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Narendra Modi’s two Indias: economic miracle or billionaire’s Raj?

With a third term in sight, the PM has transformed his country but inequality is soaring and his Hindu nationalism is more divisive than ever. Oliver Shah goes in search of the real Modi

Picture caption: With index fingers marked with an indelible ink, supporters of Narendra Modi in Varanasi cast their vote in the final stage of India’s national elections

Oliver Shah
, Varanasi
Sunday June 02 2024, 12.01am, The Sunday Timess

Sitting cross-legged on the top floor of his Sanskrit school in Varanasi, Anil Shastri delights in scrolling through photographs on his phone of himself with Narendra Modi’s siblings and their late mother. He has known the Indian prime minister since he was a young man in the western state of Gujarat, where Modi also grew up and which he ran for more than 12 years as chief minister.
Along with pupils at the school he has just completed an 11-day prayer marathon in aid of Modi’s campaign for a third term in charge of the world’s biggest democracy. The final round of voting in India’s epic six-week general election took place across eight states on Saturday in a record heatwave that had partly been blamed for lower turnout than in the previous two contests. Among the 57 constituencies going to the ballot box was the holy city of Varanasi, Modi’s seat in the populous but impoverished northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
An aggregate of five early exit polls suggested that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance would win about 365 seats in India’s parliament, well above the 272 needed for a majority. The polls put the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance on 142.

However, Modi had set a target of winning at least 400 seats, which would have given him a super-majority. The BJP and the coalition presently have 352 out of 543 seats. Official results will be released on Tuesday.
Asked why he feels so passionately about the need to make Modi India’s longest-serving leader since Jawaharlal Nehru, Shastri, 57, raises a forefinger and answers in English: “Discipline.”

Modi, 73, goes to bed early, wakes early and works all day, Shastri says. He takes decisions quickly — “he doesn’t wait for dessert”. Shastri also worries about a higher birth rate among the Muslim population. He thinks Modi — a strongman who has long made political capital out of undermining India’s biggest minority group — will “protect our Indian culture”.

Picture caption: Anil Shastri at his Gujarat Samaj Sanskrit school in Varanasi

There is another, more prosaic, strand to this voter’s enthusiasm. “Lighting,” he says, again in English. “Development of all the solar lighting.”
Shastri’s eldest son, 19-year-old Bhagyesh, chimes in. He claims Modi has done more for the economy in the past decade than previous leaders did in almost 70 years after independence, mentioning infrastructure projects such as a delayed bullet train from Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s biggest city, to the finance hub of Mumbai. He even uses the phrase “levelling up”.

Picture caption: The Vande Bharat Express, India’s first semi-high-speed train, travels from Delhi to Varanasi in under 10 hours

This is the winning recipe that Modi has refined since he swept to power in 2014 promising India’s 1.4 billion people achhe din, or “good times”.
He has sought to embed a brand of Hindu nationalism that looks back to an era not just before the British Raj but the Muslim conquests of northern India centuries earlier. This year alone he consecrated a Hindu temple on the site of a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya, changed the law to fast-track citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants and warned that his political opponents wanted to redistribute Indians’ wealth to “infiltrators” — a none-too-subtle dog whistle in the same direction.

In a rare intervention his predecessor as prime minister, Manmohan Singh, released a public letter last week accusing him of “indulging in the most vicious form of hate speeches”.
Modi’s government has acquired an increasingly despotic character over the course of its first ten years — raiding the BBC’s offices after it aired a documentary critical of the prime minister and arresting opposition politicians such as the Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, who was freed to noisy effect last month. Although he operates through a tight inner circle that includes the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, and the home minister, Amit Shah, Modi has in many respects turned the BJP into a cult of one man. Its slogan in the elections is Modi ki guarantee — “Modi promises”.

Picture caption: Modi attends the inauguration ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu god
INDIAN PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU/EPA

Through actions such as carrying a red cushion through the new Ram temple in Ayodhya — a role that would previously have been the preserve of the priestly Brahmin caste, not a low-born individual such as Modi — he has even tried to align his image with that of Lord Ram, considered the supreme being by Hindus. With his white beard, impeccable garb and considered manner of speech — he often engages in slow question-and-response exchanges with crowds at rallies — Modi looks and sounds the part of a quasi-religious figurehead. In interviews during the campaign he has declared himself sent by God.
“I am sure he thinks of himself as the absolute chosen one to run this country,” Sugata Srinivasaraju, an author and journalist, says. “The kind of language he uses, the way he walks around, the way he speaks — all this has been completely transformed since 2014.”
The “chosen one” has simultaneously taken credit for the country’s powerful economic growth, driven by massive investment in modern physical and digital infrastructure.

The so-called “India stack”, a digital ID with a government-provided payment interface and data storage service layered on top — has brought 500 million people into the banking system and allowed the state to pay billions of dollars in benefits direct, without leakage to middlemen. (The digital ID, known as Aadhaar, was started by the previous government but embraced by Modi’s.) As a result, even in remote villages you will find stallholders selling coconuts who will take payment via mobile apps such as PhonePe.
The number of airports in India has doubled to 149 in the past decade and the government is building 10,000km of roads a year, including an eight-lane expressway from Delhi to Mumbai. In February Modi’s government announced a record 11.1 trillion rupees (£104 billion) of annual spending on capital projects, more than triple the amount it allocated five years ago.
Yet average economic growth of 5.6 per cent a year between 2014 and 2022, while far stronger than the average of other developing countries, has been weaker than the 6 per cent or higher achieved by past governments since the liberalisation of the economy in 1991. Unemployment is high, especially among young people and women, with only 100 million of the 1 billion workforce in formal jobs.

Picture caption: Women queue to vote in Dharamshala. The gender gap in voter turnout is falling, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

AMARJEET KUMAR SINGH/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES

While the proportion of Indians living in extreme poverty has fallen from 18.7 per cent in 2015 to 12 per cent in 2021, according to World Bank data, inequality has soared. The richest 1 per cent own 40 per cent of the country’s wealth. The top 1 per cent of earners account for 22.6 per cent of all income — the highest number since data going back to the 1920s.
The economists whose report made the claims, including Thomas Piketty, wrote: “The Billionaire Raj headed by India’s modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces.”

At the forefront of this new Raj are Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, and Gautam Adani, another billionaire. These early backers of Modi have seen their wealth multiply by about five and 13 times respectively since he became prime minister, according to figures from Forbes.
Ambani’s Reliance Industries empire includes Jio, the mobile phone company that transformed Indian telecoms and crushed competition in the sector when it launched free voice calls and dirt-cheap data in 2016. Without Ambani’s democratisation of mobile phones, which includes selling a $12 handset with 4G capability, India’s digital revolution might not have happened — at least not at such an astonishing pace.
Adani’s eponymous conglomerate, which came under attack from a hedge fund last year, is the country’s biggest port operator and thermal coal producer. When the government privatised six airports in 2018 after loosening the rules to deepen the pool of potential bidders, Adani Group controversially bought all of them. Ambani and Adani between them control much of India’s media. Adani’s hostile takeover of New Delhi TV (NDTV) last year, which was followed by an exodus of senior journalists, was seen as a watershed moment for media plurality. It was NDTV that reported the first exit polls.
Asim Ali, an independent analyst based in Delhi, argues that what might be dubbed Modinomics — a big state channelling activity through a handful of loyal tycoons — is in keeping with the prime minister’s social populism. “This very small crony network … is how you run a one-man show in a big country,” he says. “Modi, by his nature, is a very authoritarian person. The whole model is based on controlling every aspect of the economy, society, polity. The economic model should be seen along with the political model, which is to build a very authoritarian state where everything goes through the centre.”

Picture caption: Varanasi, in the country’s Hindu heartland, is seen as a symbolic stronghold for Narendra Modi’s party

RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES

Modi’s focus on infrastructure is evident on his home turf. In Varanasi, roads have been widened, street lighting improved and the ghats — or steps — leading down to the river Ganges beautified.

He won the constituency with 56.4 per cent of the vote in 2014 and 63.6 per cent in 2019. Judging by comments from voters streaming out of polling booths he will hold it again comfortably, mostly thanks to these tangible civic efforts. Mahendra Kumar Pathak, a 39-year-old stock market trader, gave a typical response. He said he had voted BJP because “Modi-Ji”, to use his honorific, had “worked on a lot of things — roads, construction”.

But Ali questions whether India’s impressive headline GDP performance truly trickles down. “We have top-heavy economic growth, which is not filtering down to the common masses of the country,” he says. “A big challenge in this election is the economic discontent that’s bubbling up.”

At a rally near Varanasi, Rahul Gandhi — scion of the family that has produced three Indian prime ministers, and leader of the Indian National Congress, the biggest party in an anti-Modi coalition — tells a raucous audience that the prime minister works only for the rich, not the poor.
In the crowd is Vinod Sahani, a taxi driver. He voted for Modi in 2014 but blames the government for increases in his cost of living. Sahani says a litre of petrol has gone from about 70 rupees (66p) a litre in 2014 to more than 100p a litre. “Everything is very expensive,” he says. “Modi’s always saying the wrong thing — every time it’s a different type of talking.”
Modi forged his model for governing in Gujarat. Born in modest circumstances in the town of Vadnagar, where his father had a stall near the railway station, he married as a teenager but left his young wife to devote himself to Hinduism. After a journey that he says took him to monasteries in the Himalayas, he climbed the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, a Hindu nationalist movement, one of whose members assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. Modi was transferred to the BJP, the movement’s political arm. He came to prominence in 1990 when he helped to organise the march that preceded the destruction of Ayodhya’s 16th-century Babri mosque by a Hindu mob two years later.

Picture caption: The ceremony at the Ram temple marks the transformation of an idol into deity, giving Modi the ability to accept prayers

INDIAN PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU/EPA

Modi was made chief minister of Gujarat in late 2001. A few months later at least 59 Hindus were killed returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya. Modi called it a “violent act of terrorism” and was accused of standing by as riots erupted in which more than 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims. He was banned from travelling to America for almost a decade. It was not until 2022 that India’s Supreme Court endorsed an investigation that found he did nothing wrong. Some 31 Muslims were eventually convicted for an arson attack on the pilgrims’ train.
Modi doubled down on his discriminatory rhetoric, describing refugee camps for Muslims who lost their homes in the riots as “baby-making factories”. He found this delivered electoral success: the BJP held Gujarat emphatically in 2007 and 2012. He combined his muscular Hindu-first domestic policies with a pro-business approach, hosting a bi-annual summit, Vibrant Gujarat, and slashing regulations. Among the first to invest were Ambani and Adani. When Modi became prime minister in 2014 he made the flight from Gujarat to Delhi in Adani’s private jet.
Many see Modi’s sniping at India’s 200 million Muslims, who make up 14 per cent of the population, as an attempt to curry favour with Hindu voters in the less educated, poorer and yet more electorally significant north. (Hindus make up about 80 per cent of the total.) Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the two most populous northern states, have double-digit poverty rates but account for 120 of the 543 seats in parliament. That’s only nine seats fewer than all five southern states combined.
The south has benefited from far higher inward investment. As well as Mumbai, international giants such as Amazon and Goldman Sachs have chosen to open offices in affluent and well-educated southern cities such as Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The BJP won none of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu at the previous election. “Modi and his divisive politics are hated here,” says G Sundarrajan, a robotics entrepreneur from the southeastern state’s capital, Chennai. “Whereas we focus on building schools, hospitals, industries, roads, in the northern part of India they focus on building temples and demolishing mosques. The investment climate is better in the southern part of the country because we have no religion in our public spaces. You can’t sit every day and think, ‘Will somebody break my place of worship? Will somebody kill in the name of having beef or pork?’”
The prime minister’s constituency is being racked by just such a dispute. A campaign is under way to move the 17th-century Gyanvapi mosque, which stands next to the Shri Kashi Vishwanath Hindu temple, enlarged by Modi in 2021. Rajesh Shukla, a senior BJP figure who describes himself as an adviser to the campaigners, denies that Islamophobia is at play. “The word ‘Islamophobic’ I think itself was created by a few western writers,” he says.
Abdul Raheem would beg to differ. His family has been weaving silk saris in Varanasi’s Muslim quarter for more than a hundred years. He keeps a framed letter sent by the governor of Bombay to his grandfather in 1959 praising him for “trying to pull the art out from the traditional ruts in which it had got”.

Picture caption: Abdul Raheem, who sells saris, says Varanasi’s weaving trade is in decline

OLIVER SHAH

Raheem says that until 2014 Hindus and Muslims lived like “brothers and sisters”. He says Modi is “injecting poison into every human being” and that his reign has been negative for the city’s weavers. “We are getting more poor,” he says. “Most of the looms are closed.”
For now world leaders and tycoons seem determined to keep ignoring this dark side of Modi’s India. Last year Elon Musk described himself as “a fan of Modi’s” and said that India had “more promise than any large country”. In April the chief executive of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, said Modi had done “an unbelievable job” and criticised western liberals for “lecturing” him.
Smaller companies know they need to toe the line. Kanwal Jeet Jawa, chief executive of the Japanese air-conditioning manufacturer Daikin Industries’ Indian business, says the market is the “most promising and encouraging in the entire world” — in part thanks to the government’s “stable economic policies”.
Those who diverge find themselves backtracking quickly. After the head of Asian Paints made an unguarded comment about trying to find India’s “real GDP” on a call with analysts during the election, the company put out a statement saying he had in no way “meant to question the sanctity of the [official] GDP numbers”.
After a frantic six weeks, relative calm descended on India’s politics this weekend. Modi ended the campaign with a slick photographed and videoed meditation retreat at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial off India’s southern tip. When he emerges, a third term will test whether his idiosyncratic blend of Hindu nationalism and Modinomics can keep the country together.

Read this from The Sunday Times of London - should interest you. Hopefully, the paywall won't prevent you from accessing one article for free, but if it does, LMK, and I'll reproduce it here.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/narendra-modi-india-elections-prime-minister-z3z7nj0vb#main-container