Narendra Modi exploits nationalism to distract Indians from a failing economy – By Ravinder Kaur
Good times are about to arrive,” Narendra Modi tweeted to his followers in May 2014…. The promised future was now within reach, or so it seemed…. Yet seven years on, the capitalist growth story of freedoms – economic and political – appears to have gone off script….
Parallel to this economic fragility is the rise in social strife, as Hindu nationalism becomes the driving force in politics. This shift has been especially striking in the Modi government’s second term, when several core agendas of the Hindu nationalist movement – from the revocation of Kashmir’s special status to the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Act – were achieved.
It is this majoritarian approach to politics that scholars have termed as a kind of “decay”, an erosion of India’s long-established liberal political traditions. The good times of progress and prosperity continue to be postponed, again and again. But what has been readily yielded is a rich dividend to Hindu nationalist politics. The liberalised economy has created an illiberal society….
