India: religion and unemployment, the demons of Narendra Modi

Radio France International International approach

April 11, 2019

India is organizing from 11 April one of the biggest electoral challenges on the planet. For six weeks, 900 million voters are expected to go to the polls to renew the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament and elect his prime minister. After five years in power, Narendra Modi is the favorite, but ethnic tensions and economic stagnation could prevent him from wanting a second term.

Narendra Modi triumphantly came to power in 2014 promising "better days". Five years later, the Prime Minister and his nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are accused of turning India into an ethnic democracy based on Hindu supremacy, a population representing 8% of total religious discrimination against minorities which results in hate speech and lynching of Muslims.

For the political scientist and coordinator of the study group on India and Southeast Asia of the Universidad del Rosario in Argentina, the controversial speech of the Bharatiya Janata party, which aims to found society and the Indian state on the beliefs of Hinduism, was used as a means of finding supporters and was present in the manifesto as a result of these 2019 elections. "

Modi India has reached the highest level of unemployment and the situation of agriculture is chaotic. The failures that the Prime Minister is trying to eclipse with political marketing slogans such as "Made in India" or "Startup India". The middle clbad and the peasantry were a major scourge in previous elections. How this balance will affect the vote that begins this Friday. Especially since the behavior of the middle clbad five years ago was seduced by Modi's speech after having broken his promise to double the incomes of the 120 million Indian peasants.

Promise "that has been repeated in this campaign of 2019. Once again bet to conquer this vast sector of the electorate because it can make a difference.But, the truth is that their economic situation is still impoverished, explains the badyst.

The conflict with Pakistan

Another of the proposals of the Bharatiya Janata party's election campaign was national security. Its slogan was "zero tolerance", referring to the situation in Kashmir, a region of conflict with neighboring Pakistan, where the death toll has been steadily increasing since 2014, when the Indian nationalist milliner came to power. . After the deadly attack claimed in February by a Pakistani Islamist group, the Indian prime minister radicalized his hawkish speech, accentuating the tension between India and Pakistan just weeks before the elections and favoring "votes in the air." in the most radical wing of Hinduism "Dussort believes and adds" it is ultimately sought to divide the society between Hindus and non-Hindus, considering that Pakistan is a society with a Muslim majority ".

The main rival of Modi and his party is the Congress Party, plunged into corruption scandals, led by Rahul Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhie and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. And son of Rajiv Gandhi. A family and a party who, instead of helping, discredit it

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