Observing that the ruling party BJP is clearly in the lead for the Lok Sabha elections and is about to return to power for the third term, a columnist and eminent American think-tank expert on South Asia Tuesday said that it's undoubtedly the Modi era” in India.
“Obviously in Indian terms, this is quite unprecedented because what we're looking at would be for the first time since the early 1960s that a ruling party looks poised to win three straight national elections,” Sadanand Dhume from the American Enterprise Institute think tank told PTI in an interview.
Also, a South Asia columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Dhume noted that it's the Modi era in India. “Undoubtedly, it's the Modi era. I mean, we are living in an era, I would say, around the world of outsized political personalities. It has been the Trump era in American politics since 2015, regardless of whether he's in power or not. It has clearly been the Modi era in India since roughly 2013.”
“He's the focus of the national conversation, whether you love him or whether you hate him. There's no doubt that nobody has really dominated the national conversation as far as Indian politics goes since Indira Gandhi,” he said.
Dhume said the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done reasonably well on the economic front.
“The personal popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains very high. If you look at polls, it's like hovering around 80%, which is among the highest, if not the highest, for world leaders. There's also the factor that the opposition in many ways has really collapsed and has not been able to get its back together after two back-to-back dismal performances by the Congress, first in 2014 and in 2019,” he said.
Dhume said that historically India has long been a country that has only had room for one powerful national party. “If you look at the 60s, 70s, 80s, it was dominated by the Congress party and now it is dominated by the BJP, not to the same extent that it was once dominated by Congress.
“If you kind of look at the total seats that are held by the two national parties, it doesn't change that much, but the proportion has changed. That's one part of it, right there isn't really, because there's so many strong regional parties in places like Bengal, in places like Aam Nadu and so on. The room for two national parties I think doesn't really exist.
“In India, the main opposition party, the Congress has not figured out its mechanism for leadership succession the way successful political parties around the world have. Whether it's the Labor Party or the Conservative Party or the Democratic Party in the US, when you lose an election, typically you find new leadership. Congress doesn't know how to do that because it's become a family run party,” Dhume said.
The Congress is very upfront that the Gandhi family is the only uniting glue that it has had for the last 50 years. “It's not the party of Mahatma Gandhi anymore. It's not the party of the freedom struggle,” he said.
Dhume said Prime Minister Modi has done a reasonable job in terms of managing the economy. “I don't think he's been a revolutionary reformer. He's done some good things. There's been some privatisation around the edges. Infrastructure has been a standout. He's provided a certain amount of policy stability,” he said.
“The government has pursued a pretty strong macroeconomic framework. These are all things the Modi government deserves credit for on the economic front. Where I have been somewhat more critical of him is on some of the issues that have more to do with liberal democracy, media freedom, room for criticism,” Dhume said.
He said Modi's handling of foreign policy has actually been quite excellent. “He has really taken this moment for India when it comes to whether it's pursuing relations with the US or increasing India's role in the world, that's been handled very successfully.
“It's kind of ironic for me, because when I was writing about Modi in 2013, in 2014, if you had asked me, then I would've said his strength will be the economy and his particular weakness will be foreign policy.
Turns out his particular strength was the foreign policy. It's not as if he has done very badly on the economy, but I don't think he's done particularly well either,” Dhume said.
