Banana republic in the making?: A South Asian perspective on India from Kathmandu
Publishing date: 29 April 2024
Published in: scroll.in
While the attitudes of their governments may wax and wane, the people who live in the countries neighbouring India all want friendship with the subcontinental superpower. In this, they see not only historical and cultural continuity but peace, political stability and economic growth for all countries in the region.
Sadly, the flourishing India so zealously projected by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not evident from the outside.
India was long the economic and political vanguard of the subcontinent, with its robust parliamentary system, social-democratic policies of growth and equity, independent media and critical academia, professional bureaucracy and security forces, and even-handed governance of a plural demography. But the perspective and dispassion of cross-border distance show an India that has slipped on the path.
Modi’s brand of governance over the past decade has led to impoverishment and social polarisation. Even though Hindutva diverts attention, Indians are materially poorer. The teflon prime minister has been able to deflect accountability for his imperious governance: demonetisation did not take black money off the market but ended up hurting small-holders in all sectors; the Covid-19 lockdown, activated on four-hour notice, forced millions of wage-earners to walk empty highways back to their homes in the poorest regions; activists and Opposition leaders are jailed and harassed even as a compliant media plays cheerleader.
India’s wide geography and demographic diversity cannot be governed by a centralised autocracy, but Modi is bent on undercutting the state governments. Runaway centralisation ensures that the country’s 1.4 billion people are deprived of representation and agency.
The end result of this stifling will be horrendous; the size and dispersal of the population, the regime’s willingness to deploy coercive means and the use of religion-laced ultra-nationalism will ensure that a people’s movement of dissent will take time to coalesce.