Decoding Narendra Modi's Popularity Amidst An Economic Crisis

The neoliberal ideological path that we undertook since the 1990s has widened inequality by prescribing the withdrawal of the welfare state to make way for the markets. The wealth share of the top one per cent increased from 10-16 per cent in 1990 to 42.5 per cent in 2020, whereas the same for the bottom 50 per cent fell from 12.3 per cent to 2.8 per cent. Recent research by economist Thomas Piketty and others has shown that inequality levels have reached a historic high in India. The India Employment Report 2024 has shown that among the unemployed, 65.7 per cent are educated, having completed secondary or higher education. The shrinking of public sector employment, contractualisation, and informalisation of work are some of the significant issues that haunt the youth in India. Such a crisis situation should have triggered a political revolt in demanding solutions, but instead, it is contributing towards strengthening the existing regime. To figure out such a contradictory situation, understanding the neoliberal context and right-wing populist discourse is very important.

According to David Harvey, the British economic geographer, neoliberalism advocates that human well-being can be advanced through the maximisation of entrepreneurial freedom by creating a stronger framework for protecting private property, individual liberty and free trade. Beyond the economic domain, neoliberalism as a ‘total ideology’ wants every individual to imbibe these entrepreneurial values in their everyday lives. It focuses on maximisation of profit and in the process, inequality has to be tolerated. Along with withdrawal from welfare measures, the neoliberal state has to create markets wherever there is scope for profit. The welfare state model that preceded the neoliberal political economy had a strong redistributive mechanism, which reduced inequality while keeping a check on the economic elite. But neoliberalism has restored the class power of the economic elite as we witness such extreme inequality across the world.

Even though populism as a radical democratic framework has expanded the scope for the participation of common people in the political process, the way in which populist leaders have guided the common people has made a huge difference. Populism identifies the economic elite as the main enemy and the reason for the people’s suffering and creates a direct link with the common people in questioning and confronting the elite. The Neoliberalism and its consequent inequality are the right conditions for the populist to exploit the miseries of the common people in their favour. Left-wing populism, based on the philosophical framework of materialism, wants to initiate interventions to bring about changes in the material conditions of the common people. This involves strong state intervention and it is against neoliberal principles.

Former President of Venezuela, the late Hugo Chavez, had initiated many welfare programmes, which represented the material demands of the masses. Right-wing populism identifies the enemy not in the material realm, but in the cultural realm. The philosophical basis of right-wing populism being idealism, they identify the enemies within the ideological/cultural domain for the existing crisis situation. Their anti-economic elite stand is only mere rhetoric, and they have a strong nexus with the economic elite. In the Indian context, we have witnessed this in the electoral bonds issue.

Many progressive populist governments were not able to sustain their politics as they were not able to give a radical alternative to the existing neoliberal political economy. People-oriented policies like MGNREGA and the Food Security Act were trying to assuage the impact of neoliberalism, rather than provide an alternative. Right-wing populist governments, rather than deal with the situation with such policy interventions—which will only slow down neoliberalism—tried to change the political discourse to a different domain, while people were looking for a messiah or a saviour, who could provide the alternative. The right-wing populist change of political discourse focused on culture/ethnicity, rather than the material crisis, to sustain their support system and cover up the acute economic crisis. The popularity of the present regime can be understood based on four important traits of the government as identified by Prabhat Patnaik in his Neoliberalism and Fascism.

The first one is acute hatred against cultural minorities. According to the India Hate Lab, around 668 hate speeches targeting Muslims were recorded in 2023. Around 75 per cent of them were in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states, Union Territories administered by the Union Government and Delhi, where the police is under the control of the Union Government. A 2024 report by Human Rights Watch highlights the policies and practices that discriminate against minorities. These actions are with a clear intention to deviate from material reality and create polarisation. The second one is eliciting obedience and discipline without any rationality. This is in order to elicit loyalty and reduce the scope for any critical engagement in questioning the government. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were made to bang plates and even apply cow dung and urine to get rid of the virus. To deviate from the major lacunae in health infrastructure, these irrational measures were taken to stop people from thinking. Such popular measures will attract more people for public exhibition of loyalty as many cinema stars and personalities posted videos of banging plates to be in the good books of the government.

The third aspect is making efforts to acquire social hegemony. The regime keeps propagating the goodness of the glorious past and the significance of Hindu cultural practices. Here, the minorities are targeted for the deterioration of the glorious past. The prime minister spoke about plastic surgery first being done on Lord Ganesha. While the inauguration of the Ram Temple is being seen as a cultural revival, the removal of the Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat riots from school textbooks and various other measures are to establish hegemony based on cultural identity. These actions will not change the material reality, but mesmerise people to forget the material reality. The fourth one is street violence to create fear in the minds of people to not counter the dominant ideas and actions of the government. It could be individual targeting like Narendra Dabholkar, M M Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Gauri Lankesh or targeting people in the name of beef or other cultural factors.

The above deviations are an attempt to keep the spirit of the people high, while forgetting the material reality. This could keep the popular base of the regime intact as the opposition is not able to provide an alternative and gain the confidence of the people. In spite of huge economic inequalities and cultural discrimination, the identification of the common enemy through cultural nationalism has kept the momentum going for the present regime and has not blown these contradictions towards a political uprising. Pushing the limits of cultural politics perpetually is not feasible and the material reality will haunt the lives of the people soon.

(Views expressed are personal)

(The author is an academician)