Missing: India’s third Modi wave

The writer is chair of Rockefeller International

Narendra Modi knows how to create waves. Ten years ago, he led his Bharatiya Janata party to the first outright parliamentary majority India had seen in three decades. Five years later he turned that narrow majority into a more decisive one, on a surge of support amid tensions with Pakistan. So when the prime minister, his party and the polls started predicting another big win this year, few doubted the coming third wave. I certainly didn’t.   

Then I hit the campaign trail, alongside a group of 20 media colleagues with whom I have covered 32 Indian national and state elections over the past 25 years. This time we tracked the campaign from the east coast to the west, traversing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra. And as is often the case, the conventional wisdom did not survive the road reality test. Nowhere on this 2,000km, eight-day route did we hear the sounds of a wave.

We heard no backlash against the prime minister either. Just a return to an India before Modi mania, focused on local issues and leaders — with events in New Delhi an afterthought. The urban middle-class stir with pride at Modi’s base case for a third term — that a roaring economy is raising India’s global stature. But many rural voters do not.    

Despite a doubling of subsidies to the poor under Modi, they still speak of daily distress from rising food prices and of the urgent need for more government relief. Every gleaming new expressway is matched by such a chaos of urban developments that we averaged just 50km an hour between cities — same as a quarter century ago. 

Our trip started in Andhra Pradesh where the BJP is essentially a junior ally to local parties. At a Modi rally in the city of Rajahmundry voters didn’t even mention the prime minister unless prompted. They gave a bigger welcome to his ally Pawan Kalyan — a regional film star who launched his own party and spoke in this state’s official tongue, Telugu. Modi had to be translated from Hindi, his words seeming to melt in oppressive mid-afternoon heat before reaching the crowd.  

Three days later we reached Hyderabad, capital of Telangana, where chief minister Revanth Reddy of the Congress party said the country was in the grip of “Swiggy” politics — referencing a popular food-delivery app. We were told by campaign managers that candidates were spending up to $15mn per constituency, or more than $1bn in total to win the more prosperous southern states; in return voters expected instant public benefits. 

Outsiders who worry about Modi’s brand of Hindu nationalism miss this increasingly transactional quality of Indian politics; as Reddy told us: “ideology is for libraries”. Parties and voters are driven by pure self-interest. By one count, nearly one in four BJP candidates nationwide are new recruits from rival parties — no prior commitment to its Hindutva ideology required.

The second half of our trip took us briefly to Karnataka, where freshly whitewashed homes and wide roads speak to rising prosperity, then into Maharashtra, where cratered state highways reflect its stagnation. Growing far slower than the national average over the past decade and surpassed by Karnataka and Telangana in per capita income, Maharashtra is focused on gritty issues such as suicides among indebted farmers, their travails magnified by a six-month government ban on onion exports to control prices. 

More than in other states, voters in Maharashtra spoke of the BJP as overaggressive, overambitious. They muttered that the BJP “broke” two regional parties by using financial incentives or threats to steal away local candidates. Uddhav Thackeray, leader of the regional Shiv Sena party, is a former Modi ally turned foe. He told us what he now tells voters: that Maharashtra is in decline because Modi favours development in his home state, neighbouring Gujarat. 

Disillusion in Maharashtra matters, because it has more seats in parliament than any state outside Uttar Pradesh — the heart of the Hindi belt. We chose not to travel there because Modi’s support appeared so unshakeable. But reports from contacts in the region suggest the BJP may see its wide lead chipped away.  

India remains an amalgam of diverse states, tough even for the most charismatic of strongmen to dominate completely. Though Modi is still likely to return for a third term, he could fall short of the hype. The BJP now holds 303 of the 543 seats in parliament, and if it wins by a smaller margin, fears that Modi and the BJP are growing too powerful, threatening Indian democracy, will fade. Talk of how they can govern with a diminished mandate will begin.