As of: February 1, 2024, 8:07 a.m
By: Christiane Kühl
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A few months before the general election in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi already looks like the sure winner.
This is also due to the weakness of the opposition.
Some fear autocracy.
Narendra Modi snorkeled in the turquoise sea off India's Lakshadweep Islands and walked on the beach in flip-flops.
It was an “exhilarating experience,” wrote India’s Prime Minister on country, there is an ice age between New Delhi and Male.
Government officials, Bollywood stars and cricketers immediately took up Modi's allusion - and called on social media under the hashtags #BoycottMaldives and #ExploreIndianIslands to avoid the Maldives in the future and rather travel to the Lakshadweep archipelago.
It's just a small example of the influence Narendra Modi has gained in ten years as India's prime minister.
Nearly eight in 10 Indians have a favorable opinion of Modi, including 55 percent who have a very favorable opinion, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington showed.
Few doubt that Modi and his BJP will win the upcoming general elections, which will be held over several weekends in April and May.
The Prime Minister is certainly polarizing.
It is true that Modi has promoted the economy and secured India a place on the world stage.
But at the same time he pushed forward his agenda of strengthening Hinduism in public life in what was actually a secular India.
Critics also accuse Modi of a creeping concentration of power and obstruction of the judiciary and media.
Some even fear that India could become a Hindu autocracy under Modi.
Parliamentary election in India: Modi aims for third term in office
For now, Modi is aiming for his third term in office.
In 2014, protest voters swept him and the BJP to power with 31 percent of the vote and swept the long-time ruling Congress party out of office.
In 2019, Modi expanded the BJP's majority to 37 percent; he governs with 38 small parties in a coalition called the National Democratic Alliance.
The BJP is confident of victory in the election.
After the party won three important states in the religious, rural north in regional elections in December, Modi stated: “This hat trick ensures our victory for 2024.” Main opponent Congress only governs three of the 29 states and is currently weak at the national level.
India: Rise and Economic Development
India's economic and political rise is increasingly having an impact on Modi's continued popularity.
In September 2023, the Prime Minister received heads of state and government, including US President Joe Biden, in New Delhi for the G20 summit.
Foreign countries embraced him as an important partner and counterweight to authoritarian China.
Many people in India are of the opinion that “Modi has elevated the status of their country on the world stage and secured the country a place at the top of the world,” writes South Asia expert Milan Vaishnav from the think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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In 2023, India overtook China as the world's most populous country and recorded the fastest growth of any major economy at eight percent.
Modi wants to make India a developed country by 2047;
He is courting companies that are looking for alternatives to China, and new infrastructure is being built throughout the country.
The Modi government also made greater efforts to ensure that poor families in rural areas also had access to toilets, bank accounts and electricity connections.
Modi's popularity is immense
At the same time, however, Modi's name and that of his party are associated with an uncompromising religious agenda - and with bloody unrest that continues to have an impact today.
When Modi ruled the state of Gujarat, more than 1,000 people died and 2,500 were injured in fighting and pogroms against Muslims.
Many accused his government of looking the other way.
An even older incident is currently making its way back into the headlines: In 1992, a Hindu mob, also incited by the BJP, burned down a 450-year-old mosque in the city of Ayodhya - because it allegedly stood where the Hindu deity Ram was once born.
The fire destroyed the mosque and led to riots that killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.
The government had a Hindu temple built on the site, which Modi himself inaugurated on January 22nd this year.
It was a kind of triumphal procession for the Prime Minister's course and is considered the unofficial start of the election campaign.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally inaugurated the new temple to the Hindu deity Ram in Ayodhya.
The temple was built on the site of a mosque that was destroyed by a Hindu mob 20 years ago.
© Pib /Press Information/Zuma Wire/Imago
The BJP's agenda for Modi's third term is primarily cultural, believes Robin Jeffrey from the Australian National University.
"India will become a religious state, permeated by the BJP's version of what it means to be a Hindu." 80 percent of Indians are Hindus, many of whom seem to like the religious line.
But for India's 200 million Muslims as well as Christians and everyone who prefers a pluralistic state, the future will not be easy, says Jeffrey.
However, to change India's secular constitution, Modi's coalition would need a two-thirds majority in parliament and the consent of more than half of the states.
This would be difficult even for the BJP to achieve.
Observers are not yet writing off the opposition either.
To end the fragmentation, more than two dozen opposition parties founded the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA for short).
Maybe this will make the election campaign a little more exciting.