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The lead (the title of the thread) is from the bitter and borderline tantruming Huffington Post article, quoted below. For those who want to get a taste of the vitriol from the American Democrat left towards this result in the Indian elections, I will open this thread with that:
Five years after he was first elected, the economy remains sluggish and the credibility of many of India’s democratic institutions — from the judiciary, to the election commission, to the media, and even the country’s central bank, Reserve Bank of India — have been compromised. Yet enough of India’s 900 million voters felt Modi deserved another chance. His victory suggests that the global rightward shift — from Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines — is likely to endure.
Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist and professor at OP Jindal Global University, said that like Russia under Vladimir Putin and the Philippines under Duterte, India under Modi faced a “tyranny of the demagogue.”
“Modi is going to be ruthless and vindictive, and we don’t have civil society to counter it,” he said. “Majoritarian democracy is the death of democracy. Elections are no longer a solution. We are left with caricatures of democracy.”
In India, majoritarianism means Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, an ideology that envisions over 170 million Indian Muslims accepting that they are, in effect, second-class citizens. Modi owes his victory in large part to the opposition’s inability to project a viable leader to replace him, the BJP’s stranglehold over most of the English- and Hindi-language media, and the party’s massive social media presence.
As we saw recently in Australia, the winning party is not really "Right wing" in any meaningful sense of the term. Instead, the BJP and the NDA have been pragmatic and reasonably responsible, although not in anything approaching a flawless manner. Many of their policies have been arguably socialist.
But more of these solutions have been designed to do the dreary but extremely necessary work needed to transform India into a modern economy that creates jobs, develops skills, attracts investment, and that supports the most needy members of its population in a way that helps to lift them up out of some of the most shocking poverty that our world has ever known.
Mistakes have been made but a great deal of progress also. The people of India resoundingly appear to agree, even if the globalist establishment elitist left around the world does not.
Just to provide a little background, the nation of India is currently the second most populous nation in the world, just after China. Here are the top four:
1 China1,420,062,022
2 India 1,368,737,513
3 United States 329,093,110
4 Indonesia 269,536,482
5 Brazil 212,392,717
India is projected to take over the top spot as the most populous country from China, perhaps within the next ten years.
India is the largest democracy in the world, hands-down, case-closed, game over. The turnout numbers are not in yet, but the turnout is expected to exceed 600 million and could be a good bit over that. By comparison, 138 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, so their voter participation is well over four times ours, and could easily exceed five times by the time this is all done and dusted.
Also, for those of you who do not follow Indian politics, it is a raucous affair, every bit as energetic as our own political process. Their culture is extremely different from our own. While I do not claim to be an expert about India or its politics, I have been there. It is culturally very different from the US, and it is also politically alive and very exciting.
I don't know if anyone else on this forum cares about any of this, but I find it fascinating.
Last edited by Spartacus713; 05-23-2019 at 10:01 AM..
Here is a report from the Times of India. I will just quote the first part, and then the section headings after that. If anyone is interested, there is more at the link:
The BJP under Modi seems to have upended the tradition of caste politics in states like UP
Congress was completely decimated by the BJP in states where both the parties were in a direct clash
Modi's muscular foreign policy and tough talk on terror clearly resonated with the Indian voters
NEW DELHI: The BJP-led NDA is all set to storm back to power and will likely surpass its 2014 tally, as per trends released by the Election Commission for all the 542 seats that went to polls in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Narendra Modi's second consecutive victory, that too with a thumping majority, has once again reaffirmed BJP’s pole position in Indian politics and the new mandate is likely to mark a tectonic shift in the way politics is conducted in India.
Here are some of the key takeaways of 2019 Lok Sabha election results and what it means for the country (Topic headings - more at the link):
The win by Modi and the BJP has surprised even the most hardened political analysts, with the consensus being that they would be returned to power but with a reduced majority.
His re-election reinforces a global trend of right-wing populists sweeping to victory, from the United States to Brazil and Italy, often after adopting harsh positions on protectionism, immigration and defence.
The result reinforces Mr Modi's immense popularity and vindicated what at times was a belligerent campaign by several parties, with the focus heavily on the economy, national security, and from the BJP's perspective, an affirmation of its underlying ideology of Hindu nationalism.
First of all, the word "populist" comes from the same root word as the word "population". As in, "We the people". So it seems kind of creepy that people who like to hold themselves out as "democratic," routinely use this term as a term of derision these days.
The alternative to popular, democratic voting is elitist, establishment, aristocratic, authoritarian government. Which might be allowed the window dressing of elections - as long as the populous votes the way that the establishment elites direct them to. If you ask me, THIS is what should be held in derision.
Anyway, the people of India have for two national elections in a row escaped their fixation with the name "Ghandi" and instead have elected a man who they believe is the right leader to unite their country enough to be able to take on and fix a lot of the incredibly difficult and very fundamental problems that this country has struggled with since they won their independence from the British in 1948, and even before.
Also, if you look at what PM Modi has actually accomplished in his first five years, you could probably make a more convincing case that he is a socialist than that he is a right winger or a "conservative" in the sense that we have typically used that term here in the US or the West. (I am a rightist here in the USA). He really isn't.
But apparently what "Right winger" means now is that whoever this term is being directed at is not sufficiently deferential to the agenda of the globalist left establishment elites and their supporters. So THAT apparently is how it has been determined by these people that PM Modi and his party are "Right wing".
But the Indian people seem to really like this guy. Which in choosing a leader of your country, really has to count for something, regardless of whatever other tags the foreign press tries to hang on him.
The alternative to nationalism is globalism. Modi is all about the people of India.
The leadership of the BJP has not been perfect, not even close. But India is a predominately Hindu country and the people support the values associated with that. Some of the tactics that the Indian Hindus have used not only towards Muslims, but also toward Christians and others, certainly should be taken down several notches. That is a fact.
But India is a nation of almost 1.4 billion people that is soon expected to be the most populous country in the world. The poverty that the people of India have experienced over its history has been truly horrifying. They need basic infrastructure. Roads, water, sewers. One of Modi's big social initiatives during his first term was to promote the use of toilets - which many tens (hundreds?) of millions of Indians pushed back against. A great many of them apparently prefer to go #2 out in the field or in the yard.
Modi and the BJP early on implemented a program to establish ID's for all Indians. At the same time, they worked to set up bank accounts for them. For those Indians receiving government benefits, this allowed those people to actually receive those payments directly, and it disabled corrupt middlemen from either outright stealing these benefits from those who they were intended for or at least skimming huge amounts of these benefits for themselves.
Modi and the BJP also implemented a national Goods and Services Tax (GST), passed sweeping new bankruptcy and fraud laws and demonitized small notes in circulation to make control of the money supply and collection of taxes much more efficient and effective. These are not sexy moves and they were not altogether popular. But it was needed and Modi and the BJP used their political capital to get it done.
They still have a long way to go. But there is literally no other party that could possibly command the support in India to do all of this. The more typically corrupt leftist party in India, the Congress party (the Ghandi dynasty) had 40 years to try to address these problems. They never really even tried. But now they have someone who is working to try to do the hard and not always popular work that India needs done for it and its people to thrive going forward.
And that is a good thing, whether anyone agrees or not.
As India’s opposition Congress party went down to a landslide defeat on Thursday, its leader, Rahul Gandhi, was also convincingly beaten in his own parliamentary seat – a north Indian constituency that had sent three of his family members to parliament in the past half-century.
The loss of the family bastion seat of Amethi underscored the dwindling relevance of south Asia’s most famous political dynasty in Narendra Modi’s “new India”, alongside the decline of the pluralistic vision of India that has been synonymous with the Nehru-Gandhi family for the past seven decades.
Well, apparently nobody here is interested in India's elections and how they fit into a larger pattern of elections around the world over the past five years of so, other than me.
Nevertheless, here is the best article I have seen so far about what this victory means for India and to a lesser extent the world. It is from Brahma Chellaney at the Canadian Globe and Mail. Here is a quote, with more at the link:
Quote:
Modi’s big win has averted a nightmare scenario
Faced with a choice between a stable, firm government and a possible retreat to political drift and paralysis, voters in the world’s largest democracy have returned Narendra Modi to power with a thumping majority. This reflects the desire of Indians for a dynamic, assertive leadership to help revitalize the country so that it stops punching below its weight.
Mr. Modi’s election triumph represents a fresh mandate to reinvent India as a more secure, confident and competitive country.
However, to his credit, Mr. Modi has reduced political corruption and cut India’s proverbial red tape by streamlining regulations and reining in the bloated bureaucracy. For example, government permits and licences can be sought online. A new simplified national tax regime serves as further advertisement that India is open for business. The tax and regulatory overhaul will likely yield major dividends in Mr. Modi’s second term.
To be sure, India’s economic growth has remained impressive. Its economy now is about 50 per cent larger than when Mr. Modi took office five years ago.
{More at the link}
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