Modi Seeks to Consolidate Power in India Election—and Change the Country’s Future
Publishing date: 29 May 2024
Published in: Wall Street Journal
The divide between the politically powerful north and an economically powerful south has become a potent fault line in India, putting the geographical split at the center of this year’s national election.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi draws his political power from the landlocked north, which is home to massive but poor states such as Uttar Pradesh, with a population larger than Brazil’s. But India’s largely coastal south, where people are richer and live longer on average, is the bedrock of Modi’s goal to boost India’s economy into the world’s third-largest. The region is where factories are popping up to supply U.S. firms such as Apple, and Amazon.com has located its largest global office.
Making inroads in India’s five southern states is key to Modi’s pledge to win a supermajority in this election, which reaches a final round of voting on June 1.
A supermajority win would bring the ability to change the country’s secular constitution. But the southern region has long stood as a bulwark against the Hindu nationalist’s goal of reshaping the country into a world power united around a single religion and language.
Instead, the region prides itself on a unique identity based on diversity and flourishing local languages. Many believe those cultural elements, along with an educational push and efforts to foster industry, have helped drive their economic success.
Many southerners fear that their independence—and a more expansive vision of national identity—will be stamped out if Modi’s party gains traction in the region.
Photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a rally in Mumbai in May. PHOTO: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Modi has barnstormed through the south with at least 20 visits this year, including appearing at a campaign rally outside of Coimbatore where he sported a veshti, a traditional southern style of men’s dress. His slate of young, southern-born politicians has delivered speeches as the crowd cheered and chanted “Victory to Mother India!”
One, K. Annamalai, 39, gives thundering speeches about Hindu rights as he campaigns for a seat in parliament in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Coimbatore is the second-largest city. The former police officer frequently goes viral on social media for his spirited jousts with journalists.
At a recent campaign stop in a temple featuring the lotus flower, the symbol of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, crowds swarmed him like a political rock star. A loudspeaker urged people to “Vote for Modi’s loving younger brother!”
In the last national election, in 2019, Modi’s party won zero seats in three out of the five southern states. The region has complained that Modi, in his decade in power, has governed in a way that puts the interests of his base in the north first, for example by leaning more heavily on tax revenues from the prosperous south to help shore up the economic laggards of the north.
“He would love to have victory in Tamil Nadu. But that’s only because he wants more ground under his feet,” said Kasturi Logeswaran, a 24-year-old homemaker who attended a recent rally by the regional party that rules the state, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party. “His victory base is in the north. We are not his first concern. We are not the most important to him.”
BJP candidate K. Annamalai at a temple in Coimbatore. PHOTO: MAHESH SHANTARAM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Rise of the south
A coming redrawing of the electoral map based on population has unsettled southerners, who fear their power could shrink. A freeze that had capped seats according to 1970s population levels expires in 2026.
Population in the south is still growing, but at a slower pace than the north. As a result, it now accounts for about 20% of India’s population, down from a quarter in 1970.
Southern states fear that if the BJP wins more seats in the region, Modi will tweak the electoral map to favor the north, relegating the south to political irrelevance. The BJP party needs a two-thirds majority in parliament to carry out such a change, which political experts doubt can be accomplished in this election. The vote will be counted on June 4.
Leaders in the south say the redistricting plan would effectively punish the region for its successful population control measures and would reward the north for a population boom. “That would be a huge injustice to the southern states,” said T.R.B. Rajaa, the minister of industries for Tamil Nadu.
Southern states also fear that a BJP party with a supermajority would revise the constitution, which currently guarantees all religions equality under the law, to enshrine Modi’s vision of a Hindu-first country, and also seize more control on issues such as education and caste-based affirmative-action programs, in which states currently have a lot of input.
The major distinction between the regions is economic.
Modi has pushed to boost domestic manufacturing as part of his “Made in India” campaign. It has helped draw global manufacturers looking for alternatives to China—and many have ended up in the south.
Arizona-based First Solar, which searched for a location for its first Indian factory during the pandemic, chose the south’s Tamil Nadu.
The solar panel company said the southern state had simplified the application process for the many permits required with an online portal, said Kuntal Kumar Verma, chief manufacturing officer of First Solar. Government officials were also quick to smooth over any hiccups. “They were holding our hands,” Verma said.
The state and neighbors such as Karnataka are Exhibit A for the types of policies that have turned swaths of the south into an economic success story.