Intro: This year, 2024, will see a record number of elections being held, with over 2 billion people voting in 50 countries around the world. At the halfway mark of the year, the world’s largest democracy , India, has just concluded its six-week long election, counting 640 million votes. India’s incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected but his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost their majority and are now in a coalition with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
What does this mean for India, Asia and the world? To find out, we are joined by Professor Kanti Bajpai, Vice Dean (Research and Development) and Wilmar Professor of Asian Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He is an expert on India and China-India relations, and his most recent book is titled:
India Versus China: Why They Are Not Friends.
I asked him what he thought was the key takeaway of the election results.
Professor Kanti Bajpai: The BJP under Modi expected a very big win and hoped for a very big win and didn't get it.
In fact we're forced into a coalition government. And so that's quite a shocker in a sense because as Modi and the BJP have won two
elections back to back with a full simple majority, and they've now been forced into a coalition government.
David Austin: And was that a surprise to you?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: There were times when I thought that the BJP and Modi would score even better than they had in the previous election.
Then as I read and listened to the campaign as it progressed, I thought not that there were signs that the BJP would not do as well and indeed might, might not even get a full majority. And then I was back again to thinking that they would do okay, perhaps pretty much back to where they were.
But towards the end it did seem like they were in trouble. And so the final result over a seven week campaign, I guess I wasn't shocked, but relative to where I started out, yeah, I was pretty surprised.
David Austin: What do you think the results say about the Indian political landscape? Has anything major changed in your opinion?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: The biggest change is that we are back to coalition politics in India. Since the late 1980s no government in Delhi has had a full majority. They've always had to cobble together a bunch of parties in a coalition in order to govern.
And this has been unstable to some extent, politically at least. And then Modi and the BJP came along and put together two elections back-to-back, as I said, which gave them a full majority and they really weren't dependent on coalition partners.
The big effect of this election is that in a way India has gone back to the period of 1989 to 2014 when there were coalition governments in power. So that's about 25 years of, or 30 years of coalition government, and we've come back to that.
David Austin: What about the broader implication that this might be a rejection of the BJP and Prime Minister Modi's policies. Do you agree with that? And what do you think really matters to the Indian population right now?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: I think we've got to be a bit careful. The BJP and Modi got 37% of the votes which is exactly the percentage they had in the previous election.
But given the nature of first-past-the-post election systems, that is the person who has the biggest number of votes wins the constituency, despite winning 37%, they've only won about 240 seats, which is a loss of about 60 or 70 seats from the previous election. So I think it's a mixed result.
They've managed to keep 37% of the vote, but because the opposition got together and were not divided, that 37% of the vote didn't manage to give them the kind of victories that they got the last time around.
One of the big takeaways is that if the opposition sticks together they can beat the BJP. Sticking together means, can they adjust seats? Can they say to each other, look, let's not all compete against each other against the BJP.
The opposition in significant areas did manage to get their act together and take on the BJP in a head-to-head, and I think that worked. So it's a mixed bag for the BJP, they're back in power. They got 37% of the vote, but they've lost seats. And the opposition can smell that this government is beatable. Modi is beatable. If they stick together.
David Austin: Do you think they can, keep that up and put aside any other kind of infighting or disputes between them?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: They have a history of fighting each other and competing against each other and falling out, and then sometimes going over and becoming friends and partners with the BJP. I think it's still an open question, you know, they have a record, as I say, of falling apart.
So you can see that the BJP looking ahead, after a decent interval, I think Prime Minister Modi and the BJP will take their time. They don't want to immediately begin to try and split the opposition because they won't look good. Won't look good to the voter. The voter is looking now for the BJP to come back down to Earth and provide good governance, work with the opposition, and not try to play, unseemly politics and try and break the opposition right away.
But, the BJP has a wonderful track record in breaking opposition by winning over MPs from the other side and perhaps even stealing MPs from their coalition partners. So I think looking down the road I can imagine Mr. Modi and the BJP trying to win over members of their own coalition to their side, or breaking the opposition by winning over their MPs. But I would say it won't happen in the immediate future, the BJP will wait for a decent interval.
David Austin: Now speaking of kind of unseemly politics, the rising ethnic tensions and religious divisions over the last 10 years, does this election signal to you that voters are now seeing past the policies of division?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: It certainly seems like voters for the time being, have had enough of what I broadly call cultural politics and they want good solid economic policy making. That's a big message here. But, India's a very big country and there will be incidents. There've already been incidents here and there.
The idea that
ethno-religious tensions will immediately disappear because of this vote. I don't think that's likely. I'm not saying that the BJP and the Modi government at the centre in Delhi will periodically engineer these kinds of episodes. There are forces out there who are manageable and amenable to the BJP and direction from Delhi who can cause trouble. And so I think it's quite likely that there will be ethno-religious tensions, for instance attacks on, on minorities - Muslims, perhaps even Christians.
So I think there will be incidents. The question is how much the BJP at the central level is seemingly going to be, either sympathetic to or put a particular spin on it, which they think will help them electorally.
The government will have temptations and as it goes along, they've got five years ahead of them, it's difficult to see that there won't be moments when they will be tempted to put a particular spin on episodes to their advantage. And, again, I say 37% of the electorate voted for Modi and the BJP.
So it's not altogether a rejection of a certain kind of politics, cultural politics in India.
David Austin: But you did mention that there is a demand for some solid governance and progress on the economy. Do you think that the BJP will change the way they govern in the, at least in the short term to respond to that demand and, what will they need to do to win back the initiative with voters?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Clearly the economy has hurt the BJP and has hurt India. Its unemployment is very high. Some figures suggest that almost half of young people have no jobs or have, just part-time employment. Those are astonishing figures, if correct. We are not sure because this government has been reluctant to share the usual unemployment data that we are used to getting. But it's clear that the electorate has felt the pinch. There's inflation. That's the second big problem, so that has to be tackled. There's the issue of affirmative action, what the Americans call affirmative action, which Indians call reservations.
Reservations meant special policies in say, for instance, jobs reserved for tribals or people of a lower caste background. There was a suggestion by the opposition during the election that the BJP would scale back those reservations to the detriment of tribal and caste groups.
Some of the voting public defected from the BJP as a result of the opposition's arguments on that score. I think there again, there's a problem for the BJP. They have to find a way to reassure tribals and caste groups that the reservations policy is not going to be taken away.
So there are two or three areas where the BJP has to be very businesslike, very workmanlike in the months ahead, and I would certainly say the first year or so will in a way harken back to Modi mark one, his first term where development, the economy were much more a feature of his governance.
The second term which just ended was marked much more by cultural politics. The citizenship campaign, the building of the Ram Temple, certain kinds of issues relating to Muslims such as the changes in the divorce law for Muslims. Also the talk of a uniform civil code where Muslims would also be brought in, finally into, a uniform civil code.
So these were quite big features of Modi's governance in the second term, I think this term may see a return, at least initially, for a year or two back to the economy and development issues and reassuring people that growth can be put back on a higher trajectory than the 7% that Modi kind of managed in these five years. That reservations won't be fooled around with, that inflation will be curbed and that there will be progress on jobs. It's a very big issue.
David Austin: Where do you see the fault lines and how is the opposition going to try and take advantage of this in this next term?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: The opposition's already said it's going to be more aggressive with the bigger numbers they have.
One sign of that is already evident. There has to be a selection of a new speaker for the parliamentary houses, the upper and lower house, and the opposition’s already saying that they want their own kind of nominee and they're reaching out to the BJP's coalition partners to try to get them to defect on this issue.
But clearly, Parliament's going to be far more contentious than it was the last five years. Parliament rarely met and when they did meet, debates were relatively tame. I think there's going to be a ramping up of debate and noise in the parliament.
Now, the opposition has to be careful. The public has made clear they want a functioning and really quite effective opposition. But what they don't want, I suspect, is an opposition that stalls in parliament constantly and stops the house functioning.
Having voted a good number of opposition MPs into parliament, the public does want solid, effective opposition that will work with the government to get the economy particularly back on the rails.
So if the opposition is tempted to get super aggressive and cause a lot of trouble, it may very soon find that the BJP is able to exploit that.
David Austin: Now you’ve mentioned already the issues with jobs and inflation and how does this tie in with the overall economic inequality and what do you think are the prospects for that being improved in the near term?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: This is a structural problem. It goes beyond Modi and the BJP. If you look at 30 years of economic growth in India, it's been trucking along, ticking along at 7% per annum. It doesn't matter if India has had a coalition government in power. It doesn't matter whether there's been a strong prime minister or relatively weak prime minister.
Modi had a full-on majority. He was a strong personality. He ran his party without too much internal trouble, and he still didn't manage to do much better than 7% per annum. He was in line with the growth rates of previous administrations, and despite being such a strong leader with such a strong mandate, he couldn't get past 7%.
So there seems to be a kind of a structural problem in India. Governments are simply not able to go past 7%. Now, 7% globally per annum over a long period of time is actually a very good record. So it's not to be sneezed at, but the problem seems to be that it's not delivering enough of economic development for there to be redistribution.
So to your question about inequality, you've got to have growth and you have to have enough growth to start to distribute it more evenly. And it seems to me that hasn't quite happened.
There just isn't enough fat in the system in their view to, to take more radical action on inequality. The problem is too much redistribution and you might choke off the growth numbers. So I think nobody's figured out, over 30 years, quite how to do it.
There are signs already that Modi's going to try and tinker with the tax system. Trying to reduce tax burden, try to get domestic demand going, boost growth and by lowering taxes, reduce inequality somewhat.
He's been very careful in this last administration to keep the fiscal deficit within manageable range. I think that's been one of his economic achievements. He may have to loosen the purse. He may have to run the press, pump out rupees into the economy to stimulate growth, but also to redistribute and take his risks then on inflation.
And also, if you increase the fiscal deficit investors begin to get worried. So it's not easy to promote jobs and employment and curtail inflation and keep foreign investment coming in. So he’s got quite a challenge in his hands, and I think in part we are paying the price for too much attention to cultural politics in his last government.
David Austin: Now I want to move on to some more international topics. But before I do, is there anything else about the domestic situation that you'd like to comment on?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: No, I think it's a situation that people have to watch very carefully and Modi above all.
One other thing I think that's worth watching is, he's retained most of the senior ministers that he had in the last couple of governments. But the more important issue is what kind of outreach is there going to be?
I think it was very clear that the last 10 years have focused a lot on Modi. Modi delivering stuff to the public. He went into the election with a slogan, Modi guarantees you this, Modi guarantees you that. Some people accused him of building a cult of personality. So I think that now he's going to have to take a step back.
The RSS, which is this kind of quasi political organisation, which provides a lot of organisational backbone for the BJP government. Already the head of the RSS has signalled that this kind of cult personality has got to go. That the Modi government has to look at more accountable, more decentralised, more consultative governance.
And so one of the things to look for in domestic politics now and decision making is how much Modi pulls back from this kind of very public overblown image of himself and begins to use his ministerial team and the RSS to develop a softer, more broad based form of governance.
David Austin: I have one follow-up question on your last comment, how much do you think Modi believes his own cult of personality?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Yeah, I don't think one should ever underestimate Modi. He's a very clever politician. He's self-aware. He's schooled himself to project a certain kind of personality and certain kind of politics. I think he can retool. There's no denying the fact that he's very adept at that. But yes, he's got used to a certain kind of projection of himself and he'll need some time to digest this result and to make some adjustments. What happened in the campaign was that they went into it with a view that he was really their calling card and very decisive. And they had a very good shot at increasing their seat tally.
And then they began to very quickly find out that the crowds weren't showing up, that there wasn't the usual triumphalist kind of election meetings. And they made a call which went wrong. I think the call they made was to emphasize Modi as this fantastic leader even more. To give him almost mythic proportions.
And he himself began to take that line saying that he had a feeling that he was an extraordinary person, born not biologically propagated, but born to divinity and so on and so forth. Now surely he doesn't believe that literally. But it was a sense that would play well with the voter.
So he doubled down on his personality and the enormousness of his, his kind of a public persona. And as the elections went on, and you've got to appreciate that these elections go on over about six or seven weeks in India because of the massive size of the electorate. And they’re held in six or seven phases, and in each phase the BJP would've been taking the pulse of the voter.
What's striking is that surely they were beginning to get information that it wasn't going as well as they thought it was going to go. But what's curious is that they then stuck with a kind of messaging of Modi as this larger-than-life personality. Rather than pull back and go back to a more normal campaigning - sensible, a normal way, present their achievements and talk about some of the stuff they want to do in the future. And perhaps even admit some failures. They doubled down again on, on Modi being this larger-than-life personality who would lead into a triumphal new age. And I think it just didn't work.
The voters in a sense became either tired of it. Tired of this government taking, and Modi in particular taking credit for everything and tired of a messaging that they felt was out of kilter with the situation on the ground. No jobs, rising inflation and so on.
We should remember also another thing that's very important. He's 72 or 73 years old. The next election is five years away. He would be 78 years old going into the next election. Now he's pretty healthy. He does his yoga. He doesn't smoke and drink and all of that kind of stuff. He's very careful about his diet.
He might be in good shape, but he may not be. So this may be a period when they're looking to soften his image and look for a successor as well.
David Austin: Now I'd like to move on to foreign policy. And in terms of foreign policy, do you think that the result of this latest election will have an impact in Southeast Asia and Singapore specifically?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Not really. I think that this last five years, Modi, played down foreign policy.
He didn't travel as much as he did in his first term. And he didn't come all that much to Asian countries. In the first term he came to Southeast Asia a lot. He went to Japan and so on and so forth. But he didn't do the Asia Pacific very much in his second term. And I think he downplayed the Asia angle, so I think that's led to a bit of neglect of this region.
So possibly, I think foreign policy may come back into this third term. He may be looking to, again, play the foreign policy card to boost his image at home. And to say, look, I'm still a respected leader on the world stage. I carry India's flag. And with that in mind, Southeast Asia and Singapore might be a good place to make a comeback.
I think India's lost ground in the region and in Singapore, and this might be a time to come back. He admires the region. He admires Singapore a lot, and he may want to make a comeback. Plus, there are economic reasons to do so. If India wants to boost its trade and investments, Southeast Asia and Singapore have traditionally been a good place for India to do business.
India famously walked out of the RCEP, the regional trade agreement that included the ASEAN countries, plus China, plus South Korea, plus Japan and so on. I don't think India will necessarily go back to the RCEP, but he may want to make more of a push for economic reasons into this region. So I think that's a distinct possibility.
David Austin: And he may not go back to the RCEP, but didn't they say they're leaving the door open for India if they change their mind?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Yes that's the case. Don't rule it out completely. But there were reasons that Modi and India declined the RCEP primarily because they feared that an RCEP would, in effect, allow even more Chinese goods to flow into India.
You have to remember that. There's a massive trade deficit with China, India's trade with China. Last year was the biggest figure for bilateral trade with China, about $140 billion. But the trade deficit with China is something like a hundred billion dollars. So it's massively in favour of China.
And the fear is that the RCEP would exacerbate the trade deficit. But he would like to strengthen trade ties with ASEAN, he would like probably more bilateral trade deals or investment deals and so on. Having said that, he's primarily looking to Western markets.
He's got a trade deal on the anvil with the Americans, with the European Union, with the UK, and even with the Canadians, even though relations with Canada are not in great shape. So I think his priority will be to cut those deals with the Western countries.
So there's an opening, there's a possibility of something of trade and economic deals with Asia as well, including Southeast Asia. But, as I say, I think he'd primarily be looking to the West and only secondarily to Asia and Southeast Asia.
David Austin: You mentioned the trade relationship between China and India, but geopolitically now the relationship between China, India, and the United States, which is fairly high tension right now. How do you see that relationship playing out with this new balance of power in Indian politics?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Yeah, that's an interesting question. It was quite noticeable that during the election in an interview, Modi said that he thought that India and China should quicken the pace on a border settlement.
The biggest quarrel between the two countries is over the border. And he also said that relations with China were very significant for India. So I think the way to read that is here he is in the middle of an election, he's signalling something to Beijing. He's signalling hopes of a better relationship after the difficulties since 2020.
You remember in 2020 there was a fight in a place called Galwan, and 20 Indian
soldiers lost their lives. And ever since then, the normal sort of course of relations with China have been put on the back burner. And the election campaign of course featured a little bit of an India China quarrel as well because there's campaigning in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India, which adjoins China which Beijing lays claim to.
And so when campaigning was going on China did wag its finger and say, Arunachal Pradesh is part of China, you shouldn't be campaigning there. But Modi himself took a softer line on China during the campaign, and we should remember that he's always admired China for governance, for its astonishing economic rise. When he was chief minister in Gujarat, he made four or five trips to China and he had many Chinese business delegations come to his state. And throughout these 10 years, despite Galwan, Modi himself, has never criticized China in public. So he does want a solid relationship with China.
If he manages to govern fairly stably over the next couple of years, he may yet try and reach out to China. And you've got to remember that in the opposition, parties like the Congress and some of the left of centre parties have always been quite soft on China as well.
So they may not oppose him too much if he takes a fairly business-like approach to China and starts to move towards a better relationship.
He will be looking for opportunities to improve the relationship with China. He'll be looking to create some more bargaining space with the Americans, who on issues in Indian domestic politics have been critical of Modi; human rights, minority rights, there was the whole issue of the Americans accusing India of plotting an assassination in the United States.
So those things obviously have been difficult for Modi to swallow, and I think he wants a little bit of bargaining space even with the Americans. And an outreach to China reminds the Americans that India has other geopolitical options if it's pushed too hard on its domestic record, on human rights and democracy.
Much depends on what happens in the United States now in the presidential elections, which are coming up in November. If Trump wins I think that's good for Modi and for India politically, I think some of the heat on human rights, democracy and perhaps even these accusations over the assassination they may soften with Trump.
On the other hand, dealing with Trump on economic issues is more difficult. He's a much harder player on things like tariffs, on protectionism and so on, and he's accused India in the past of not being open enough to American investment, American goods.
He slapped tariffs on India in retaliation. So I think it would be a mixed picture with the United States if Trump comes to power. So there are all kinds of things I think, in motion. And it's not clear what Moody will do, but I would look to him trying to create some more bargaining room with the United States by taking us a softer line on China.
David Austin: Very interesting. And I take your point on how things might change if Trump were to be re-elected in the US but there are a lot of other elections this year around the world. Do you see anything that would change the dynamics for example, if there's a change in government in the UK or in the EU?
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Well, The United States is the most important country for India amongst those three. But yeah, I think it looks like Keir Starmer and Labour will come to victory. But again, the margin of their victory will count, I think for India. Traditionally over the last 20, 30 years, India seems to have done better with the Tories in par in Britain because especially under Modi, there's been a view that the Labour Party draws a lot of support from Muslim voters in the UK. And so Modi will be looking sideways at a Labour government to see just how much the Labour Party will draw on Muslim support as it governs. And there's a degree of weariness, I think in the BJP and Modi about a Labour victory.
Having said that, on the whole, India deals quite comfortably with whichever governments in power in the UK and I think Labour will be reaching out to India likewise for trade deals and to manage the immigration issues and so on. There's a very large South Asian and Indian constituency and no government in the UK can afford to ignore India, whoever's in power in India.
So on both sides, there will be a period of adjustment with Starmer coming to power but I would look to the Modi government to have a good working relationship with the UK and maybe clinch that trade deal as fast as possible to compensate for walking out of the RCEP.
The EU, I think that's a more interesting situation. For instance, Macron has called for an election in France. And it could go very wrong for him, and you could get for the first time a right-wing government in France.
Now India has a close strategic partnership with the French. Will that be strengthened by a right-wing government in, in, in France? Probably. Modi does quite well with right-wing governments. He just went to the G7 meeting and had a whole series of selfies with Giorgia Meloni, the right-wing Italian Prime Minister.
That change would probably be okay for Modi and might even strengthen the relationship with the French. There's been a rightward swing in the EU parliamentary elections. And again, that might suit a right of centre government in India, which doesn't enjoy the occasional EU criticism of democratic backsliding India or human rights situations in India.
Trump coming to power and the EU and the French moving rightwards, I would think that for the BJP and Modi, that those would be good news.
So you might see the US and EU play a bigger role in India's foreign policy than the UK going forward. And again, that's worth watching carefully.
David Austin: Definitely a lot to watch as we move into this new administration, new coalition. So thank you so much for sharing all that with us. Really a lot of fascinating insights.
Professor Kanti Bajpai: Thank you very much for having me. I think it's given me a chance to think through some issues as well on where the future is with this new government.
David Austin: Very good. Thank you so much.