India June 2024-

20-22 July
C Uday BhaskarA Cry of Anguish; a Sad Day for Democracy, but a Glimmer of Hope

‘Cockroach Janta Party’ takes India by storm
( FRANCE 24) Born from a satirical retort to a passing comment by India’s top judge, the “Cockroach Janta Party” has grown into a full-fledged movement protesting the government’s mishandling of the nationwide medical entrance examination in May. Despite a violent crackdown on a peaceful march heading to the Indian parliament in New Delhi on Monday, members of the movement have kept up their protest. FRANCE 24 explains how the CJP came to be.
India’s Cockroach party leads thousands of youth in protest to parliament
Demonstrators in the Indian capital have marched to parliament as they demand the sacking of the country’s education minister. The youth-led Cockroach movement, started as a satirical youth platform, but has morphed into something larger. Protesters are more galvanised after a hunger-striking social activist was forcibly moved to hospital, against his will.
India’s Modi government faces major protests led by Cockroach Janta party over education reform
(Global news) Police lobbed tear gas shells and used batons on supporters of India’s youth-led ‘Cockroach’ movement on Monday as they sought to march towards parliament in New Delhi.

8 June
‘What if all cockroaches came together?’ The youth movement threatening to shake up India’s politics
Cockroach Janta party began as online joke but is growing into one of the most unexpected challenges to country’s rightwing government
(The Guardian) The call out to the youth of India was simple: “Get ready to swarm the streets of Delhi with peaceful and loving dissent.” They came in their thousands.
The weekend marked the first public protest of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), a movement that began as an online joke, but which has swiftly grown into one of the most unexpected challenges to the indomitable power of the country’s right wing Narendra Modi government – driven by millions of discontented and disillusioned young people.
“The youth of this country will no longer fear, they will fight,” said CJP’s founder, Abhijeet Dipke, who had flown in that morning from the US to lead the lively protest.
“For the government, we may be mere insects, but we are alive and capable of fighting for our rights.”
The rise of the CJP comes amid growing criticism of India’s “toxic” exam industry and its toll on the country’s youth. More is now spent in India on private tuition than the government’s entire higher education budget, with parents often getting into crippling debt to ensure their children get coveted places to study medicine and engineering or secure lucrative government jobs. The pressure on students to succeed has been linked to a growing number of suicides.

22 February
India’s Tricky AI Balancing Act
(Bloomberg) It’s the end of a week-long jamboree in New Delhi, the India AI Impact Summit, and the world’s most populous nation is hoping it can use the event to position itself as a pivotal force in artificial intelligence. The pitch was clear this week: The world needs an alternative to relying on a few companies in the US and China.
India wants to act as a bridge between AI and the so-called Global South. In theory, it has advantages. The country has a vast engineering talent pool, a thriving startup ecosystem that’s the third-largest in the world, and a government eager to boost its own credibility by framing AI as a public digital good globally. India also has experience building massive public tech infrastructure such as its biometric ID system and real-time payments network.
In AI, its ambition is not merely to build large language models, but to make them accessible across 22 official languages, and to a billion-plus citizens. In doing so, India seeks moral authority in a fractured AI world.
The challenges are stark. AI at scale requires immense — and expensive — computing power, advanced semiconductor manufacturing and robust cloud infrastructure. … India sees a path forward in building coalitions…and aligning with nations not just in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America but also in Europe. The country wants to help set standards and shape norms on open models, multilingual access and affordable deployment

7 February
India and the U.S. move closer to reducing Trump tariffs
(Bloomberg) India and the United States released a framework for an interim trade agreement to lower tariffs on Indian goods, which Indian opposition accused of favoring Washington.
The joint statement, released Friday, came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his plan last week to reduce import tariffs on the South Asian country, six months after imposing steep taxes to press New Delhi to cut its reliance on cheap Russian crude.
Under the deal, tariffs on goods from India would be lowered to 18 per cent, from 25 per cent, after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to stop buying Russian oil, Trump had said.
The two countries called the agreement “reciprocal and mutually beneficial” and expressed commitment to work toward a broader trade deal that “will include additional market access commitments and support more resilient supply chains.” The framework said that more negotiations will be needed to formalize the agreement.
India would also “eliminate or reduce tariffs” on all U.S. industrial goods and a wide range of food and agricultural products, Friday’s statement said.
The U.S. president had said that India would start to reduce its import taxes on U.S. goods to zero and buy US$500 billion worth of American products over five years, part of the Trump administration’s bid to seek greater market access and zero tariffs on almost all American exports.
The Slow Reveal of the India-US Trade Deal
There is limited public information on the full extent of compromises made by both countries.
(Bloomberg newsletter) US President Donald Trump has via an executive order, effective Feb. 7, lifted the punitive 25% tariff on the promise of no further Russian oil purchases by India — though Modi’s government remains silent on this.
Critics may read Modi’s bowing to US pressure on this matter as a dilution of its strategic autonomy-led foreign policy. Admirers may say India has remained faithful to the tenet by ditching yesterday’s gains (cheap Russian crude oil) for tomorrow’s profits (access to the world’s largest market). To me, it seems like pragmatism has finally overcome political egos to ensure India keeps its biggest trading partner and source of capital; and the US continues to hedge China’s rise.

5 February
India’s imports of Russian oil
This week, India agreed to stop importing Russian oil amid US pressure. However, that may be easier said than done. In January, India imported approximately 1.2 million barrels of Russian crude oil every day. That’s the equivalent of 76 Olympic-sized swimming pools. If they follow through, India’s withdrawal could make a major dent in Russia’s already struggling economy.

The EU-India agreement is huge – and it illustrates the changing role of trade in a fractured world order
Sangeeta Khorana, Professor of International Trade Policy, Aston University
(The Conversation) The recently concluded EU-India free trade agreement is notable for the huge scale and ambition of the deal. Labelled the “mother of all deals” by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, it comes as India has overtaken Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Bilateral trade in goods and services between the EU and India is already worth €180 billion (£155 billion). The agreement aims to double EU exports to India by 2032 and create a free-trade area representing around a quarter of the world’s population (nearly two billion people). This would also cover about 25% of the world’s GDP.
At this point in history, the world’s multilateral trading system is under threat from tariffs and geopolitical tensions. But this agreement offers a clear example that the era of free trade is not over.
Rather, it demonstrates how countries are adapting to new global realities to liberalise trade (that is, remove barriers). Instead of steering away from free trade, countries are becoming selective and seeking bilateral arrangements with strategic partners. The UK signed its own trade agreement with India in July 2025.

2 February
India, EU Clinch Landmark Trade Deal Ahead of Carney’s Expected Visit
Tanya Dawar: Research Scholar, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada
The Takeaway
As the U.S. and China continue to deploy coercive trade instruments, including tariffs and export controls, as tools of strategic leverage, the recently concluded European Union–India free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations signal something different: a renewed commitment to a rules-based free trade partnership. The deal is an indicator of India’s shift toward comprehensive partnerships, integrating market access with security, technology, climate action, and mobility.
For Canada, the deal could serve as a benchmark as it pursues trade talks with New Delhi. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s expected visit to India in early 2026, therefore, comes at a critical time.

29 January
Why the EU-India trade deal matters
(GZERO media) On Tuesday [27 January], the world’s largest trading bloc and the world’s most populous country cinched a deal that will slash or reduce tariffs on the vast majority of the products they trade. If approved by the European Parliament and the Indian cabinet, the deal will cut duties on nearly 97% of EU exports to India, while the EU will grant preferential access to 99% of Indian exports.
The deal is huge. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen dubbed it the “mother of all trade deals.” Aside from the scale of the two parties involved, it marks yet another trade agreement since US President Donald Trump returned to office that has been struck between two “middle powers” – a term that appears to be gaining popularity. The latest agreement follows the EU’s deal with the South American trading bloc Mercosur, reached a few weeks ago, as well as India’s recent pacts with the UK, Oman, and New Zealand.
“With this, India now has got all of its major trading areas sealed up, except for China and the United States,” said Eurasia Group’s South Asia expert Pramit Pal Chaudhuri. He added that the deal opens India up to more European investment, boosts Indian textile firms, and theoretically gives them – and Europe – more leverage when dealing with the United States.
The two sides had been hammering out the deal for nearly 20 years, but negotiations stalled when Europe demanded that non-trade terms be included, such as sustainability measures and labor protections. The two sides didn’t speak about the deal for nine years.
But then Trump returned to office and started announcing tariffs on virtually all of the US’s trading partners. He was particularly heavy-handed with New Delhi and Brussels. In India’s case, he slapped 50% tariffs on its imports, half of which was a penalty for the country’s refusal to stop buying Russian oil. With the EU, punishingly high tariffs pushed the bloc to agree to a deal critics called uneven.
Where does their foreign policy move going forward? In recent decades, India has had a policy of non-alignment, refusing to hew itself too closely to any one power. But Delhi may have amended that strategy since Trump returned to the White House, focusing on building links outside the two leading global powers. Just two days before he did, India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar gave a speech in Mumbai that was eerily similar to the one Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered at Davos last week.
“In a world that is less forthcoming on commitments, India also recognizes the role of middle powers,” said Jaishankar, while highlighting that India’s relationship with the US and China has become more challenging.

26 January
Our Republic’s soul lives in we, the people
The State should honour its sacred constitutional commitment to the citizen
C Uday Bhaskar
JANUARY 26 is an import-laden day for India. On this day in 1950, it made the transition to a self-governing, democratic nation under its own supreme law derived from its majestic Constitution. This historic document was adopted and enacted on November 26, 1949, and came into effect two months later.
The Constituent Assembly took almost three years to complete the Herculean task of drafting the Constitution… The deliberations and debates from which a consensual template was distilled are thoughtful and on occasion profound as a diverse people, subjugated by harsh and ruthlessly extractive colonial rule, articulated in a lucid and expansive manner what freedom would mean for them. …
National security is non-negotiable. Its principal guardian, the military, remains committed to its calling — this is reassuring.
However, when it comes to the individual citizen and what the Preamble envisages as “assuring the dignity” and securing “justice, liberty and equality”, the picture is not as reassuring.
Equality among citizens is deemed to be a foundational tenet, but in contemporary India, it is evident that some are more equal than others. Majoritarianism is the flavour of the decade, and national politics is now played out along a divisive agenda. A bitter and deeply embedded polarisation over religion and politics has engulfed the social fabric. …

2025

5-6 August
Why is India rebuffing Trump over Russian oil?
(GZERO media) The spat began last week when Trump, desperately seeking ways to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine (Putin has ignored Trump’s demands to do so for months), slapped tariffs and threatened fines on India, the second-largest purchaser of Russian crude. The idea was to force Delhi to stop buying Russian oil, starving the Kremlin of revenue for its war machine. On Wednesday, Trump upped the ante further, announcing he would double India’s tariff rate to 50% later this month. …
“Indian refineries save about $1 billion a month by buying Russian crude,” said Eurasia Group’s South Asia Practice Head Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, a lower amount than previously – the Russian oil discount has diminished in recent weeks – but still significant.
While India requires this fuel for its own energy needs, it also uses the discounted oil to generate major revenues from exporting refined petroleum products in which crude in an input, like diesel and jet fuels. In this trade, Europe is one of India’s largest markets.
“Purchasing crude oil from Russia and refining it for the market (which includes European countries) has allowed India to not only profit from the purchases but maintain its political and economic relationship with Russia,” Manjari Chatterjee Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told GZERO.
India accuses US, EU of Russia trade double standards: Who is right?
India pushes back against sanctions, tariffs and threats over its purchase of Russian oil, accusing the West of trading more with Moscow, and of actually wanting it to buy Putin’s crude.
(Al Jazeera) India’s strongest pushback yet, against mounting pressure from Washington and Brussels on trade and its ties with Russia, came hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to significantly increase tariffs he had previously announced against Indian goods.
In late July, the EU also slapped sanctions on Nayara, one of India’s two big private oil refiners, which is Russian-majority owned. The bloc also banned the import of refined oil made from Russian crude, again hurting Indian refiners.
Until Monday night, India’s response had been muted. That has now changed. Two hours after Trump’s latest announcement, New Delhi issued a statement accusing the US and EU of double standards and of, in fact, quietly encouraging India to buy Russian crude earlier.

30 July
Trump hits India with 25% tariff, extra ‘penalty’ for Russian oil purchases
… The aggressive trade policy further complicates ties between Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which were warm during the US president’s first term but have since faced challenges over trade and immigration. Modi has also denied Trump’s claims that he intervened to resolve a four-day conflict with Pakistan in May, saying India has not and will never “accept mediation”. … 

Republic Day Diplomacy: Decoding Indonesian President Subianto’s Delhi Sojourn
With the Indonesian strongman Prabowo Subianto in Delhi, the geopolitical ball is in PM Narendra Modi’s court.
C Uday Bhaskar
(The Quint) India celebrated its first Republic Day on 26 January 1950 – and in keeping with the fervour of the end of the colonial rule in southern Asia and the enthusiastic embrace of non-alignment by like-minded nations in that heady era, it was appropriate that the chief guest at the first-ever parade was the then Indonesian President Sukarno.
Seventy five years later, another Indonesian President has been accorded this honour, testifying to the historic legacy of the bilateral relationship and the potential it has for consolidating the national interests of both nations in the current decade.
Collectively, ASEAN accounts for 11 percent of India’s total global trade and it is diminutive Singapore, the city-state with which Delhi has the most comprehensive regional partnership, that is India’s largest trading partner.
Indonesia is in second place with bilateral trade touching $29.4 billion in financial year 2023-24 – and the balance of trade is visibly in Jakarta’s favour.
For two proximate nations whose combined GDP is in excess of $5 trillion, a bilateral trade figure of under $30 billion points to the vast potential for steady growth. Subianto’s visit will thus hopefully prove to be the catalyst.

18 June
India’s Modi tells Trump there was no US mediation in Pakistan truce
Donald Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed neighbours agreed to a ceasefire after talks mediated by the US.
the two leaders spoke over the phone late on Tuesday on Trump’s insistence after the two leaders were unable to meet on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada, which Modi attended as a guest. The call lasted 35 minutes.
Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours agreed to the ceasefire after talks mediated by the US, and that the hostilities ended after he urged the countries to focus on trade instead of war.
There was no immediate comment from the White House on the Modi-Trump call.
Pakistan has previously said the ceasefire was agreed after its military returned a call the Indian military had initiated on May 7.

2 January
Narendra Modi’s Populist Facade Is Cracking
India is now a testing ground for whether demagoguery or deteriorating living conditions exert a greater sway on voters.
By Robert F. Worth
(The Atlantic) … India has been living on hype. Its leaders manufacture bigger promises every year: India as an economic titan, a spiritual leader, a world power capable of standing alongside China, Russia, Europe, and America. Modi’s enablers describe him as a “civilizational figure”—someone who stands above politics, who will use his country’s demographic weight to rewrite the rules of the global economy. … Even Modi’s abundant critics have focused mostly on his Muslim-baiting and his democratic backsliding, as if prepared to concede what they see as his managerial skill.
But the election results and their aftermath hint at a crack in Modi’s populist facade and a spreading discontent with his economic and political record. India’s growth has been heavily weighted toward the wealthy, who have become exponentially richer on Modi’s watch. …
At the same time, eight in 10 Indians live in poverty. Extraordinary numbers are out of work; one estimate puts unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 at more than 45 percent (though other estimates run lower). Instead of moving from farms to seek employment in cities, as people in other developing countries have done, many Indians—unable to find factory or service jobs—are making the trek in reverse, even as farm income stagnates and drought turns fields into deserts.

2024

26 December
India’s former prime minister Manmohan Singh, architect of economic reforms, dies at 92
(AP) — India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, widely regarded as the architect of India’s economic reform program and a landmark nuclear deal with the United States, has died. He was 92.
… A mild-mannered technocrat, Singh became one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers for 10 years and leader of the Congress Party in the Parliament’s Upper House, earning a reputation as a man of great personal integrity. He was chosen to fill the role in 2004 by Sonia Gandhi, the widow of assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Singh was reelected in 2009, but his second term as prime minister was clouded by financial scandals and corruption charges over the organization of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. This led to the Congress Party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 national election by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Narendra Modi.
Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh dies aged 92
(The Guardian) … Singh, called India’s “reluctant prime minister” due to his shyness and preference for being behind the scenes, was considered an unlikely choice to lead the world’s biggest democracy. But when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi led her party to a surprise victory in 2004, she turned to Singh to be prime minister.
Famed for his trademark sky-blue turbans and home-spun white kurta pyjamas, Singh became the country’s first non-Hindu prime minister. He served a rare full two terms as prime minister in India’s tumultuous politics and is credited with spurring the rapid economic growth that lifted tens of millions of Indians from poverty.
…he won scholarships to study economics at Cambridge and later at Oxford, where he earned a doctorate.
He went on to hold pivotal government roles including serving as head of India’s central bank. Later, he worked for the International Monetary Fund.
Singh was pitchforked into politics in 1991 when India, facing one of the worst-ever economic crises, was on the brink of default. The then prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, drafted Singh to be his finance minister.
In a seismic shift, Singh broke away from India’s Soviet-style economic planning model. … He dismantled the restrictive “license raj” which dictated the products factories could make and what types of bread could be sold, devalued the rupee to boost exports, opened key industrial sectors to private and foreign investment, and slashed taxes. The bold steps ushered in rapid growth, earning Singh the moniker of India’s economic “liberator”.
The same deft economic hand marked his first term as prime minister. He presided over an economy that grew at more than 8%, championed landmark initiatives such as the Indo-US civil nuclear deal which ended India’s nuclear isolation, and launched ambitious social welfare programmes. But his second term was marred by a string of massive corruption scandals that eroded public trust in his administration.

16-20 August
India Sets Up National Task Force After Rape and Murder of Doctor
India’s top court has set up a national task force for doctors to help with the safety of their staff, according to the Associated Press.
Zero-tolerance approach a must to curb crimes against women
The plight of victims in high-profile rape cases and the relief accorded by the state to the accused are stark in cases such as that of Bilkis Bano.
C Uday Bhaskar
“India’s rape statistics indicate that 90 such dastardly incidents are reported daily. This may be relatively low by global standards — as per an estimate, India reports 1.8 rape cases per 100,000 population, while the figures for Botswana and South Africa are 92.9 and 72.1, respectively. However, this is callous justification for the deplorable trends related to the security and safety of women and the girl child over the past two decades.”
(The Tribune India)THE horrific gangrape and murder of a junior doctor at a medical college and hospital in Kolkata has triggered national outrage. This was reflected in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day address.
Alluding to the incident, Modi said: “I would like to express my pain once again, from the Red Fort today. As a society, we will have to think seriously about the atrocities against women that are happening — there is outrage against this in the country. I can feel this outrage. The country, society and state governments will have to take this seriously.” He added that such cases of crime against women should be investigated speedily “and those responsible should be punished without delay”.
The victim in the Kolkata case is being referred to as Abhaya by her shell-shocked colleagues, recalling the horrific 2012 Delhi gangrape-murder that was termed the ‘Nirbhaya’ case; it took eight years before the perpetrators were finally brought to justice in March 2020.
Kolkata doctor rape and murder case: Indian medics call for nationwide strike
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to lead rally calling for justice
13 August
Protesting Kolkata doctors claim cover-up in killing of trainee Indian medic after arrest
Striking staff say more than one person was probably involved in the crime and are pushing for compensation for her family
Thousands of resident doctors across India have stepped up strike action over an alleged government cover-up in the rape and murder of a trainee medic, disrupting patient care in state-run hospitals nationwide.
A 31-year-old resident doctor was killed on Friday at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, while she was on shift.
Her body was found in the state-run hospital bearing numerous injuries and she had been sexually assaulted, local media reported.
Police have arrested a civic volunteer, who has reportedly confessed to the crime, but protesting doctors claim more people were involved in the crime and the alleged cover-up. Resident doctors are graduate doctors who are receiving on-the-job training at government-run hospitals.
Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India, where an average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022. A survey by the Indian Medical Association found 75 per cent of doctors in India have faced some form of violence.

11 August
Unregulated vigilante armies push Indian state of Manipur to brink of civil war
Thousands of rifles are in the hands of civilian militia who freely mobilise every night, with police and the state accused of being powerless
(The Guardian) The violence in Manipur began last May with clashes between the majority Meitei and the minority Kukis-Zo tribes over the removal of special minority privileges for the Kuki community. Since then, it has escalated into an ongoing ethnic conflict which has killed over 220 people and displaced over 60,000 as whole villages were burned to the ground, while women reported sexual assault and rape.
An unofficial border dividing the state down ethnic lines – Kuki-Zo on one side and Meitei on the other – has become a hardened frontline, created and fiercely guarded by civilian militia groups from both communities. Thousands of guns, many sophisticated rifles stolen from state armouries, are now in the hands of these unregulated vigilante civilian armies who freely mobilise every night to protect their own turf. The police and the state stand accused of being both complicit and unwilling to intervene.

23 July
A weakened Narendra Modi subsidises jobs and doles out pork
The prime minister has had to compromise after a disappointing election
(The Economist) Narendra Modi…was brimming with confidence when his government unveiled an interim budget in February. With a general election a few weeks away, his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was widely expected to retain, and possibly expand, its majority in parliament. Such was his sureness of victory that the mini-budget contained few of the welfare handouts and other sops that often precede Indian elections. It focused instead on trimming the fiscal deficit, improving infrastructure and other measures aimed at a long-term goal to make India a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of its independence.
A new political reality infused the full budget, unveiled on July 23rd. It was the first since the election result in June, in which the BJP lost its majority, forcing it to rely on coalition partners to form a government. That unexpected shift in India’s political landscape—attributed largely to public anger over unemployment, inflation and inequality—was evident in the budget in several ways.
10 June
New Hope for India’s Democracy
Jayati Ghosh
(Project Syndicate) The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s inability to secure a parliamentary majority in India’s general election has shattered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aura of invincibility. Modi will now have to rely on coalition partners to pass legislation, potentially curbing his efforts to consolidate power.
Voters have pulled Indian democracy back from the brink. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a third consecutive term, the failure of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to secure a simple majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, will force Modi to rely on several unpredictable allies to promote his legislative agenda.
While domestic elites and external observers had bought into the BJP’s claims of economic prosperity, India’s supposed boom has benefited only a small segment of the population. Most Indians face declining job prospects, stagnant or falling real wages, and sharp increases in the prices of essential goods. Polls show that these issues were at the top of voters’ – and more recently, business executives’ – minds, despite efforts to distract them with divisive rhetoric. The limits of the BJP’s divisive political agenda are also becoming increasingly apparent. Throughout the election campaign, Modi and his party openly stoked Hindu fears and prejudices, claiming that the opposition Congress party would seize people’s assets and distribute them to “infiltrators” and “those who have more children” – a dog-whistle for Muslims.

8 June
India’s Rahul Gandhi nominated as opposition leader after election gains
Gandhi’s Congress party’s election results defied analysts’ expectations, and helped rehabilitate his political career.
(Al Jazeera) Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family that governed India for decades in the wake of independence, has been nominated to lead India’s opposition in parliament following an election result that pulled his party back from the political wilderness.
A meeting of the leadership of Congress – the leading opposition party in the country – on Saturday voted unanimously to recommend Gandhi’s election as India’s official opposition leader. The role had been left vacant since 2014.
Gandhi is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister following independence in 1947. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and father, Rajiv Gandhi, also served in the role, while his mother has long been a top official for Congress

7 June
C. Uday Bhaskar: India’s shock election result shows democracy is still thriving
While the BJP’s underperformance shocked supporters and observers, Indian voters have restored hope in the country’s democratic process
(SCMP) …The welcome news for the liberal camp is that Indian democracy, which was steadily sliding towards a one-party/one-leader/one-religion template of illiberal authoritarianism since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, has shown it is relatively robust and spirited.
The fear in many quarters that equitable, non-discriminatory democracy was being slowly strangled has eased. A large cross section of Indian voters used the ballot box to reject the divisive, anti-Muslim Hindutva politics that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) champions.
Modi’s supporters were no doubt shocked by the final election tally after most exit polls and mainstream media projections suggested an emphatic victory for the BJP.
Modi projected himself as the face of the BJP for this election. His campaign was enabled in large measure by a subservient mainstream media – derisively referred to as godi, or lapdog, media – creating a larger-than-life perception of the prime minister.
A vast cyber-constituency of pro-BJP trolls, many in the diaspora, venerated Modi’s image and subjected critics of their leader and the Hindutva agenda to vile abuse. The virus of hatred for the “other” – particularly Muslims – was injected night after night by servile journalists and their corporate owners.
Collectively, the media, influencers, pollsters and Modi’s cyber militia exuded misplaced certitude that the two-term prime minister was much loved and admired, had a divine mission to lead India to lost glory and that the voters would endorse him en masse. This did not happen, and the BJP is now in the unenviable position of having to cobble together a coalition government.
The biggest political takeaway from the election is the Indian voter definitively pricking the much-hyped Modi bubble. In recent weeks, the prime minister began describing himself as a divine emissary and suggested his birth was not biological. Even Ayodhya, where Modi consecrated an ornate temple to the Hindu god Ram, rejected the BJP candidate at the polls.
India’s much-derided opposition showed commendable determination and pre-election planning, with Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi playing a significant role. He has been portrayed as an inept princeling too politically naive to be a match for Modi, yet his cross-country Bharat Jodo (Unite India) marches reinvigorated a poisoned national polity.

Indian Surprise
By Gwynne Dyer
“Pride goeth before a fall”, says the Old Testament, so India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was just begging for humiliation. It duly arrived.
In ten years in office he had never held a press conference and very rarely even gave an interview, but before this election he was so confident that his BJP (Indian People’s Party) would win that he let it all hang out. In a TV interview in his own Varanasi constituency, he revealed that his birth had been a divine event.
The opinion polls said the BJP would win in a landslide, the media followed suit, and various pundits began writing about the impending demise of India’s democracy. They were all wrong.
Some voters took the long view and understood the threat Modi posed to India’s future as a united country; others just feared that the BJP was getting too big for its boots and needed to be taken down a peg – and some others, mostly not Hindus, actually feared for their lives. Together they were numerous enough to spoil Modi’s party.

India awaits results of general election marred by ‘unprecented’ disinformation
India’s six-week election was staggering in its size and logistical complexity, but also in the “unprecedented” scale of online disinformation.
(France 24) The biggest democratic exercise in history brought with it a surge of false social media posts and instant messaging, ranging from doctored videos to unrelated images with false captions.
Raqib Hameed Naik, from the US-based India Hate Lab, said they had “witnessed an unprecedented scale of disinformation” in the elections.
“Conspiracy theories… were vigorously promoted to deepen the communal divide,” said Naik, whose organisation researches hate speech and disinformation.
With seven stages of voting stretched over six weeks, AFP fact checkers carried out 40 election-related debunks across India’s political divide.
There were fake videos of Bollywood stars endorsing the opposition, as well as those purporting to show one person casting multiple votes.