The World’s Biggest Election Wraps Up

Exit polls from the last phase of India’s national election predict a major victory for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party:

A poll by C-Voter, a research group, indicated the BJP and its allies could win 289 seats in Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, giving the coalition the majority needed to oust the incumbent Congress Party and form the nation’s next government. A poll by ABP-Nielsen predicted the BJP-led coalition would secure 281 seats, according to Reuters. If the exit polls prove to be correct — which is no guarantee — they would put BJP leader Narendra Modi in pole position to become the next Prime Minister of India.

But Heather Timmons cautions that Indian exit polls are notoriously unreliable, and the final results could look very different when they come out on Friday:

Opinion and exit polls have been so inaccurate so often in the past that not only are they not taken seriously by analysts, but many in the general population believe they are wrong on purpose in an attempt to curry favor with politicians. Election opinion polls are viewed in India as “covert instruments used by media houses in collusion with political parties for falsely predicting their fortunes with the aim of influencing the electorate in India,” said Praveen Rai, a political analyst with New Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

In the last national election in 2009, for example, television network NDTV, Hindi channel Aaj Tak, and media house Zee News predicted based on opinion and exit polls that the BJP and its allies could get between 230 and 250 seats, and Congress and its allies between 176 and 205. The actual number for the BJP group was 189, and Congress and its allies got 222.

Nonetheless, the commentariat is already talking about what a Modi premiership might look like. Harsh Pant explains why the BJP chief is such a big deal:

Modi’s rise has shaken the foundations of the Indian polity. You may not like his politics, but you cannot deny his impact. He has broken old norms, challenging the Gandhis openly, talking about them disparagingly, embellishing his record, sidelining the old guard within his own party, leading a tech-savvy campaign, reaching out directly to the people, and making a strong pitch for national leadership without inhibitions. He wants to be India’s next prime minister, he is telling his countrymen and women, and he is not ashamed to ask for their support. Modi’s ambition is his greatest asset in an increasingly ambitious India.

And it’s precisely because of this that Modi’s rise matters. The liberal intelligentsia continues to sound alarm bells, some even threatening to leave the country if Modi is elected. But they fail to comprehend how radically India has changed. Modi is a product of a contemporary India where the fault-lines of religion and caste, while important, are no longer the be all and end all of politics. An absence of leadership over the last decade has led to a craving for decisive leadership. Modi fills that vacuum.

Milan Vaishnav wonders if he can meet the public’s extremely high expectations, especially regarding the economy:

Yes, signs suggest the struggling Indian economy may be bottoming out. The International Monetary Fund recently announced that it expects India’s growth rate to recover from 4.4 percent in 2013 to 5.4 percent in 2014 and 6.4 percent in 2015. Consumer price inflation has come down from 11 percent in 2013 to 8 percent this March. The rupee, which experienced a free fall last summer after the Federal Reserve’s tapering talk, has since stabilized. Thus, with or without Modi, India may be able to muddle through.

But voter expectations are far greater; surveys suggest that they are flocking toward the BJP in the hopes that Modi can generate millions of new jobs, plug India’s infrastructure gap and attract the kinds of foreign money he has lured to Gujarat. Beyond voters, Modi is also moving stock markets: On the basis of pre-election polls projecting a BJP victory, India’s Sensex has risen more than 15 percent over the past six months. In meeting these expectations, Modi faces obstacles ranging from the difficult to the impossible.

William Inboden considers how the US should deal with Modi, who has been banned from visiting the US since 2005 over his role in a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat three years earlier:

Modi may not be the leader we want for India, but he will likely be the leader we get. Additionally, on the issue of religious toleration itself, the visa ban has outlived its effectiveness. Twelve years after the Gujarat massacres, there is little evidence that Modi’s continued blacklisting will do much to protect religious freedom in India.

But lifting the visa ban alone would be insufficient. The Obama administration should couple this with a series of other specific measures that show America’s willingness to work with Modi does not diminish our concern for religious freedom. While Modi has moderated some of his rhetoric, regrettably he seems to still embrace some of the more intolerant and toxic strains of Hindu nationalism. Many of India’s Muslims and Christians in particular fear that a Modi government could bring them increased discrimination and even persecution. The Obama administration should start communicating to India now its support for religious toleration, and should start developing specific policy initiatives to support religious freedom in India.

Previous Dish on Modi here and India’s elections here.