[This one is a stark cnontrast from the assessment made by another staunch economic neoliberal, far less known, Manas Chakravarty, earlier this very week (ref.: 'Narendra Modi govt’s creative destruction' at < https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/DIaSrBKXbAYuTzu5cqbJOK/Narendra-Modi-govts-creative-destruction.html >).
While the unambiguous message from Chakravarty is: *Modi is, at the end of the day, an ardent and ruthless champion of large capital and out to smother everybody else with an iron hand, in the process. Keep faith, just don't lose it. And, for heaven's sake, don't crib about democracy and all that trash!* Chakravarty, of course, acknowledges some dissonance between Hindutva and economic neoliberalism, but finds these not too incompatible and the former, in a way, a potential faciliataor for the latter via championing of authoritatianism. And, in case of a conflict, he's quite certain that under Modi the latter will prevail. Not the other way round. Dhume, a much better known commentator with global recognition, is, on the other, beset with doubts. To begin with, he's not too sure that Hindutva and economic neoliberalism can really be reconciled. But, even more importantly, he's apparently resigned to the fate that in the contest between the two Modi has unmistakably opted for the former. A sort of heartbreak for him. As regards his observation that the BJP's core vote is around 19%, and it's sort of a constant; the BJP, right athe moment, is trying precisely to expand that, the latest series of armed Ramnavami processions and resultant bloodshed is just only one indicator as much as is the annointment of Adityanath as the Chief Minister of the most populous state, even at the risk of losing some peripheral ones. Of course, the eventual outcome is still openended, not just a pregiven, and other factors like the economy will definitely play important roles.] https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/bjps-12-percent-dilemma-repeating-modis-2014-appeal-to-diverse-constituencies-will-be-difficult/ BJP’s 12 percent dilemma: Repeating Modi’s 2014 appeal to diverse constituencies will be difficult April 7, 2018, 2:00 AM IST Sadanand Dhume in TOI Edit Page | Edit Page, India | TOI Nearly four years ago, when the bloom on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rose was still fresh, a group of about sixteen intellectuals and activists, many of them familiar names on the nation’s op-ed pages, met to brainstorm over a fine meal at Indian Accent in Delhi. Uday Deb The agenda: to see if the market liberals of the economic Right and the cultural conservatives of the Hindu Right could find enough common ground to provide an alternative to the tired leftist consensus that had long held sway in India. In hindsight, what was once a gleaming hope now appears hopelessly naïve. Rather than deepening the reformist agenda of the first BJP government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Modi has helmed arguably the most ploddingly bureaucratic administration since the advent of liberalisation in 1991. On trade tariffs and price controls BJP stands today to the left of Manmohan Singh’s Congress. If UPA2 was the al Qaeda of tax terrorism, then NDA2 is the Islamic State. Demonetisation will likely be remembered as one of the most senseless acts in independent Indian history. (Luckily for Modi, Indira Gandhi’s misbegotten rule produced its share of snafus too.) Suffice to say that many free market enthusiasts have lost their ardour for this government. But as the country steams toward next year’s general election does any of this really matter? You might argue that the only people who read op-eds are other op-ed writers. The Indian libertarian movement may be too big to fit in a Maruti 800, but even if every committed market liberal trooped into a Volvo bus chances are that there would be seats to spare. “How many divisions has he got?” asked Joseph Stalin about the Pope. BJP president Amit Shah could just as easily inquire about how many votes the Indian disciples of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman command. But he would need to keep a doctor nearby in case the answer sets off a dangerous laughing fit. So let’s agree that in electoral terms the flight from BJP of the market liberals counts for squat. Nonetheless, there’s a way in which this exit may be emblematic of something larger that ought to worry Modi and Shah. Four years ago, Modi stormed to power backed by an unlikely coalition of voters. You can slice it in many ways, but one of the simplest is to point out that BJP’s share of the national vote jumped by 12 points from 19% in 2009 to 31% five years later. That extra 12% – nearly one in eight voters – made the difference between the party’s aimless capitulation under LK Advani and triumphant resurgence under Modi. An obvious way to think about the 19% is as the BJP’s base. If you were willing to vote for a party led by a then 82-year-old Advani blabbing endlessly about black money, then the odds suggest that your commitment to the party is pretty strong. The 12%, by contrast, represent a fickler variety of BJP voter. Let’s call them incrementals. Most large democratic parties contain contradictions in their support base. For instance, a conservative Christian pastor in Iowa and a flamboyant hedge fund manager in New York City may self-identify with the Republican Party for starkly different reasons. But arguably the divergences – not merely of caste or language but of core beliefs – are particularly wide in the BJP’s 2014 winning coalition. The base probably contains at least some people who voted for Modi because of the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat on his watch. The incrementals likely include many people who backed Modi despite the riots. This heightened contradiction creates the political version of pushmi-pullyu, the mythical two-headed beast from Dr Dolittle. I know BJP supporters for whom Modi’s decision last year to nominate the hardline monk Yogi Adityanath as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh was the best thing that he has done in four years. I know others who view it as the prime minister’s biggest blunder. So far Modi has not delivered on many hot button issues that animate ideologues in the base: the hated Right to Education Act remains in place, Rohingya Muslims have not been deported from India en masse, and Jammu and Kashmir’s Article 370, which (at least in theory) gives the state government a great degree of autonomy, doesn’t look like disappearing any time soon. But the base has nowhere else to go. It’s the potential flight of a large number of incrementals that ought to worry the ruling party. I told a young BJP leader from Delhi, at a conference in Goa last month, that the party’s lacklustre economic record, appointment of Adityanath, and embrace of a harsh and haranguing tone on social media could alienate many fence sitters. He was not convinced. Next year’s elections will include 100 million voters who turned eighteen after 2014, he pointed out. Modi has spent the past four years cultivating them. How many of these new voters will ink their fingers for BJP remains to be seen. But for now one thing appears all but certain: the coalition that brought Modi to power four years ago was too contradictory to last. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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