New Delhi: It is election time in India and the results in four states may “seal the fate of Modi’s project,” Mihir Sharma writes for Bloomberg.
He writes that while West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Assam are not the largest states, for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), “the elections are nevertheless of surpassing importance.”
“The BJP—and its parent organization, the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—have a deeper, more significant project in hand: The remaking of India, and the homogenization of its multiple cultures, languages, and ways of worship,” he writes.
The elections, Sharma highlights, will take place in those states which have “most emphatically rejected its [BJP] totalizing ‘Hindutva’ project”.
He says that the BJP is “closer to that goal today than ever before.”
“A decade of cultivating ethnic and religious divides in Assam will pay off; the BJP is likely to be reelected comfortably. In Kerala, they’re already further than they’ve ever been, winning local elections in the state’s capital last year. They are now the main challenger in West Bengal, and a dynamic component of the opposition alliance in Tamil Nadu.”
Sharma argues that not only do these states have a sizeable Muslim population, but even their Hindu residents are culturally different from their compatriots in the North and the West.
In other news, Anup Roy of Bloomberg reports about how the West Asia situation is affecting India economically.
While the government and refiners have absorbed the impact of higher crude prices so far, pressure is likely to build, he writes. “India is among the economies most exposed to global energy disruptions, importing about 90 percent of its crude oil and more than half of its liquefied petroleum gas.”
As Roy notes, inflation has remained within the limit projected by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)—between two and six percent—but “it is expected to keep inching up if global supply chains aren’t restored.”
RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra projects inflation at 4.6 percent for the current financial year.
“Data released Monday also showed that food prices—which account for about 37 percent of the consumer basket—rose 3.87 percent from a year earlier. India’s food inflation has remained subdued after a favorable monsoon last year, but forecasts of below-normal rains this year could put upward pressure on prices.”
Veena Venugopal of the Financial Times writes about Tata Sons going public at a time when boardroom tensions over succession persist.
“Six months after a previous missed deadline to go public, Tata Sons’ potential listing is back in the news. A proposed change in the Reserve Bank of India’s regulations could finally bring the holding company behind Tata Group on to the stock market,” she writes.
According to draft guidelines published by the RBI last week, non-banking financial companies with more than Rs 1 trillion in assets will be forced to list on the stock market “without exception”.
The company reported assets worth Rs 1.75 trillion till March 2025, but it then put in a request to deregister itself as a “core investment company” to avoid public listing. The RBI is yet to decide on the request.
Venugopal argues that a public listing, while providing a wider horizon for investment, will also compel the company to be more transparent about its operations.
However, tensions have been simmering in the boardroom ever since Ratan Tata died, and his half-brother, Noel Tata, became the chair of Tata Trusts.
“The board is also grappling with the decision of whether to extend Chandrasekaran’s tenure—set to end in February 2027—for a third term,” Venugopal writes. “The group needs a unified leadership now more than ever, yet a quick resolution does not appear to be in sight.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)