The political image of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is suffering an unprecedented deterioration. Famous for his ability to control the public narrative, Modi and his Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata (BJP), are suddenly faced with an avalanche of criticism after thousands of people have died in India from lack of oxygen and water. hospital beds in a virulent second wave of the pandemic. A mixture of overconfidence from the authorities and a new, more aggressive variant, which is causing 400,000 daily cotagios and nearly 4,000 deaths, have caused the pandemic in the country to spiral out of control. The fragile situation has unleashed a wave of criticism that Modi did not like.
Annoyed by a series of reports in the international media about the lack of preparation for the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic and by the comments against its having allowed mass events such as the Holi festival, which marks the beginning of the spring, or criticism that it has campaigned in the local elections of four states at times of collapse of the health system, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs convened an emergency meeting last week with representatives of the Indian Embassies around the world and it ordered its diplomats to "present an appropriate picture" of the government's efforts to combat the pandemic.
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The ministry even sent official denials to many foreign publications.
Although the messages did not specifically refer to the incompetence allegations, the language was very harsh.
In the case of
The Australian
newspaper
, the ministry accused him of wanting to tarnish India's reputation and called the published reports "biased and malicious".
Open fronts
The BJP and Modi are used to criticism.
Even before the pandemic began, the government had many fronts open, with hundreds of thousands of students, trade unionists, farmers, members of minorities and human rights groups in permanent protest against its policies.
The influx of attendees to the demonstrations has been increasing since the first student protests in 2016. The zenith occurred in 2019, with parallel protests by peasants - against the proposed privatization of the agricultural sector - and Muslims and groups of human rights, against the proposal to grant Indian nationality exclusively to non-Muslim refugees.
The feeling so far was that all this turmoil was taking place within a liberal bubble and the protests did not threaten Modi's power.
Modi's meteoric rise to power in the last decade has been characterized by his ability to attract the masses, but also by his talent for winning the support of the media and the judiciary, which are now the biggest headaches for him. they are giving.
Several high courts across the country have condemned the government for failing to honor its commitments to supply vaccines, drugs, equipment, and oxygen to state governments.
The Delhi High Court, breaking with the tradition that the judicial arm should stay away from the functions of the executive arm, ordered the government to supply 700 tons of oxygen to covid patients in the capital's metropolitan region.
When he did not comply, the court went one step further and began a process for contempt of the government.
Pandemic elections
The Madras High Court also criticized the government's decision to hold elections in four states amid a pandemic.
The judges directly held the Electoral Commission responsible for blindly obeying the Government and not imposing COVID protocols during the campaign.
The commission and, therefore, the central government on which it depends, "must be prosecuted for murder," he considered.
The observations of the TS of Madras captured the attention of national and international media.
The government, irritated by what it considered an insult, asked the Supreme Court to delete the comments of the Supreme Court.
He also tried to keep the media from reporting the legal dispute.
The Supreme Court rejected the request and limited itself to slightly reprimanding the lower court, arguing that "the formula chosen was perhaps too harsh."
"We cannot pretend today that the media does not report on the discussions that take place in the courts," said the magistrates.
Criticism and control
As for the media, until recently, news critical of the Government was only found in small and independent media, generally digital. “All the big media conglomerates, both the televisions and the newspapers, have suddenly turned against Modi. Even the most right-wing publications, which until now acted as government spokespersons, have turned against him, ”says Shiv Kumar, director of Pratidhvani, a Kannada-language news portal based in Bangalore, in southern Bangalore. India.
The other dispute is fought on the networks.
For the second week, the tags calling for Modi's resignation have become a trend again on Indian media, as people post desperate calls for oxygen and hospital beds on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp.
The Government of Modi made an official request to the networks to block the content of some accounts critical of their management, "in view of the improper use of social media platforms by certain users to spread false or misleading information," he said in a statement from the Ministry of Technological Information.
Last week, when Facebook temporarily blocked the #ResignModi tag, the government was accused of trying to suppress freedom of expression, a massive backlash that forced the hashtag to be reinstated.
Electoral failure
As if the ruling party had little trouble, it has performed poorly in recent elections in several states.
The only victory it achieved was that of the state of Assam, but it lost in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
It is a continuation of the pattern of the past three years, in which the BJP has lost power in several states after Modi was the star of the campaigns.
In 2017, when it was at the height of its power, the BJP ruled in 19 of the 29 Indian states.
Today he governs only in 11.
Uncertain future
According to the US data company Morning Consult, the prime minister's approval rating has fallen from 74% in March to 65% in May.
The company, which examines the popularity of the Indian leader since 2019, says that the percentage of people who disapprove of his work, in that period, has increased from 20% to 29%.
However, experts disagree on what the current crisis means for the future of the BJP and Modi.
Suraj Yengde, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School, sees a tide of outrage against Modi and his right-hand man, Amit Shah, across the board.
“Before, the victims of his right-wing policies were marginalized groups in society, such as Muslims and Dalits.
But the mistakes made in managing covid have affected all Indians, ”says Yegde, author of the book
Caste Matters
, an international best-seller that addresses the fundamental importance of castes in Indian life.
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Yengde says this stage in Modi's career marks a turning point: “His biggest problem will be raised by dissenting voices within his own party, because Shah and Modi have completely transformed a cadre organization into a cult of personality. ”.
The analyst has the feeling that the opposition does not yet have a credible face to serve as an alternative to Modi's appeal.
“His rivals within the party are more numerous than ever.
And they will be the architects of the collapse of the prime minister ”.
Although she shares Yengde's view on changing people's sentiments, Deepa Kurup, an economist and professor at Oxford, is more cautious in her predictions.
"I do not believe that the pandemic is the only aspect in which this government has failed," he says.
“The Indian economy was experiencing a slowdown even before it exploded.
The new tax regime, the demonetization of the currency, the agrarian laws.
People opposed these measures and millions of people demonstrated ”.
Kurup notes that many analysts believed that Modi was not going to get a second term in 2019 due to his financial failures.
Also then, Modi faced dissent within his own party, and corporate money to finance opposition parties increased markedly.
"But then, just before the elections, the Pulwama explosions and skirmishes with Pakistan happened, creating a wave of nationalist sentiment that favored the BJP." It says that Hindutva and nationalism are the foundations of the party's power and influence in government. "Today, in India, if that feeling is unleashed, everything else is forgotten." veteran journalist and director of The News Minute portal Dhanya Rajendran says that state and national elections are completely different. “In the national elections, there does not seem to be anyone capable of challenging Modi yet. In state elections, people vote for local issues but, in national elections, Modi remains the most popular leader because the opposition is divided and has not yet resolved what the distribution of power would be like ”.
Politicization of castes
Rahul Sonpimple, a student leader at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehry University, believes that whatever happens in the upcoming elections, Modi and Shah have transformed India's political landscape forever.
He says the BJP's rise to power has been characterized by the politicization of the most marginalized communities in India's caste society.
“The supposedly secular or left parties have never given political power to these marginalized groups.
They have always had upper-caste leaders who believed themselves to be the vanguard of the poor ”.
What the BJP did, he explains, was to welcome under its umbrella those communities that wanted to seize power from the ruling castes, within a cunning project of social engineering. “They gave the lower castes a war machine and invited them to form an army of their own. These communities have not experienced any social or political mobility for centuries ”.
Sonpimple says the inability of secular and left parties to include the aspirations of people oppressed by caste, gender and identity is being their downfall. "They only understand class politics," he says. “Not just here, but all over the world. But, unfortunately, the world is not divided only into rich and poor, capitalists and workers ”.
According to Sonpimple, who is doing his PhD on caste and labor relations, socialist or Marxist ideologies imported by Western-educated elites have defined Indian politics since the time of Gandhi and Nehru.
“Modi does not offer oppressed communities emancipation or social justice. It offers them a perverse opportunity to take on the higher castes. And that is an idea that seduces the enslaved lower caste communities, which constitute more than 70% of the country's population, ”he says.