Achin Vanaik — Hindutva’s Forward March

This March, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won regional elections in four out of five states, including Uttar Pradesh (UP). This huge prize represents a qualitative advance for the party and the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar it represents, giving greater legitimacy to their long-term goal of establishing a Hindu state in all but name.

Is India ceasing to be an outpost of liberal democracy and moving in the direction of theocratic nationalism? Something to keep an eye on.

But economics is fundamental, and here Prime Minister Modi is a neoliberal.

The Modi regime’s greatest weakness comes from its economic failures. For example, the demonetization scheme represented a massive failure. Modi designed his program to attack the black economy’s cash flow, but the most important component of the informal economy is the stock of wealth held in immovable assets or stashed abroad. The government promised that the program’s success would make up for the short-term disruption to the most vulnerable people, but most of the old notes have returned to the formal banking sector. This means that the elites, who hoarded wads of cash, have converted their wealth into legitimate bank holdings that they can now earn interest on. The scheme’s mismanagement has helped lower average growth rates over the last two years. Modi’s promise of greater prosperity for the vast majority has not and will not be fulfilled. 

His greatest failure, however, is a structural one, embedded in his economic policies of neoliberalism: neither he nor his government can ever provide enough good-paying jobs for the nation. The already poor and precarious will face increasing deprivation, and lower middle-class youth will watch their opportunities fade away. 

How these economic frustrations will crystallize politically between now and the next general elections — and what forces will take advantage of them — remains the most important unknown.

India is in considerable turmoil as it deals with its relationship with the modern world and how to fit in without losing its "Indian soul."

Jacobin
Hindutva’s Forward March
Achin Vanaik

Major Singh — 180 million Workers Strike Back in India

On Friday the 2nd of September 2016 the biggest single strike action in world history took place in India. As many as between 150 and 180 million workers took part in the All India Strike around a 12 point charter of demands put forward by the Central Trade Unions. These included a raise to the minimum wage and pension for all workers, an end to privatization of state owned enterprises and contractorisation of the workforce, a halt to price hikes, the enforcement of labour rights and the scrapping of pro-employer labour law amendments.…

The strike was met with more organized governmental resistance than Occupy Wall Street across the US coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, but it came off anyway in spite of the intense repression.

Unlike Occupy, the strikers put forward a 12 point list of demands.

Defend Democracy
180 million Workers Strike Back in India
Major Singh

Seth Ferris — India: The Revolution You Didn’t Hear About

The municipal elections in Delhi, capital of India, on February 7th raised interest in a few journals but not nearly as much as they should have done. There is a reason for this. Many countries are struggling to cope with non-traditional parties challenging the establishment and gaining popular support. What happened in India, one of the most important emerging powers, may have consequences neither governments nor compliant mainstream media anywhere wish to contemplate.... 

In India, one of the world’s new economic powerhouses, the voters of the nations capital’s put the Aam Admi Party (AAP), or “Common Man’s Party” into power. It wasn’t even close: the AAP won 67 out of the 70 seats, and unseated the local leaders of both the currently-ruling Janata Party, or BJP, and the traditionally ruling Congress Party, the CPI....

The AAP is advocating nothing new. It is seeking to introduce practices which are well established in the Western democracies India has always seen as models.

It wants an independent ombudsman who can impartially investigate complaints of government corruption and protect those who make them. It also wants to devolve power to local authorities and populations, change the law so that if the majority of voters choose the “None of the Above” option on the ballot paper no candidate is elected, and give citizens the right to recall their representatives, the process by which Arnold Schwarzenegger ended up as Governor of California....

New Eastern Outlook

India: The Revolution You Didn’t Hear About

Seth Ferris

Jiwan Kshetry — Delhi poll verdict: Is Modi-led India spinning in circles?

Indian PM Narendra Modi walks a tightrope with a balance bar weighted at one end with neoliberalism and Hindu fundamentalism at the other. (Similar to the GOP in the US trying to balance neoliberalism with the religious right.)

As the marriage of convenience between neo-liberalism and hardline Hindutva shows signs of strains the oar rowing the Hindutva agenda seems to be overplaying its role giving rise to the spin.

From forced conversions infuriating the minority communities in the country to the thugs of RSS (Rastriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the parent organization of Modi's party BJP) posing as moral police out to 'teach discipline to the young' alienating the young middle class, the heavy-handed approach of the extremist elements in Modi's power base seems to be badly backfiring. People in Delhi have repudiated BJP for precisely same excesses which Sakshi saw as the lukewarm responses from Modi fixated too much on the development agenda.

With this the prolonged honeymoon period of the Modi-led government in India is now effectively over and there will be no other yardstick other than performance in the form of good governance and speedy development to measure his success or failure and his political survival will depend on the measure of that success.

It would be, however, entirely wrong to conclude from these results that the immediate political future of Modi and his right-wing party is in jeopardy, for the rout of the party in the national capital is more symbolic than real when it comes to national politics. Also, Narendra Modi is a seasoned political player in political arena and it is too early to rule out a comeback in near future.

But the most significant fallout of the poll results in Delhi is this: Modi, along with his handpicked president of the BJP, Amit Shah, is no longer forms the infallible or invincible pair when it comes to electoral politics.…

Immediate risks for [Modi] are two fold: 1) his new-found rival Aam Admi Party is now set to develop a national footprint after a resounding victory making his party no longer the only option for voters across the country averse to leaning back to Congress, the BJP's fallen foe in national politics, and 2) battle for the general elections in 2019 will prove much tougher than those in 2014 to win.

A barely noticed political formation in world's most populous democracy has just illustrated how powerful the thrust of democracy is.

Vineyard of the Saker

Delhi poll verdict: Is Modi-led India spinning in circles?

Jiwan Kshetry

For the uninitiated, Amit Shah was minister in Modi-led state government in Gujarat after 2002 and served there for a nearly a decade holding upto twelve portfolios at a time including the important home ministry and was alleged of orchestrating some of the worst human right violations in Gujarat including the infamous fake encounters. His acquittal from murder charges by a special court recently has raised many eyebrows in India and many fear the era of pervasive impunity if his acquittal sets a precedent for similar cases.

M K Bhadrakumar — Delhi gives warning to Premier Modi

India PM Narendra Modi's honeymoon with the voter is over. That didn't last long.

The election results of the Delhi poll last week were keenly awaited. Delhi has a larger-than-life significance in India's national politics. If a ruling party at the centre cannot win in Delhi, it somehow gets to be taken as a warning that the national mood disfavors it. Delhi is a microcosm of India, and the crushing defeat that the ruling party at the centre, Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP], has suffered in Delhi - winning just three seats out of 70 - ought to ring alarm bells in the mind of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.…

…the recent period witnessed a high level of intolerance toward minority communities on the part of the right wing nationalists who form the bedrock of the Modi government. Scores of Christian churches have been vandalized and mass ‘conversion' of people from other faiths to Hindu religion is being arranged. But the government has not done anything to stop these outrageous happenings and authorities are passively acquiescing with the rising curve of Hindu fundamentalism.…

Most certainly, it is about time to rein in the Hindu zealots since he has promises to keep. They have caused enough desecration in the holy grounds of the nation's secularism. The Delhi results underscore that the people reject the politics of polarization on religious lines.

In fact, Modi's mandate in 2014 was not a mandate for Hindu fundamentalist ideology, and a big majority of Hindu resent that the so-called "Sangh Parivar" (right-wing Hindu nationalists) has arrogated to itself the right to speak and act on their behalf. People elected Modi under the impression he had a development agenda and a capacity to deliver good governance. The Delhiites' vehement rejection of Modi, bordering on condemnation, should remind him of it.  

Asia Times Online
Delhi gives warning to Premier Modi
M K Bhadrakumar | retired career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001)

M K Bhadrakumar — Anatomy of India's general election

Summary of a complex issue by an insider familiar with India and Indian politics.

Asia Times Online
Anatomy of India's general election
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar

John Cassidy — Modi’s Role Model: Margaret Thatcher Or Lee Kuan Yew?

Seems like a pretty fair analysis to me. Don't look for huge Thatcher-like changes in India.

In broad terms, his campaign message was very similar to the one Mrs. T. peddled thirty-five years ago: the old way of doing things is holding us back, so let’s sweep much of it away and unleash enterprise.

There, though, the similarities between Modi and Thatcher may end. In terms of economic policy, Mrs. Thatcher was a Manchester School liberal: a fervent believer in the free market, free trade, and small government. She revered Adam Smith, she was mentored by Sir Keith Joseph, England’s version of Barry Goldwater, and she invited Milton Friedman to Downing Street. Given the political environment at the time, there was a limit to how far she could go in dismantling the postwar welfare state. But in breaking the power of the trade unions, privatizing nationalized industries, and encouraging a culture of naked individualism, she thoroughly changed Britain, and served as a role model for conservative reformers elsewhere.

Modi, despite his embrace of business, comes from a very different intellectual tradition. In seeking to modernize Gujarat, his role models were Asian strongmen, such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and China’s Deng Xiaoping, rather than Anglo-American economists. In the “Asian tiger” model of development, which Lee and Deng, along with South Korea’s Park Chung-hee, helped to popularize, markets and foreign investment play an important role, but so does the state—by directing industrialization, building infrastructure, and distributing the proceeds. As Modi seeks to revive India’s economy, which has stalled in recent years, it’s likely that he will look to Seoul and Beijing for inspiration, rather than to London and Washington.

Institutional constraints will also determine how far Modi can go in the Thatcherite direction. Britain is a small place with a strong central government; India is a sprawling federal democracy, which places limits on how much the administration in New Delhi can do.

The real challenge in India is harmonizing politics and economics with social realities in a highly disparate and contentious environment. Western analysis tends to look mostly at the economics and ignore the social and political environment that limit what can be accomplished politically.
 
The New Yorker — Rational Irrationality
Modi’s Role Model: Margaret Thatcher Or Lee Kuan Yew?
John Cassid
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)