#BJPs

[dxrlinggxd]

take a moment to read indian election news!! india has voted against the ruling fascist party. while they will resume government they will need to forge alliances and have lost multiple strong members of parliament. and all this despite them controlling the media and jailing their opposers! this is SUCH an important reminder that u shld never ever underestimate the power of a vote

[thelocalreport8]

Anupam Hazra removed from the post of BJP's national minister

New Delhi. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda has removed Anupam Hazra from the post of National Minister. This order of BJP President issued on Tuesday will come into effect with immediate effect. The decision was taken by Home Minister Amit Shah and party president JP Nadda on Tuesday after an organizational meeting in West Bengal. In this core committee meeting, the…

[baliportalnews]

Pertama di Bali, Jembrana Beri Jaminan Sosial Bagi Para Pekerja Rentan

BALIPORTALNEWS.COM, JEMBRANA - Perhatian akan perlindungan masyarakat khususnya bagi para pekerja di Jembrana terus ditingkatkan. Teranyar, Jembrana menjadi kabupaten pertama di Bali yang memberikan jaminan sosial bagi pekerja rentan. Komitmen itu diwujudkan melalui penandatanganan perjanjian kerja sama antara BPJS Ketenagakerjaan dengan Pemerintah Desa, Rabu (8/3/2023) di Ruang Rapat, Gedung Sentra Tenun Jembrana. Penandatanganan kerja sama antara Kepala Desa dengan Kepala Cabang BPJS Ketenagakerjaan Wilayah Bali itu disaksikan langsung oleh Bupati Jembrana, I Nengah Tamba bersama Deputi Direktur BPJS ketenagakerjaan Wilayah Nusa Tenggara dan Papua. Adapun jumlah pekerja rentan yang di-cover setiap desanya berjumlah 10 orang pekerja rentan di 41 desa dengan keseluruhan total 410 orang pekerja rentan.  Kategori pekerja rentan meliputi nelayan, petani, tukang ojek, buruh harian, tukang kayu mandiri, tukang batu mandiri, pedagang kaki lima dan pekerja lainnya yang tidak penerima upah dari perusahaan/tempatnya bekerja. Perjanjian kerja sama ini, kata Bupati Tamba sesuai apa yang menjadi visi misi Bupati dan Wakil Bupati untuk mengintervensi tenaga kerja yang rentan mendapatkan perlindungan “Kita sediakan satu desa 10 tenaga kerja dengan angsuran Rp16.800/orang tiap bulan selama satu tahun.  Ini akan kita tingkatkan lagi bilamana kondisi keuangan kita sudah bagus. Setidaknya kita sudah berbuat satu wilayah sebagai contoh di Provinsi Bali, Jembrana satu-satunya,” ungkap Bupati Tamba. Sementara, Kepala BPJamsostek Cabang Bali Denpasar, Opik Taufik membenarkan bahwa Kabupaten Jembrana merupakan satu-satunya kabupaten yang pertama kali Bali dalam memberikan perlindungan kepada tenaga kerja rentan. “Ini dicanangkan pertama kali di kabupaten yang dibiayai oleh pemerintah daerah, Jembrana yang pertama.  Dengan harapan perlindungan ini programnya adalah satu desa 100 pekerja rentan, kami sangat memahami bahwa pemerintah daerah sudah sangat berusaha sekuat tenaga harus ada masyarakat desa yang memberikan perlindungan. Maka dengan program bupati yang sangat luar biasa ini mudah-mudahan kedepannya terus bertambah.  Desa harus makin banyak melindungi masyarakatnya,” terangnya. Selain itu, pihaknya mengungkapkan bahwa program ini menjadi pilot project untuk kabupaten lainnya. “Ini akan menjadi percontohan untuk kabupaten-kabupaten lainnya, dan ini juga sudah menjadi program nasional.  untuk di Bali ini termasuk pemerintah daerah melalui anggaran APBD yang memberikan penganggaran untuk masyarakat desanya,” tegasnya. Hal senada disampaikan Deputi Direktur BPJS Ketenagakerjaan Wilayah Nusa Tenggara Papua, Kuncoro Budi Winarno, bahwa Kebupaten Jembrana satu-satunya kabupaten di Bali yang pertama kali dalam menjalankan program perlindungan kepada masyarakatnya. “Ini merupakan program yang sangat mulia karena memiliki resiko kerja yang sama, pemerintah harus hadir memberikan perlindungan. Kami sangat mengapresiasi apa yang sudah difokuskan dan dibijaksanai oleh Bapak Bupati Jembrana dengan memberikan perlindungan kepada pekerja rentan di seluruh desa yang ada di Kabupaten Jembrana.  Semoga perlindungan ini dapat diteruskan dan ditingkatkan,” tandasnya.(ang/bpn) Read the full article

[curtwilde]

Indian Army is supposedly using White Phosphorus on civilians in Kashmir - a war crime according to international law.

This is the "Kashmir is healing" that Hindutvadis talk about.

How long do they plan to use the pain of Kashmiri Hindus to justify this occupation?

[reasonsforhope]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, by some measures, the most popular leader in the world. Prior to the 2024 election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held an outright majority in the Lok Sabha (India’s Parliament) — one that was widely projected to grow after the vote count. The party regularly boasted that it would win 400 Lok Sabha seats, easily enough to amend India’s constitution along the party's preferred Hindu nationalist lines.

But when the results were announced on Tuesday, the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.

So what happened? Why did Indian voters deal a devastating blow to a prime minister who, by all measures, they mostly seem to like?

India is a massive country — the most populous in the world — and one of the most diverse, making its internal politics exceedingly complicated. A definitive assessment of the election would require granular data on voter breakdown across caste, class, linguistic, religious, age, and gender divides. At present, those numbers don’t exist in sufficient detail. 

But after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Understanding these factors isn’t just important for Indians. The country’s election has some universal lessons for how to beat a would-be authoritarian — ones that Americans especially might want to heed heading into its election in November.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024. Article continues below.

A new (and unequal) economy

Modi’s biggest and most surprising losses came in India’s two most populous states: Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west. Both states had previously been BJP strongholds — places where the party’s core tactic of pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority had seemingly cemented Hindu support for Modi and his allies.

One prominent Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.

Traveling through the country, but especially rural Uttar Pradesh, he prophesied “the return of normal politics”: that Indian voters were no longer held spellbound by Modi’s charismatic nationalist appeals and were instead starting to worry about the way politics was affecting their lives.

Yadav’s conclusions derived in no small part from hearing voters’ concerns about the economy. The issue wasn’t GDP growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many ordinary Indians suffered. Nearly half of all Indians between 20 and 24 are unemployed; Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that they felt hurt their livelihoods.

“Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the plight of farmers, [and] the struggles of labor,” Yadav wrote...

“We know for sure that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed,” says Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies India. 

The lesson here isn’t that the pocketbook concerns trump identity-based appeals everywhere; recent evidence in wealthier democracies suggests the opposite is true. Rather, it’s that even entrenched reputations of populist leaders are not unshakeable. When they make errors, even some time ago, it’s possible to get voters to remember these mistakes and prioritize them over whatever culture war the populist is peddling at the moment.

Liberalism strikes back

The Indian constitution is a liberal document: It guarantees equality of all citizens and enshrines measures designed to enshrine said equality into law. The signature goal of Modi’s time in power has been to rip this liberal edifice down and replace it with a Hindu nationalist model that pushes non-Hindus to the social margins. In pursuit of this agenda, the BJP has concentrated power in Modi’s hands and undermined key pillars of Indian democracy (like a free press and independent judiciary).

Prior to the election, there was a sense that Indian voters either didn’t much care about the assault on liberal democracy or mostly agreed with it. But the BJP’s surprising underperformance suggests otherwise.

The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of “scheduled castes” — the legal term for Dalits, the lowest caste grouping in the Hindu hierarchy.

Caste has long been an essential cleavage in Indian politics, with Dalits typically favoring the left-wing Congress party over the BJP (long seen as an upper-caste party). Under Modi, the BJP had seemingly tamped down on the salience of class by elevating all Hindus — including Dalits — over Muslims. Yet now it’s looking like Dalits were flocking back to Congress and its allies. Why?

According to experts, Dalit voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide. If Modi’s party achieved its 400-seat target, they’d have more than enough votes to amend India’s constitution. Since the constitution contains several protections designed to promote Dalit equality — including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system — that seemed like a serious threat to the community. It seems, at least based on preliminary data, that they voted accordingly.

The Dalit vote is but one example of the ways in which Modi’s brazen willingness to assail Indian institutions likely alienated voters.

Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. 

Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, it specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad — in which the Ayodhya temple is located. It’s as direct an electoral rebuke to BJP ideology as one can imagine.

In Maharashtra, the second largest state, the BJP made a tactical alliance with a local politician, Ajit Pawar, facing serious corruption charges. Voters seemingly punished Modi’s party for turning a blind eye to Pawar’s offenses against the public trust. Across the country, Muslim voters turned out for the opposition to defend their rights against Modi’s attacks.

The global lesson here is clear: Even popular authoritarians can overreach.

By turning “400 seats” into a campaign slogan, an all-but-open signal that he intended to remake the Indian state in his illiberal image, Modi practically rang an alarm bell for constituencies worried about the consequences. So they turned out to stop him en masse.

The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small part, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.

Return of the Gandhis? 

Of course, Modi’s mistakes might not have mattered had his rivals failed to capitalize. The Indian opposition, however, was far more effective than most observers anticipated.

Perhaps most importantly, the many opposition parties coordinated with each other. Forming a united bloc called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), they worked to make sure they weren’t stealing votes from each other in critical constituencies, positioning INDIA coalition candidates to win straight fights against BJP rivals.

The leading party in the opposition bloc — Congress — was also more put together than people thought. Its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, was widely dismissed as a dilettante nepo baby: a pale imitation of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira, both former Congress prime ministers. Now his critics are rethinking things.

“I owe Rahul Gandhi an apology because I seriously underestimated him,” says Manjari Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Miller singled out Gandhi’s yatras (marches) across India as a particularly canny tactic. These physically grueling voyages across the length and breadth of India showed that he wasn’t just a privileged son of Indian political royalty, but a politician willing to take risks and meet ordinary Indians where they were. During the yatras, he would meet directly with voters from marginalized groups and rail against Modi’s politics of hate.

“The persona he’s developed — as somebody kind, caring, inclusive, [and] resolute in the face of bullying — has really worked and captured the imagination of younger India,” says Suryanarayan. “If you’ve spent any time on Instagram Reels, [you’ll see] an entire generation now waking up to Rahul Gandhi’s very appealing videos.”

This, too, has a lesson for the rest of the world: Tactical innovation from the opposition matters even in an unfair electoral context.

There is no doubt that, in the past 10 years, the BJP stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favor themselves, suborned the famously independent Indian Electoral Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. 

The opposition, though, managed to find ways to compete even under unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP cash advantage. Direct voter outreach like the yatra helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.

To be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, likely thanks in large part to the ways he rigged the system in his favor.

Yet there is no doubt that the opposition deserves to celebrate. Modi’s power has been constrained and the myth of his invincibility wounded, perhaps mortally. Indian voters, like those in Brazil and Poland before them, have dealt a major blow to their homegrown authoritarian faction.

And that is something worth celebrating.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024.

[maintohthakgayibhaishaab]

[shehzadi]

so far, nearly 3 weeks on from the inauguration of ram mandir, indian authorities have demolished as many masjids and/or madrasas.

30.01.24 - akhoonji masjid & madrasa in delhi, also destroying a cemetery, shrine and all the students’ belongings in the process.

01.02.24 - a madrasa in maharashtra despite facing opposition from local muslims and one day before its scheduled court appeal.

08.02.24 - a masjid & madrasa in uttarakhand. this comes one day after uttarakhand became the first state to pass the uniform civil code (x, x) which aims to apply a ‘hindu code’ to all indians, infringing on the rights of dalits, adivasis, sikhs, christians, buddhists and muslims (i.e. anybody non-hindu) to practice their religion/lifestyle. muslim women protesting the demolition were lathi-charged (beaten with sticks) by police, a shoot-on-sight order was given resulting in 6 muslims killed and 300+ injured in the riots that followed, a curfew was put in place during which hindutva mobs burned down muslim homes and businesses while shouting abuse at muslims.

as always, no prior notice was given and bjp used it’s gold-standard excuse for each demolition, citing ‘illegal encroachment’.

in addition to these masjid demolitions, indian authorities bulldozed 2 neighbourhoods (ghettos, really) in the same timeframe and also without prior notice:

01.02.24 - jasola slum, which, having been around for at least 16 years, should not have been demolished without providing alternative housing, as the delhi slum policy states for slums which came up before 2015. obviously, housing hasn’t been provided.

06.02.24 - panchsheel nagar in mumbai which, having been around since 2011, entitled residents to paid rehabilitation, which has also not been given. this has left over 110 families homeless.

the demographic of both neighbourhoods, surprise surprise, is overwhelmingly muslim, buddhist and dalit.

bjp is enjoying the cover it is receiving from israel’s genocide in palestine to do whatever it wants and is getting bolder by the day. this ‘bulldozer justice’ has been happening for years, but not at such a rapid rate as it is now.

[okbutwhy-rebooted]

[foxglovedforest]

It’s vote counting day in india and while it fucking KILLS me to see my country going downhill it’s also fucking HILARIOUS that the BJP is trailing in Ayodhya (as of now) like imagine losing in the place that carried your entire religion based PR 💀💀💀

[bypatia]

The bjp government introduced the ucc bill in Uttarakhand which has made it mandatory for live in couples to register with the government and a copy of the registration will be sent to respective families. It also added the father as a first class legal heir for inheritance of property, encroaching upon the the right of the mother, wife, daughter (the actual victims of patriarchy, who most likely did not have any social right to gain access to financial independence or inheritance from other family members) to accommodate the father, who more than likely than not already has financial freedom and ownership rights over land property. Moving on, they removed the Muslim personal law, which guaranteed the rights of the daughter in a fixed inheritance percentage. Not to mention the whole act is modelled after hindu personal laws and demanding other religions to bend according to it is inherently regressive no matter how progressive the law on paper looks to be. So should I just bang my head against the wall right now and be done with it or watch as the bjp government slowly sets fire to all our lives?

[larasadjean]

This election has clearly shown one thing: There is a healthy opposition to the ruling party in our country, and it is The People 👏🏻👏🏻

[chappellrroan]

does modi know that he needs to kill himself before elections

[apparentlyyours]

So uhh yesterday I had a debate with one of my friends. We were talking about the exit polls and the elections. He's a bjp supporter, I am Congress supporter. I said that to the common man, it doesn't matter which party win, we're still gonna suffer cuz both parties are corrupt. He started saying that BJP isn't corrupt and it's doing so much good for our country. I called bs on this. Brought up Manipur, agniveer, unemployment in UP and MaHa and how the industries are being shifted to gujrat, how poverty increased, the farmer's protests, Kerala MLA's kid, Ramkrishna cafe attack, mujra and mangalsutra too. He didn't respond to any of these, said I've been fooled by the media, that the opposition is brainwashing me. He tried mansplaining too, saying how he wants to help me get better and be educated cuz I'm uneducated rn. How he wants me to be humbled. I also brought up hindutva, how I am deeply terrified of having to leave my country if hindu rashtra is established cuz I am a minority religion. He said I should be grateful that I get privileges (minority religions don't get privileges, castes do btw). He also stated that bjp is doing good for Indian brotherhood and oneness. The irony.

Just thought I'd share this here lmao. Avg bjp antics

[curtwilde]

Ram ke naam ❤

[reasonsforhope]

"It was widely described as the week that India’s beleaguered democracy was pulled back from the brink. As the election results rolled in on Tuesday [June 4, 2024], all predictions and polls were defied as Narendra Modi lost his outright majority for the first time in a decade while the opposition re-emerged as a legitimate political force. On Sunday evening, Modi will be sworn in as prime minister yet many believe his power and mandate stands diminished.

For one opposition politician in particular, the humbling of the strongman prime minister was a moment to savour. Late last year, Mahua Moitra, one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), found herself unceremoniously expelled from parliament and kicked out of her bungalow, after what she described as a “political witch-hunt” for daring to stand up to Modi.

The murky and allegedly undemocratic circumstances of Moitra’s expulsion from parliament was seen by many to symbolise Modi’s approach to dissenting voices and the steady erosion of India’s democracy. She was among several vocal opposition politicians who were subjected to investigations by government crime agencies.

But having won a landslide re-election in her home state of West Bengal, Moitra will return once again to parliament, part of the newly empowered opposition coalition. “I can’t wait,” said Moitra. “They went to egregious lengths to discredit and destroy me and abused every process to do it. If I had gone down, it would have meant that brute force had triumphed over democracy.”

While he may be returning for a historic third term, many have portrayed the results as something of a defeat for Modi, who has had to rely on coalition partners to form a government. The BJP’s campaign had been solely centred around him – even the manifesto was titled “Modi’s guarantee” – and in many constituencies, local BJP candidates often played second fiddle to the prime minister, who loomed large over almost every seat. He told one interviewer he believed his mandate to rule was given directly by God.

“Modi’s aura was invincibility, that the BJP could not win elections without him,” said Moitra. “But the people of India didn’t give him a simple majority. They were voting against authoritarianism and they were voting against fascism. This was an overwhelming, resounding anti-Modi vote.”

During his past decade in power, Modi and the BJP enjoyed a powerful outright majority and oversaw an unprecedented concentration of power under the prime minister’s office, where key decisions were widely known to be made by a select few.

The Modi government was accused of imposing various authoritarian measures, including the harassment and arrest of critics under terrorism laws, while the country tumbled in global democracy and press freedom rankings. Modi never faced a press conference or any committee of accountability for the often divisive actions of his government. Politicians regularly complained that parliament was simply reduced to a rubber-stamping role for the BJP’s Hindu-first agenda.

Yet on Tuesday [June 40, it became clear that the more than 25 opposition parties, united as a coalition under the acronym INDIA, had inflicted substantial losses on the BJP to take away its simple majority. Analysts said the opposition’s performance was all the more remarkable given that the BJP stands accused of subverting and manipulating the election commission, as well as putting key opposition leaders behind bars and far outspending all other parties on its campaign. The BJP has denied any attempts to skew the election in its favour.

“This election proved that the voter is still the ultimate king,” said Moitra. “Modi was so shameless, yet despite them using every tool they had to engineer this election to their advantage, our democracy fought back.”

Moitra said she was confident it was “the end of Mr Modi’s autocratic way of ruling”. Several of the parties in the BJP’s alliance who he is relying on for a parliamentary majority and who will sit in Modi’s cabinet do not share his Hindu nationalist ideology...

Moitra was not alone in describing this week’s election as a reprieve for the troubling trajectory of India’s democracy. Columns heralding that the “mirror has cracked” and the “idea of India is reborn” were plastered across the country’s biggest newspapers, and editorials spoke of the end of “supremo syndrome”. “The bulldozer now has brakes,” wrote the Deccan Chronicle newspaper. “And once a bulldozer has brakes, it becomes just a lawnmower.” ...

“This was not a normal election, it was clearly an unfair and unlevel playing field,” said Yadav. “But still, there is now a hope and a possibility that the authoritarian element could be reversed.”

Harsh Mander, one of India’s most prominent human rights and peace activists who is facing numerous criminal investigations for his work, called the election the “most important in India’s post independence history”, adding: “The resilience of Indian democracy has proved to be spectacular.”

He said it was encouraging that an “intoxication of majoritarian hate politics” had not ultimately shaped the outcome, referring to Modi’s apparent attempts to stir up religious animosity on the campaign trail as he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”.

“The past decade has seen the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience and dissent taken away,” said Mander. “If this election had gone fully the BJP way, then India would not remain a constitutional secular democracy.”"

-via The Guardian, June 9, 2024

[maintohthakgayibhaishaab]