India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing re-election. The opposition has fallen behind in polls, and also because the government is giving her less and less leeway.
However, only the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is far behind in the polls. The largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, is far behind in the polls. The BJP touts its welfare programs for the poor. But even under Modi, the gap between rich and poor is as wide as ever. According to a study from January this year, one percent of Indians own more than 40 percent of the country's wealth. But the opposition has so far been unable to take advantage of this - even if Rahul Gandhi, the top candidate, studied at Cambridge and Harvard and whose father and grandmother were heads of government. His great-grandfather was India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. But he is not related to Mahatma Gandhi. He is the son of a tea seller or "chaiwallah." Thousands demonstrated against Kejriwal's arrest at a "Save Democracy" rally in New Delhi. The Congress party, like the AAP and two dozen other parties, belongs to the opposition center-left alliance. The political climate is charged, and black and white thinking is pronounced, says Adrian Haack, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Almost eight out of ten Indians have a positive opinion of Modi, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington. But the BJP is not solely to blame for the opposition's misery, says Haack. The INDIA alliance is divided, he says. "In many states, their candidates compete against each other and cannibalize each other in this way," Haack says. The opposition criticizes the government's policies, which are increasingly tailored to the majority of Hindus, especially the 200 million Muslims who fear for their rights. But 80 percent of Indians are Hindus, many of whom like the Hindu-friendly politics, Haack adds.