As he campaigns across India for elections starting Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks about his insatiable ambitions in terms of appetite at the table.
Roofs over heads, water connections, cooking gas cylinders: Modi reads the menu of what he calls the abundant “development” he has brought to India’s poor. But he doesn’t stop there. “What Modi has done so far is just the appetizer,” he said at one stop, referring to himself in the third person, as he often does. “The main course is yet to come.”
For Modi’s legions of supporters, a third term would bring more of what they find so attractive about him. He is that rare breed of strongman who keeps his ear to the ground. He is a magnetic figure and a powerful speaker. He has built an image of a tireless and incorruptible worker for a country on the rise.
But to his critics, Modi’s talk about a “main course” is a wake-up call for the future of the world’s largest democracy.
Modi, 73, enters the elections as a strong favorite, his party’s control over the most populated areas of northern and central India is firmer than ever and the opposition in the same decisive geography is even more diminished. . Yet even with his place as India’s unrivaled leader seemingly secured, he has carried out a crackdown on dissent that has only intensified.
In the run-up to the vote, which will last six weeks before results are announced on June 4, agencies under Modi’s control froze the bank accounts of the largest opposition party. The leaders of two opposition-ruled states have been jailed in cases they say are politically motivated. (The capital region, New Delhi, is currently governed by a prime minister who sends his directives from behind bars.)
All this, Modi’s critics say, shows the penchant for total control that has become evident during his decade as prime minister. Modi, they maintain, will not stop until he has turned India’s democracy into one-party rule. Power is being aggressively consolidated “around the personality cult of the leader,” said Yamini Aiyar, a political analyst in New Delhi.
“The deep centralization of power has significantly undermined the institutional checks and balances built into India’s democratic structure,” Ms Aiyar said.
Many Indians seem ready to accept this. Modi has remained deeply popular even as he has become more autocratic. He has paid little price – and even found support – for his effort to turn India into what analysts have called an illiberal democracy.
Exploit the contradictions. The right to vote is considered sacred in a country whose democracy has offered protection in a turbulent region. But polls also indicate that large numbers of Indians are willing to give up civil liberties to support a powerful ruler they believe can get things done.
Another apparent inconsistency: People who talk about their own economic conflicts also often express faith in Modi’s management of the country’s affairs, a testament to the compelling narratives he weaves.
Indians also have more tangible reasons to support it. Modi tirelessly defends his broad support base through generous offers across society: favorable deals for the business elite in a growing economy, robust welfare programs for India’s impoverished majority, and a strong dose of Hindu nationalism for those in the middle.
A campaign stop this month in his party’s stronghold of Uttar Pradesh illustrated this winning formula.
Modi was in the back of a saffron truck as it slowly moved down a commercial street lined with global brands and jewelry stores, a scene that spoke of the new wealth that has lifted millions of Indians into the middle class.
Overhead, posters with photographs of Modi (his face is everywhere in India) spoke of achievements such as the installation of more than 100 million toilets for the poor and India’s growing stature.
At the end of the roadshow, at the junction where Modi’s vehicle turned right and headed back to Delhi, there was a stage with speakers. As Hindu nationalist songs played, actors dressed as the deities Ram and Sita posed for selfies with the crowd.
Modi’s inauguration in January of a massive temple dedicated to Ram, on the disputed site of a mosque razed three decades ago by a Hindu mob, has been a major election-year offering to his Hindu base.
“We are Hindus, we are Hindus, we will only talk about Ram,” went one song. “Those who brought Ram, we will bring to power.”
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began in 1980 as an urban, middle-class organization centered on a majority Hindu core. Under Modi, it has recast itself as the party of the poor and the village in northern India, analysts say.
Some in India believe the poorest have simply fallen under Modi’s spell. Nalin Mehta, author of the book “The New BJP,” called this fundamentally wrong.
“The fact that the BJP continues to get these victories reflects how successful it has been in winning new constituencies from voters who have never voted for the BJP before, and who may not even be followers of Hindu nationalism,” he said.
Mehta attributes much of that success to the expansion and promotion of the party’s social welfare programs and its efforts to promote itself as pan-Hindu, actively reaching out to India’s marginalized castes.
By prioritizing direct digital welfare payments, the BJP has cut out middlemen and ensured that donations are seen as coming directly from Modi.
The technology also allows the party to track, with BJP workers, armed with data, knocking on the door of anyone who receives a water tap, a gas cylinder or a government grant to build a house.
The data creates layers of feedback that help the party choose its candidates, weeding out large numbers of incumbents before each election. “This BJP is very ruthless about winning,” Mehta said.
All of this adds to Modi’s enormous appeal and his political and technological acumen.
He has put his personal story at the center of his narrative of a rising India, the main pillar of his campaign. If the son of a low-caste chai seller can become one of the most powerful men in the world, she says, other ordinary Indians can dream too.
While inequality has increased and 800 million Indians are at the mercy of monthly rations, many are focused on their faith that Modi is not a thief. He presents himself as a descendantless bachelor who works only for the Indian people, unlike what he calls the corrupt political dynasties of the opposition.
“Modi was not born into a royal family to become prime minister,” he told a crowd of tens of thousands in the state of Maharashtra. “You are the one who brought him here.”
The political opposition has been severely weakened by infighting, leadership crises and its struggle to offer an ideological alternative to the BJP.
But he also faces a playing field that Modi has tilted in his favor.
He has intimidated the media. Independent journalists who question its policies have been jailed or subjected to legal harassment. India leads the world in internet shutdowns, hiding unrest that looks bad for the government. And Modi officials have forced social media platforms to remove critical content.
Investigative agencies have acted freely against Modi’s political opponents: more than 90 percent of cases involving politicians over the past decade have involved the opposition. Many languish in jail or in the judicial system. Those who switch allegiance to the BJP find their cases disappear.
During the election campaign in the state of West Bengal, an opposition candidate, Mahua Moitra, spoke of saving democracy from authoritarianism that she said had led to her own expulsion from Parliament, in a complicated case involving a former romantic partner, a Rottweiler named Henry. and accusations of corruption.
Autocracy and Modi’s apparent comfort with billionaires have been the opposition’s two main lines of attack. While campaigning, Moitra told a group of women that they were still waiting for money from the government to build houses because Modi “is busy building palaces for his friends.”
Analysts doubt that any of these issues will have a broad impact. Many Indians, particularly in his stronghold in the north, which has a decisive say in who governs from New Delhi, like exactly what they are getting from Modi.
“He is the prime minister, and if he is not strong enough, what good would it be?” Anjali Vishwakarma, 37, an interior designer, as she walked along the Ganges on a recent day with her family in Modi’s Varanasi constituency.
Suhasini Raj contributed reports from Varanasi, Sameer Yasir of Krishnanagar and Hari Kumar of Ghaziabad in India.
