious aspirant for becoming the 6th permanent member of the UN Security Council. Despite this economic and foreign policy heft, since independence in 1947, India has stridently resisted being aligned with any one particular geopolitical “camp”. It has always wanted to retain its “strategic autonomy” and to avoid being treated as a junior partner to any major superpower. Recently, India has hedged between Ukraine and Russia, btw the BRICS and America, and btw Israel and the Arab World. As a result, India has successfully maintained cordial ties with many of the world’s top powers, but has it done so as an Orderer or as a Disorderer?
To discuss, this thorny issue on this week’s Disorder pod, Alex Hall Hall is joined by Indrani Bagchi – one of India’s most respected foreign policy journalists, a former Associate Editor for the Times of India, and currently Chief Executive Officer of the Ananta Centre.
Alex and Indira discuss India’s approach to Russia, China, the UK, and the Israel-Gaza conflict. At the interview’s conclusion, while trying to Order the Disorder, an incensed Jason butts in with his strong personal hunch that India has much latent ordering potential but that Modi has deliberately squandered it in pursuit of his divisive and disordering neopopulist policies.
Listen here.
How Does India fit in to the work we are doing at the Disorder pod?
Throughout the Podcast series, we’ve been taking a look at individual countries and ORGANIZATIONS which have played an outsize role on the global stage –as traditional Orderers, such as the US, UK, EU, NATO, or G7, though all are struggling in different ways to sustain their global leadership roles; we have also looked at active Disorderers, such as Russia and Iran, which meddle in conflicts around the world and do all they can to spread chaos and “thwart” Western democracies; and we have examined up-and-coming mid-sized players, such as UAE or Saudi Arabia, which sometimes seem to play both sides.
This has included consideration of the members of the newly expanded BRICS+ group.
One of the BRICS most important members is India, a contrarian country which defies easy description or pigeonholing. It is home to one of the world’s great civilisations – the founding place of Buddhism, the centre of Hinduism, and also home to hundreds of millions of Muslims – representing the third largest muslim population in the world; a place of stunning scenery and historic monuments, such as the Taj Mahal; also the world of Bollywood, of cricket, and depending on your perspective fabulous food (Alex thinks so, I less so).
India is surely a great power by virtue of its size, geographical position and rising economic and military clout, not least as one of the world’s declared nuclear powers. It is the world’s largest democracy – and a serious aspirant for becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It has wanted to retain its “strategic autonomy” and not wanted to be seen as a junior partner to any major superpower. But, some critics have argued that this has been a strategy aimed at allowing India to have its cake and eat it too – allowing India to hedge its bets, and not doing enough itself to promote stability in the world.
During the cold war, India positioned itself firmly within the non-aligned movement. As most of its military kit derives from that period, India still maintains a strong defence relationship with Russia, and has refused to condemn Russia explicitly for its invasion of Ukraine – even acting as a conduit for Russian oil to bypass sanctions and reach world markets. But it has also developed an increasingly close security and economic relationship with the US, not least as a way to balance China’s rising influence in the Indo-Pacific.
The US is indeed now India's top trading partner at $130bn in goods and Delhi is Washington's eighth largest trading partner. India is a member of the quadrilateral security dialogue – “the Quad”, with the US, Australia, and Japan – a platform for addressing regional security challenges in the Indo-Pacific – subtext, the threat from rising China. India has historically been a strong supporter of the Palestinians, but has recently flipped the script with Modi developing very close relations with Israel. India also sees itself as an advocate for a multipolar world, and a champion for the Global South.
India is a huge, attractive, and burgeoning consumer market with an expanding middle class, It is also a potential industrial titan in becoming, positioning itself as an alternative to China as a manufacturing hub for the world. Its Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is often described as the world’s most popular leader – with approval ratings regularly in the high 70s or more; and he and his BJP party are strongly favoured to win a third straight term in India’s next elections, which have just been announced as due to take place over seven stages from April 19 to June 1 – These will be the world’s largest general elections in human history, with nearly a billion voters set to exercise their franchise. The main opposition party – Congress – the party of Nehru and the Gandhi family which dominated India’s early years – seems to have completely collapsed and will barely be presenting coherent opposition.
Yet despite his domestic popularity Modi remains a divisive figure both domestically and internationally. Some see him as a Hindu extremist who sided with mobs who attacked Muslims in towns and cities across Gujarat, where he was the then Chief Minister, following a lethal fire supposedly started by Muslims on a train full of Hindu pilgrims in 2002 – a charge he denies. Others say he is an effective, honest administrator who has introduced policies that have boosted development and reduced poverty. The 2002 violence even led to a de facto travel ban being imposed on Modi by the UK, the US and some European nations. This was lifted from 2012, when it became obvious that he was inexorably set to become India’s Prime Minister, and he has since been feted in numerous international visits to Western capitals. But some unease remains about his party’s strong “Hindutva” ideology (”Hindu-ness) – an ideology that seeks to define the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, pluralistic India largely in terms of Hindu values.
Now quoting from Alex Hall Hall,
It's also a place which I got to know fairly well, when I served as Political Counsellor, Head of the Political Section, in the British High Commission in Delhi – the foreign office’s largest overseas embassy – from 2006 to 2007. But you can really only ever hope to scratch the surface of India in one posting – and I always needed expert analysts to help me understand what was going on.
One of those who I got to know during my posting was Indrani Bagchi – who joins us on the Disorder podcast to help us navigate the India of today.
To hear from Indrani and delve deeply into these thorny questions about India’s place in today’s disordered world, please Listen to the pod by clicking here.
For more background on India’s election, Modi’s suppression of dissent, neo-populist consolidation, banning of opposition candidates,
Find out more about India’s wealth income inequality from TIME: https://time.com/6961171/india-british-rule-income-inequality/
Read about Kejriwal’s arrest: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/us-encourages-fair-transparent-process-arrested-indian-opposition-figure-2024-03-25/
For more on India’s election: https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/modi-might-win-but-india-will-lose?utm_campaign=email-post&r=ma03l&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Learn about how Modi’s Neo-Populist consolidation: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-india-report/2024/3/28/indias-media-captured-and-censored
More on the arrest of opposition politicians: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-23/india-elections-why-is-the-opposition-being-arrested
And about the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/looking-to-work-constructively-with-indian-govt-canadian-pm-on-nijjars-killing-5323537
For more on Indira and her think tank: https://anantacentre.in/ceo/
For more on how India’s election is structured: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/worlds-largest-democratic-election-kicking-off-india-108703504