The people of India have cast their votes, and the results will be out in a few hours. ‘Exit Polls,’ dubbed by the opposition as ‘fake’, predict that Narendra Modi will return to power for a third term. If he does indeed win the elections with a large majority, India’s democracy will be endangered. Far from being the ‘world’s largest democracy’, India will become the world’s largest kleptocracy—and the country’s resources will be controlled, directly or indirectly, by a small elite.
Modi’s return to power will facilitate two crony capitalists to spread their tentacles further into every part of the country’s governance. If one were to assess based on the last ten years of Modi’s governance, two Gujarati businessmen known to be very close to Prime Minister Modi would end up owning more than half of the country’s resources. Policy-making will tilt to favour their monopolistic practices.
For instance, a day after the ‘exit polls’ were announced, companies owned by Gautam Adani, a businessman known to be close to the Prime Minister, saw an extraordinary upswing in the stock market. Adani Power gained 15.9 per cent; Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones gained 10.31 per cent; Adani Energy Solutions gained 8.92 per cent; Adani Total Gas gained 7.74 per cent; Adani Green Energy gained 7.05 per cent and Adani Enterprises gained 7.00 per cent. This unprecedented rise indicates a kleptocratic arrangement with the current government and the businessman.
In the name of ‘efficiency’ and public sector ‘rationalisation,’ resources owned and managed by public sector entities will be sold off at highly discounted rates to crony capitalists. The process in which the resources will be sold will follow a standard protocol to give it a semblance of legitimacy.
First, opinion editorials which argue that ‘the government has no business to be in business’ will proliferate through media networks owned and controlled by the two crony capitalists. The performance of public sector entities will be questioned in the public domain; reservation-based employment will be blamed for their lacklustre performance. Consequently, calls for ‘rationalisation’ will increase.
Second, the government will set up committees to evaluate the viability of government-owned businesses; the Prime Minister will appoint pliable retired judges and bureaucrats to study the matter; they will recommend the sale of assets.
Third, based on their recommendations, the government will try to auction them publicly—with precise terms of the acquisition agreed behind closed doors—to favour a small cohort of business entities.
Fourth, the entities will take on debt—mostly from public sector banks, based on inflated share values—and acquire the public sector companies. Based on the acquisitions, they will generate enough hype in the stock market to get retail investors to pump their money into a few companies in the hope of a higher return.
Economic inequality will accelerate at an unprecedented pace. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and a large majority of the lower middle class will be pushed into poverty. A majority of the country’s poor, particularly those oppressed in the caste hierarchy, will struggle to make ends meet. Due to artificial intelligence and crony capitalism, job creation will slow down; there will be a lack of investment in public sector companies, and unemployment in India will accelerate at an unprecedented pace.
A majoritarian communal agenda will unfold to deflect attention away from the control of the country’s resources by the crony capitalists. Media networks owned by crony capitalists will peddle hate speeches as opinion editorials or as ‘debates’ without editorial integrity. Their hate-filled rhetoric will be shared on social media as memes. If the past ten years are an indication of the future, the country’s majority community will believe that the country’s problems are essentially due to the country’s minorities. The people they have lived with and known for most of their lives—their friends, neighbours, business associates and professional contacts—will be perceived as enemies of the state if they disagree with the narrative peddled by those in power.
A de facto apartheid will unfold. The country’s minorities will be actively discriminated against, intimidated and made to live in fear and anxiety. Their civil rights will be under assault—essentially through policies aimed at disenfranchising them. India’s Muslims, who constitute fourteen per cent of the population, will face the brunt. Those who fight back will branded as ‘anti-nationals’ and incarcerated without recourse to justice.
The Modi government will try to tinker with the judicial system under the pretext of reforming it so that the executive can control the judiciary. Every attempt will be made to bring in ‘reforms’ that will enable the Prime Minister to have a say in the appointment of the judges and also the Chief Justice of India.
More importantly, if the Modi government wins an extraordinary majority, they will try to change the basic structure of the constitution, which has been a stated agenda of the BJP and the RSS for decades. Hindus and Muslims will be pitted against one another as enemies. The Hindutva majoritarian agenda pushed by the BJP and the RSS seeks to relegate people who are non-Hindus—Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsees, Buddhists, Jains, tribalists and atheists—to the status of second-class citizens. To make India a Hindu Rashtra (or Hindu State), the Modi government will try to subvert the basic structure of the constitution by peddling lies in the name of religion.
India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeatedly warned of the dangers of divisive rhetoric and consistent mismanagement of the economy. In an interview with the journalist Karan Thapar, he said:
We should not assume that there is a divine destiny which will ensure that India continues to flourish and prosper howsoever we mismanage our economy. Great nations like the Soviet Union have perished. They have disappeared from the surface of the Earth. If the Indian polity is not well managed, I think we ought to recognise that a similar danger can overtake us too… If we continue to mismanage our economy, if we continue to divide our country on the basis of religion, caste and other sectarian issues, I think there is a great danger of that sort of thing happening.
It will be worthwhile to remember his words of wisdom.
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