Voting is underway in the world’s largest democracy

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Apr 22, 2024 View in browser
 
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By Peder Schaefer

Bharatiya Janata Party activists paste a poster with the image of BJP leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a wall near a polling station during the first phase of voting of India's general elections in Jammu on April 19.

Bharatiya Janata Party activists paste a poster with the image of BJP leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a wall near a polling station during the first phase of voting of India's general elections in Jammu on April 19. | Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images

ONE BILLION VOTERS — The world’s largest democracy is going to the polls over the next six weeks, as nearly 1 billion registered voters in India can cast ballots in a mind-bogglingly complex logistical effort.

The voting will take place over 44 days until June 1 as voters cast ballots for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, with results released on June 4. Popular Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, is projected to win enough seats to easily win a third-term, solidifying Modi’s power over a country that he’s led since 2014.

Over 600 million Indians cast ballots in the 2019 elections, a turnout of nearly 70 percent. The BJP won 37 percent of the national vote but won 56 percent of the seats in the Lok Sabha, giving Modi a powerful majority in parliament and making his party the dominant force in Indian political life.

India’s elections are some of the most expensive in the world: In 2019, political parties spent an estimated $8.7 billion on the campaign, with that number expected to rise significantly this year.

But while some celebrate the elections conducted by the world’s largest democracy, Oxford University professor Maya Tudor thinks that rising signs of illiberalism are undercutting India’s democratic project in ways that mirror trends in democratic backsliding across the world — and could foreshadow developments in the United States.

“Because the media and the world focuses so much on elections, the world looks more democratic than if you also focus on civil liberties,” said Tudor, the author of The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan. “But the right to dissent against governments everywhere and to still be considered a loyal citizen is declining almost everywhere, including in the United States. This trend is epitomized by India’s decline.”

Nightly spoke with Tudor to learn more about India’s upcoming election, democratic backsliding and what the results could mean for America.

The following has been edited and condensed for length.

Commentators have called 2024 the ‘Year of Democracy’ and India’s elections have been called the largest free elections in world history. But do you still even consider India a democracy?

India today is not a robust democracy, not in my view nor the view of any major and independent democracy watchdog. But accurately answering the question of whether India is a democracy first requires having a clear view of what democracy entails. The average citizen defines democracy as a set of institutions that guarantees citizens voice in government. Of course that means elections, because elections are the clearest moment in which the people’s voice is heard. And India absolutely still holds elections that are free and fair.

But Russia and China also hold elections. So elections alone do not make a country a democracy. To be a democracy, one also needs to have genuine opposition candidates, candidates that are able to organize without systematic state harassment, and journalists who feel able to scrutinize the government.

India does not have a free media today — indeed it is below Belarus and Hong Kong in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. It doesn’t have protected civil liberties especially for critics of the government. It does not have a robust parliament scrutinizing government bills. So yes, India still has elections and those elections are meaningful. But Modi has so effectively clamped down on the other pillars of democracy that I would not consider India a full democracy.

Tell us more about Narendra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP. What do they stand for and what have they done for India over the last decade?

Narendra Modi stands for both economic development and Hindu nationalism. When Modi was first elected in 2014 he was the first Indian prime minister to come to power on an openly Hindu nationalist agenda. He put Hindu national identity at the center of his campaign in a way that no Indian prime minister had done before.

Over the last decade while Modi has been in power there has been a greater focus on revitalizing infrastructure and key economic changes. Modi tries to take credit for an economy that’s growing quickly, but it is worth noting that it was growing even faster in the decade before he came to power.

Modi is very popular domestically, and one of the reasons for this is that he represents, more than perhaps any prime minister in India’s history, a newly assertive India on the world stage. The youngest generation of voters want India to be aspirational on the world stage and Modi very much embodies that.

There is an important parallel between Modi and Trump, who are both leaders that capitalize on the status anxiety of a formally dominant social group. For Trump, that’s a white, male social group. For Modi, that’s the top caste groups who have felt threatened by caste-based affirmative action codified in the Indian constitution, which give lower caste groups privileged access to educational institutions and government employment. Over time, as these lower-status groups got more politically assertive, the previously dominant groups experiencing similar status anxiety voted for a populist nationalist leader reprising those status hierarchies.

How have Modi and the BJP attacked democratic norms and harassed political opposition?

There are so many examples which together paint a broad picture of a state being used to repress political competition. Many bureaucrats will speak of an overwhelming concentration of power in the prime minister’s office which has de-professionalized the state. Changes in the criminal code that makes it more difficult to get legal representation and redress if the government charges individuals with a crime. The Supreme Court has voted with the government on almost every major political issue. And virtually all major television stations have been captured to such an extent that you will be hard-pressed to find a major television station making a serious critique of the government. Overall these examples demonstrate how the Modi government is using the power of incumbency to tilt the chess board quite strongly away from opposition forces.

Trump famously visited India in 2020 and had a rally with Modi. Do you see similarities between the two leaders?

Absolutely, especially along the lines of cult of personality. That’s the clearest point of similarity between the two. People are generally casting their vote for Modi the leader and not the party that Modi represents. Just like Trump, Modi has a cult of personality that he assiduously cultivates through social media, and he has a devoted following.

The biggest difference though? In the end, Modi also brings along the BJP and a number of well-organized grassroots based organizations tied to his political project. When Trump goes, what will be left behind? But Modi can count on, by some measurements, the world’s most active social organization to back him. So the Hindu nationalist project will endure because after Modi, the BJP and these social organizations will support whoever succeeds Modi.

Let’s talk about the outcome of the elections themselves. What choices could you see an empowered Modi making on the world stage?

The larger Modi’s majority is, the more you can expect an assertive foreign policy in which India takes an independent line on key foreign policy issues from the United States. As the United States and China de-link economically, India’s relative importance will increase as a kingmaker. If Modi is assured of a large electoral majority at home, you could see Modi making clearer demands for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, for example.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at pschaefer@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @p_s_schaefer.

 

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TRUMP ON TRIAL

KICKING THINGS OFF — Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo and defense attorney Todd Blanche made their opening statements in the Trump hush money trial today.

Colangelo pointed jurors to what he described as the underlying scheme that resulted in Donald Trump’s alleged crimes, starting with a 2015 meeting that took place at Trump Tower and included Trump, Michael Cohen and David Pecker, the former CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc.

The three of them, Colangelo said, “struck an agreement at that meeting. Together, they conspired to influence the 2016 presidential election in three different ways.”

Colangelo also detailed Trump’s payments to Cohen and alleged Trump falsified 11 invoices, 12 ledger entries and 11 falsified checks, for a total of 34 falsified business records.

Blanche began his opening statement with these words: “President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes.”

He moved on to tear into Michael Cohen, calling him, among other things, “a convicted felon,” “a convicted perjurer,” “an admitted liar,” and “obsessed with President Trump.”

“He cheated on his taxes. He lied to banks. He lied about side businesses he had with taxi medallions and other things, and, as the people alluded to, in 2018, he got caught,” Blanche said of Cohen.

THE PECKER PROBLEM — There are decades of business — and something even like friendship — hanging in the air between Trump and David Pecker.

The two have known each other since the mid-1990s, when the publishing executive and former CEO of American Media, Inc., pitched Trump on launching Trump Style magazine, which documented the “glamour and fun” of Trump’s real estate properties and casinos for five years. Their relationship grew as they shared plane rides between their New York and Palm Beach, Florida, homes. Trump even invited Pecker to his wedding to Melania in 2005.

Now, all these years later, Pecker will be forced to testify against the man who treated him, in one former employee’s estimation, like a “little puppy,” and who he saw as a “king.”

He has already been sworn in as the prosecution’s first witness, where he’s expected to detail how the National Enquirer helped Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign by burying negative stories about him in a “catch and kill” arrangement.

What'd I Miss?

— Supreme Court to take up Biden crackdown on ‘ghost guns’: The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Biden administration acted legally when it implemented a crackdown on the sale of do-it-yourself “ghost gun” kits. The justices announced today that they will take up a regulation Attorney General Merrick Garland issued in 2022 that sought to consider such kits as firearms so they can’t be used to make untraceable weapons sold without background checks and frequently used in crimes.

— GOP senators: Send in the National Guard to Columbia: Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley called on President Joe Biden to send the National Guard to Columbia University as pro-Palestinian demonstrations that saw over 100 people arrested last week roil the campus. The senators issued the appeal for federal action as today marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Over the weekend, a prominent rabbi at the school urged Jewish students to leave the Upper Manhattan campus amid heated protests, and Columbia University announced today that it would hold classes remotely.

— Biden condemns ‘anti-Semitic protests’ — and absence of Palestinian empathy, too: President Joe Biden today gave his first public remarks on anti-Israel protests roiling college campuses. But in condemning the actions of demonstrators who he deemed “antisemitic,” Biden also chastised those who didn’t empathize with the suffering of those in Gaza. “I condemn the antisemitic protests,” the president told reporters en route back from a speech he had delivered to commemorate Earth Day. “That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

— Supreme Court appears skeptical of rulings that found public sleeping ban violated Constitution: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sounded highly skeptical today about lower court rulings that held an Oregon city’s ordinance prohibiting sleeping in public violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The outcome of the case involving the ban enacted in the southern Oregon city of Grants Pass is being closely watched by municipalities struggling with large homeless populations, particularly those in California and the eight other states covered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked the ordinance in Oregon and has prohibited the removal of homeless encampments in several cities.

Nightly Road to 2024

SEEING GREEN — President Joe Biden marked Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities — while criticizing Republicans who want to gut his policies to address climate change, the Associated Press reports. The Democrat seeking reelection this year took aim at the supporters of former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. The Biden administration also announced plans to expand its New Deal-style American Climate Corps green jobs training program.

AROUND THE WORLD

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks to the media in Darlington, England, on Jan. 29, 2024.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks to the media in Darlington, England, on Jan. 29, 2024. | Ian Forsyth/Pool Photo via AP

WIPEOUT FORECAST — Britain’s Conservatives look set to lose numerous seats this year. But anti-Tory campaigners want to make sure it’s a knock-out blow.

As a general election looms, a host of flashy campaigns are springing up trying to convince Brits to vote tactically. Under the U.K.’s winner-takes-all system, that means asking voters in tight seats to hold their nose and cast their ballot for a candidate with the best chance of knocking out a Conservative, even if that candidate wouldn’t be their first pick.

A flood of sophisticated online tools, backed up with data from expensive polling campaigns, are promising to help show voters where they can use their tactical edge.

There’s just one problem: skeptics say British voters just aren’t clued up enough on the finer points of the country’s system to get tactical voting really firing.

“This will be the ninth general election I’ve worked on in one capacity or another, and I think certainly for most of them, if not all of them, there has been talk of this being the tactical voting election,” says Joe Twyman, director of polling firm Deltapoll.

Indeed, polling shows British voters continue to lack an awareness of the basic information needed to make tactical voting work. A survey carried out by Deltapoll last year found just 52 percent of voters could correctly identify the winning party in their local area. That dropped to 19 percent when asked who came in second.

 

POLITICO IS BACK AT THE 2024 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO will again be your eyes and ears at the 27th Annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles from May 5-8 with exclusive, daily, reporting in our Global Playbook newsletter. Suzanne Lynch will be on the ground covering the biggest moments, behind-the-scenes buzz and on-stage insights from global leaders in health, finance, tech, philanthropy and beyond. Get a front-row seat to where the most interesting minds and top global leaders confront the world’s most pressing and complex challenges — subscribe today.

 
 
Nightly Number

73 percent

The percentage of workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. who voted to join the UAW, a major win for the union as they seek to incorporate Southern auto workers into the labor movement.

RADAR SWEEP

HIT MUTE — There are all kinds of strategies for escaping the depression or negative thoughts that can come with too much scrolling on social media platforms. One of the most discussed is trying to stay off of those platforms as much as possible in general — setting a time limit or deleting apps from your phone. But if you don’t feel ready for those kinds of more drastic measures, there’s something you can do that might make your time on X or Instagram or TikTok feel a little bit lighter: Mute the people or accounts that frustrate you. Psychologists say this process, which can essentially clean up your feed into a place of more positive or interesting updates, can legitimately greatly improve one’s mental health. Madeleine Aggeler reports for The Guardian.

Parting Image

On this date in 1972: John Lennon gestures as he speaks at a peace rally in New York's Bryant Park. Standing beside him is his wife, Yoko Ono.  The rally and march of some 30,000 people in New York City was part of a nationwide day of protests and demonstrations against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

On this date in 1972: John Lennon gestures as he speaks at a peace rally in New York's Bryant Park. Standing beside him is his wife, Yoko Ono. The rally and march of some 30,000 people in New York City was part of a nationwide day of protests and demonstrations against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. | AP

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