India’s Aspirations

India’s democracy, the world’s most populous, is a marvel of the modern age: 1.3 billion people who speak more than 700 languages uniting under one roof. Its immensity also slows the decision-making needed to keep up with its people’s aspirations. Feeble public services, persistent inflation, crippling corruption and crumbling infrastructure are ever-present grievances of a population who on average earn about $5 per day. Indians yearn not just for faster economic development but for higher-quality jobs for their children and solutions to age-old problems — from a gummed-up legal system and discrimination based on the Hindu caste system to violence against women. Voters will decide in 2019 whether to renew the mandate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who promises to continue pro-market reforms to modernize the economy. Weighing against him are complaints that the Hindu nationalists in his Bharatiya Janata Party have stoked religious and social tensions.

Modi has had a mixed record since his party in 2014 secured the first majority in the lower house of parliament in 30 years. He’s lauded for opening millions of bank accounts for the poor, bringing electricity to villages, rolling out a national sales tax and reforming archaic bankruptcy rules. On the world stage, Modi has traveled widely to sell India as an investment destination, with some success, while celebrating its flourishing diaspora from Dubai to Silicon Valley. But his decision in 2016 to recall most bank notes, a ploy to tackle corruption, caused chaos for many businesses and slowed economic growth. Efforts to boost manufacturing and create jobs for the 1 million youths joining the labor pool each month have sputtered. Proposals to ease restrictive land and labor rules have gone nowhere. Social tensions have also flared on his watch. Modi’s responses to attacks on women and Muslims have been underwhelming, critics say, while his appointment of a Hindu nationalist as party chief served to empower extremists. Fringe groups have attacked Muslims across India while a Hindu priest that Modi appointed to lead the most populous state blamed Muslim youths for waging a “love jihad” to seduce Hindu women and convert them to Islam. Still, Modi has helped extend the BJP’s grip on power in state elections, leaving the opposition Congress Party facing a formidable challenge to defeat a prime minister who remains the country’s most popular politician.