India | The biggest election in the world

Starting Friday, nearly a billion Indians will go to the polls. If the polls are confirmed, Narendra Modi should win easily. But at what cost ? Five things to know about the biggest election in the world.

Six weeks of voting!

India has 1.4 billion inhabitants and no less than 970 million voters. In comparison, Indonesia (204 million voters) and the United States (168 million) look like dwarfs! This impressive number explains why the process of these legislative elections is so long. Voting, which begins on Friday April 19, will take place in seven phases until April 1^er June, for a total of 44 days! “Historically, it was three weeks on average,” explains Serge Granger, professor of political science at the University of Sherbrooke. Now there are more voters, some of whom come from very remote areas. And so that requires more tellers, more supervisors.

These teams cannot be everywhere at the same time. This is why there are rotating elections. » The lower house of the Indian Parliament, called the Lok Sabha, has 543 seats, covering 28 states and 8 territories. You therefore need 272 seats or more to obtain a majority. The country has more than 2,500 political parties, but 10 of them share 86% of the seats in Parliament.

Modi, again…

In power for 10 years, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Narendra Modi seems well on his way to obtaining a third term. He claims to be able to elect up to 370 deputies (he had 303 so far), or even 400 if we include his allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Buoyed by the power and influence of the BJP, Modi is taking advantage of the weakness of the opposition, which is expected to have only around a hundred deputies. However, much was expected of this heterogeneous bloc made up of 26 parties (INDIA), led by the historic Indian National Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi, heir to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

But the fragmentation of everyone’s divergent interests seems to have got the better of this fragile unity even before the start of the vote, while certain members of the coalition preferred to rally around the BJP or go it alone. “That’s the problem with these alliances,” explains Serge Granger. (The parties that compose them) do not agree on the distribution of seats. So they will cannibalize each other in certain counties. It’s as if we were asking the Bloc Québécois to step aside so that voters could vote Conservative or NDP…”

A contrasting assessment

The undeniable popularity of Narendra Modi can be explained. The charismatic white-bearded politician is supported by a partisan machine that is as aggressive as it is well-oiled, which allows him to saturate the media space and stifle criticism. In 10 years in power, Modi has also transformed India into a leading player on the world stage (G20 summit, space conquest, etc.), arousing a form of national pride among Indians. Having become an essential power of the “Global South”, the country even saw its economy surpass that of the United Kingdom in the 5^e world rank, with the fastest growth in the G20, according to the OECD.

But apparently, this boom is not benefiting everyone. India also boasts the lowest per capita income of all G20 countries and ranks 132^e place out of 191, according to the latest human development index established by the UN. Not to mention the unemployment rate, which stands at more than 8%, the labor market is no longer able to absorb the young and unskilled workforce which is increasing from year to year, knowing that India is which became the most populous country on the planet last year.

Hinduize the country in depth

Narendra Modi’s party is regularly accused of wanting to establish the supremacy of the Hindu religion, the majority in India (nearly 80% of the population), to the detriment of other religions, primarily Muslims (14%, or 22 million people). people). During his previous mandate, this resulted in various forms of repression, harassment and violence against Muslim citizens, whether on the internet or on the ground, some even being victims of shootings. or killings. The Modi government also passed a two-tier Indian citizenship law (privileging non-Muslim immigrants), reduced the autonomy of the (majority Muslim) state of Kashmir, and rewrote the history books, removing the contribution Muslims to Indian culture.

According to Charlotte Thomas, an India specialist and political scientist attached to the Noria Research center, we should expect Modi’s third term to be part of the “continuum” of this supremacist policy, “with a deepening of Hinduization, which involves discrimination and marginalization of ethno-religious minorities.”

If the BJP obtains two-thirds of the seats in Parliament (362 seats or more), Modi would also have the power to modify the Constitution as he wishes (by removing, among other things, the word “secularism”, a pillar of the text) and to continue other projects, such as the controversial one of a single civil code aimed at standardizing laws such as those on marriage and divorce which differ according to religions, notably Muslim and Sikh. “In India, each ethno-religious minority group is managed by its own law,” underlines M.^me Thomas. A uniform civil code would be a means of Hinduizing all social practices,” at the risk of flouting certain sensitivities.

Muzzle the protest

It is said to be the largest democracy in the world. But for some, India is nothing more than appearances. The repression against religious minorities has thus extended to the opposition, whatever it may be. Academics, journalists, NGOs, progressive organizations, political adversaries and even Bollywood actors and actresses have all been attacked, intimidated or muzzled by the BJP, which also pulls the strings of the majority of the country’s media. In the world press freedom rankings established by Reporters Without Borders, India has lost 21 places since 2014, standing at 161^e rank out of 180 countries.

Some fear that this “democratic failure”, even this “authoritarian drift”, will worsen under Modi’s iron fist.

“It is likely that things will not improve,” concludes Narendra Subramanian, professor of political science at McGill University. India will likely become less democratic, following the pattern of countries like Russia, Hungary and Turkey. There were well-founded criticisms of the freedom of the 2019 elections, and the government moved quickly to silence academics and journalists who documented this trend. The upcoming election is likely to be less free, leading to future elections that will be largely unfree, with democracy more symbolic than substantive. »

Several criminal investigations, opened against Modi’s opponents, have provoked the reaction of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, and human rights organizations, who believe that these elections are biased. The Indian Foreign Minister, S. Jaishankar, replied that the UN did not have to comment. “The people of India will see to it,” he said. “No worries in that regard. »

With Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera, France 24 and the BBC