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

Adayam Subramanian — Hindu nationalist violence attributed to Italian ideologue

Giuseppe Mazzini and Hindutva.

Asia Times
Hindu nationalist violence attributed to Italian ideologue
Adayam Subramanian | former Director, Research and Policy Division, Union Home Ministry, Government of India, and former Director General of Police in Northeast India. He is the author, among others, of Political Violence and the Police in India, Sage, 2007, and State, Policy and Conflicts in Northeast India, Routledge, 2016

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 — 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