India Election 2024
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Big election coming to India in April 2024.
The current Prime Minister Mr. Modi is expected to win again.
The article goes over how India has changed since Modi became the Prime Minister 10 years ago.
[India] has moved ahead of Britain to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, and it is expected to surpass Japan and Germany to become the world’s third largest within the next few years.
A strange thing about the spirit of optimism about the Modi economy is that India’s rates of growth over the past 10 years have been very similar to those of the decade that preceded it, under a government that Mr. Modi often blames for wrecking the country.
Contrast with the USA:
While America was experiencing a “vibecession,” feeling glum despite upbeat economic news, India has been doing the opposite. Here many of the signals are mixed — but the vibes are fantastic. International surveys show India’s consumers have become the most upbeat anywhere.
The stock market in India has grown 3x since Modi took office. Though the growth has been concentrating around a few big corporations have good connections to the government. And the wealth gap has been worsening between the rich and the poor.
... on an individual level, India’s recent growth has been uncomfortably unequal. Having the world’s biggest population explains why so many foreign investors are attracted to its consumer market. Most Indians are rural, and 75 percent of them are by most measures poor, qualifying for free food rations intended to prevent malnutrition. Though that warrants some caution, it leaves room for growth.
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Sales of luxury goods have been booming, especially since the pandemic, generating yearslong waiting lists for vehicles like the Mercedes G 63. Sales of motorbikes and scooters, which transport far more Indians than all the four-wheeled cars combined, have been stagnant.
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The most painful aspect of the economy is the jobs situation. Officially about 7 percent of Indians are unemployed. Vastly more are underemployed. In the past month, Indians desperate to find better incomes abroad have died trying: crossing the United States’ borders, fighting as underequipped mercenaries for Russia in Ukraine and filling positions left empty by Palestinians forced to stop working in Israel.There are signs suggesting that Modi has concentrated power and control, things that Western democracies usually don't like to see:
Expressing even mild skepticism is avoided. Economists who depend on government work must be careful not to speak frankly. Economists who do not work with the government are becoming scarce, as independent think tanks are raided and shuttered.
Mr. Modi has been busy remaking the institutions of Indian governance. Political competition has been all but eliminated at the national level, and he has exploited animosity against the country’s Muslim minority of 200 million.
Still, personal conversations with Indian friends largely support the sentiment that Modi has done great things for India's economy.
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Modi has realigned the electorate. He was able to win on a hindu-first cultural agenda. No one has been able to create an electoral victory focused on a single ethnic group before.
And while it may not show in their GDP numbers, India has been a country transformed over the last 10 years. They've invested heavily into digital infrastructure. Even the poor have a digital identify card and are able to participate in a cashless economy.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/resources/idt-0385e7a0-3feb-4ab7-ab78-d80ad189e347
Modi was expected to win big. But latest tallies suggest that Modi will be looking at a "reduced majority" instead.
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Actually his party will have to form a minority government:
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Actually his party will have to form a minority government:
@Renauda said in India Election 2024:
Actually his party will have to form a minority government
I very much doubt there'll be any minorities in that guy's government
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Yes, the Congress party (which was the party in power forever, starting with Nehru - followed by his daughter Indira Gandhi -- followed by her son Rajiv -- followed by his son Rahul) is also going to try and form a government.
(As an aside story - Rajiv was never going to be in politics. His brother Sanjay was the one who was being taught to move up the political ladder. But he died in a plane crash (he was the pilot) and after he died, Rajiv became more active)
