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Friday, March 29, 2024
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India needs a leader who will govern for all Indians

Narendra Modi has once again proved himself a preternaturally skilled politician but if he wants to be a great leader, he has to show he can be one for all Indians.

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In the world’s biggest election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory looks to be even bigger than expected: His ruling Bharatiya Janata Party appears set to win an outright majority for the second time, possibly improving on its 2014 showing. Clearly, he has a mandate for a second term. Now he needs the ambitions to match.

Two challenges need immediate attention.

The first is economic. Although Modi introduced praiseworthy reforms in his first term — in particular, a new bankruptcy code and a nationwide goods-and-services tax — he hasn’t yet put the economy on a path to structurally higher growth. The only way to create the nearly 1 million jobs per month India needs for its swelling population is to expand the country’s manufacturing sector, particularly goods for export. That will require making fundamental changes to labor-market rules and land-acquisition laws that will allow companies to expand and integrate with global supply chains.


To get the latest live updates on the Lok Sabha elections, click here 


India also needs to reverse a disappointing recent trend toward protectionism, both to forestall a backlash from trading partners and to boost its competitiveness. Modi needs to start living up to his 2014 pledge to provide “minimum government, maximum governance.” Inefficient state banks need to be shut down or privatized to get investment flowing again. So do state companies such as Air India Ltd. that are little more than a drain on the exchequer.

These aren’t new problems. If Modi bears any blame, it’s for not spending more political capital on addressing them. The same can’t be said for his other central task: to tamp down the divisiveness that he and the BJP exploited to return to power.

From the beginning, Modi cast the recently concluded vote as part of a larger battle against thinly disguised enemies. He accused the opposition Indian National Congress of a treasonous sympathy for Muslim-majority Pakistan, with which India had just fought a dangerous air duel. His top lieutenant vowed to expel illegal Muslim immigrants, whom he likened to “termites.” Mocking worries about rising Hindu militancy, the BJP even put forward as a candidate a self-styled holy woman charged in a bombing that killed six Muslims.

Modi, a career-long acolyte of the Hindu nationalist movement, has never disguised his conviction that India needs to promote its Hindu heritage more loudly. In power, he has at least tolerated a rising strain of anti-Muslim prejudice encouraged by BJP supporters and party officials. This has led to violence — at least three dozen Muslims have been lynched since Modi took office, supposedly for eating or trafficking in beef — while the willingness of local BJP politicians to embrace suspects and undermine police investigations has encouraged a sense of impunity among Hindu radicals.

Such signals from the top have done more than erode faith in the police and judiciary. They’ve poisoned intercommunal relations and made overt prejudice against Muslims far more acceptable than it’s been in decades. Even if this reflects cynical politics, it’s dangerously short-sighted: It will make the kind of bipartisanship needed to promote serious economic reforms impossible, and threatens to do grave damage to India’s fragile social fabric.

Modi has once again proved himself a preternaturally skilled politician. If he wants to be a great leader, though, he has to show he can be one for all Indians. –Bloomberg


Also read: How Modi-Shah’s BJP got the better of Congress & everyone else


 

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4 COMMENTS

  1. I want to Humbly remind say that SOUL of INDIA or IDEA of INDIA can’t be BOOT LicKing of a Particular Religion or Minority/Muslim Community & their Appeasement for VoteBanK at the cost of National Security & then BRAND it as a SecuLarism ………SOUL of INDIA or IDEA of INDIA is JUSTICE to ALL, Development for ALL, Appeasement of NONE & ZERO TOLERANCE towards Anti-India TERRORISTS , which Currently only BJP & MODi is Daring to Do ……..Jai Hind

  2. I want to Humbly remind that SOUL of INDIA or IDEA of INDIA can’t be BOOT LicKing of a Particular Religion or Minority/Muslim Community & their Appeasement for VoteBanK at the cost of National Security & then BRAND it as a SecuLarism ………SOUL of INDIA or IDEA of INDIA is JUSTICE to ALL, Development for ALL, Appeasement of NONE & ZERO TOLERANCE towards Anti-India TERRORISTS , which Currently only BJP & MODi is Doing……..Jai Hind

  3. Doomberg: go spread your doom and gloom and bare-faced lies elsewhere.
    Your home country was so agitated over another country’s alleged meddling in your elections.
    Stop doing what you don’t want others to do.
    In a word (rather two): GET LOST!

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