#Narendra Modi.

[alewaanewspaper1960]

أثر النسق العقيدي للقيادة السياسية على عملية صنع القرار في الهند - دراسة لحالتي (سينج ومودي)

أثر النسق العقيدي للقيادة السياسية على عملية صنع القرار في الهند – دراسة لحالتي (سينج ومودي)   أثر النسق العقيدي للقيادة السياسية على عملية صنع القرار في الهند – دراسة لحالتي (سينج ومودي) المؤلفون: أحمد وهبان1؛ أحمد صبري الحمراوي2؛ اسامة العادلي 3 1أستاذ العلوم السياسية وعميد الكلية كلية الدراسات الاقتصادية والعلوم السياسية جامعة الإسكندرية 2مدرس العلوم السياسية المساعد كلية الدراسات الاقتصادية…

[dr-amer]

أثر النسق العقيدي للقيادة السياسية على عملية صنع القرار في الهند - دراسة لحالتي (سينج ومودي)

أثر النسق العقيدي للقيادة السياسية على عملية صنع القرار في الهند – دراسة لحالتي (سينج ومودي)   أثر النسق العقيدي للقيادة السياسية على عملية صنع القرار في الهند – دراسة لحالتي (سينج ومودي) المؤلفون: أحمد وهبان1؛ أحمد صبري الحمراوي2؛ اسامة العادلي 3 1أستاذ العلوم السياسية وعميد الكلية كلية الدراسات الاقتصادية والعلوم السياسية جامعة الإسكندرية 2مدرس العلوم السياسية المساعد كلية الدراسات الاقتصادية…

[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]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

When I was researching my book on anti-democratic politics, I found a striking pattern in modern incarnations of it — that these movements, almost uniformly, claim their most aggressive anti-democratic policies are actually defenses of democracy. While Donald Trump worked to overturn the 2020 election, for example, he insisted that he wasn’t trying to steal an election — but rather to “stop the steal” Joe Biden had already pulled off. When Trump returned to power this year, I expected to see the same rhetorical maneuver deployed to justify his inevitable power grabs. And indeed, many of Trump’s Day 1 executive orders did exactly this. Take, for example, Trump’s revival of Schedule F — a move that, in theory, could allow Trump to fire tens of thousands of nonpartisan civil servants and replace them with MAGA cronies. Such a move would be a serious threat to democracy, in that it would consolidate key powers of state in the executive’s hands in a manner that proved crucial to the rise of elected authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Yet in the text of the order, Trump sells the move as a vindication of democratic principles. Because the president and vice president are the only executive branch members “elected and directly accountable to the people,” they must be able to assert greater control over civil servants “to restore accountability to the career civil service.” The same is true of other executive orders that might aid in Trump’s efforts to consolidate power. An executive order on “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship” does not provide any concrete protections against abusive surveillance or internet control practices. It does, however, order the attorney general to set up an inquiry into Biden administration policies that could serve as a pretext to harass and dismiss federal employees who don’t share Trump politics. An order claiming to combat the “weaponization” of the federal government similarly does very little to prevent Trump from, for example, ordering the attorney general to investigate his political enemies or the IRS to audit them. In fact, it lays the groundwork for two separate probes into Biden administration policies that could end up targeting both federal employees and private citizens.

[...] Going forward, Trump will almost assuredly not do anything as blatant as abolishing elections. Instead, every move will be given a democratic defense, every power grab described as a victory for the American people against the “deep state.” The aim is to make the reality of the situation into just another partisan debate, where Trump says one thing while Democrats (and the media) say another. The erosion of core democratic principles, like separation of powers and political noninterference with government functions, will appear to many like a perfectly normal part of democracy. [...]

The global spread of American-style authoritarianism

As democracy became ideologically dominant around the world, similar practices became popular globally. Today, its most sophisticated practitioners are elected executives who have worked to take down democracy from within — people such as Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Narendra Modi. Orbán describes his political project, which in reality is the construction of an authoritarian kleptocracy, as an attempt to wrest back control of Hungarian democracy from Eurocrats in Brussels — with specific tactics, like restricting LGBT speech on television, being sold as an extension of the Hungarian people’s will. When Netanyahu attempted to impose political controls on Israel’s judiciary in 2023, removing the sole formally independent check on his majority’s power, he argued that he was merely reasserting the people’s control over unelected branches.

Fascist-in-Chief��s democracy-eroding EOs serve a purpose: baselessly claim to protect democracy while simultaneously undercut democracy.

[timetravellingkitty]

bro got the magic sperm 🥶

[affairsmastery]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed a "mega partnership" with the US during his meeting with President Donald Trump, announcing a deal to boost US oil and gas imports to India, aiming to reduce the trade deficit. Modi expressed openness to lowering tariffs, repatriating undocumented Indians, and purchasing US fighter jets, while Trump criticized India's high trade tariffs as a "big problem."

The leaders also discussed immigration, with Trump agreeing to extradite a suspect in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Despite trade tensions, both emphasized strengthening ties, with Modi playfully adapting Trump's slogan: "Maga plus Miga equals Mega partnership for prosperity."

[that-was-a-bit-stupid-of-you]

okay okay but plan b. what if we kill modi

[nerdreader]

I may support bjp and modijj but we seriously need good opposition who will talk about actual problems and issues of ruling party and not just insane yappity yap about hindus and ahinsa like bro respectfully stfu

[noididnotsignupforthis]

honestly i don't know why people are not paying attention to the fact that India, largest democracy in the world, is shifting to authoritarianism, is openly supporting Israel to the point that Israel is telling it's citizens to be happy that Maldives banned them and they can now explore Lakshadweep.

like i don't know what the result of the election will be but it will be very concerning if modi won by a very large margin

[srldesigns6277]

Today, (02/13) Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While much of their discussion centered on technology and adaptations to Starlink in Southeast Asia.

But one can't help but think about the placement of the flag behind him. Why does it look like he's a head of state? If it was just a business meeting, why were there flags at all? He's really taking this 'President Musk' shit far. Hopefully, it will continue to drive a wedge between Musk and Trump.

[bengalimusically]

[curtwilde]

TW: Rape, violent language, islamphobia.

On Slide 3 you can see the vile genocidal fantasies of hindutva ghouls towards grieving Palestinian mothers and children, and yet they'll whine about safety of Hindu women just to demonize Muslim men. Please remember every accusation from the Hindutva genocidal majority is a confession.

Source

This is what hindutvavadis - even the soft sanghis here on tumblr - support and align themselves with. This is what they believe and what they vote for.

[maintohthakgayibhaishaab]

[that-was-a-bit-stupid-of-you]

blocking desi blogs with the word sanatani cuz which self-respecting person admits that in public