Neelam Rahim | neelam@radioislam.co.za

3-minute read
14 April 2024 | 20:07 CAT

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi displays a copy of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto for the general election in New Delhi, India, on Sunday. Picture: REUTERS/ADNAN ABIDI

The world’s largest democratic election could be one of its most consequential.

India gears up for a monumental election, with Prime Minister Modi and the BJP at the forefront. But what are the dynamics shaping this electoral battleground?

Radio Islam International discussed Modi’s popularity and concerns about the nation’s direction under his leadership with Sanjay Kapoor, a Foreign Policy Specialist focused on India and writer at HardNews.

The 6-week-long general election starts on April 19, and results will be announced on June 4. The voters, who comprise over 10% of the world’s population, will elect 543 members for the lower house of Parliament for a five-year term.

India has a first-past-the-post multiparty electoral system in which the candidate who receives the most votes wins. To secure a majority, a party or coalition must breach the mark of 272 seats.

Most surveys suggest Modi is likely to win comfortably, especially after he opened a Hindu temple in northern Ayodhya city in January, which fulfilled his party’s long-held Hindu nationalist pledge.

Another victory would cement Modi as one of the country’s most popular and important leaders. It would follow a thumping win in 2019 when the BJP clinched an absolute majority by sweeping 303 parliamentary seats. The Congress party managed only 52 seats.

Kapoor explained that the intensity will also test the limits of Modi, whose rise has seen increasing attacks against religious minorities, mostly Muslims.

“Modi’s third term in parliament is a move which people fear is going to strengthen the hold of the forces taking India toward a Hindu state from a secular constitutional mandated in 1947,” Kapoor says.

India under Modi is a rising global power. Still, his rule has also been marked by rising unemployment, attacks by Hindu nationalists against minorities, particularly Muslims, and a shrinking space for dissent and free media.

The 73-year-old Modi first swept to power in 2014 on promises of economic development, presenting himself as an outsider cracking down on corruption. Since then, he has fused religion with politics in a formula that has attracted wide support from the country’s majority Hindu population.

Even as India’s growth soars by some measures, the Modi government has struggled to generate enough jobs for young Indians and has instead relied on welfare programs like free food and housing to woo voters.

Listen to the full interview on Radio Islam International with Muallimah Annisa Essack.