Narendra Modi narrowly re-elected for a third term

The Indian Prime Minister claims victory, but with a reduced parliamentary majority, and an opposition which emerges strengthened. A specific plan of economic reforms has already been devised to mark the first hundred days of the new “Modi 3.0” era.

In India, at the end of the largest democratic exercise on the planet, with more than 950 million registered voters, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed victory for his party the BJP and its allies on Tuesday June 4 in the elections legislative. The results are not yet final. The opposition should emerge stronger from this election, but everything indicates that the BJP will retain a narrow majority and therefore that Narendra Modi will be reappointed for a third term.

We can already draw some lessons from the advent, forceps, of “Modi 3.0”. A third term that all pollsters and analysts have announced as inevitable. On the one hand, it appears that the BJP, his party, will not be able to govern alone, which will in fact give more weight to the other members of the government coalition. Then, the opposition is on track to double its number of seats in Parliament. And finally, on a personal level, Narendra Modi retains his post as deputy, but with five times fewer votes than in the previous election. Conclusion, if the status of leader of Narendra Modi is not called into question, his omnipotence is today contested.

It is the expression of “the incredible power of Indian democracy“, to use the words of the head of the electoral commission, despite the efforts of the government and the BJP to gag the opposition and repress Muslim minorities. During the campaign, many local journalists and foreign correspondents came under pressure from authorities a necessary evil justified by this Indian nationalist diplomat close to Narendra Modi: “We have a lot of active minorities in our society and we don’t want them to be influenced by other countries. That would complicate our task. Like in Georgia, look, their foreign agent law is much less harsh than the one in the United States. And despite this, it provoked massive riots, which were even supported by European ministers. We must be careful at home“.

In 2023, India is the country that has most deprived its populations of internet access, with 84 outages, six times more than Iran and ten times more than Burma. Indian voters therefore went to the polls to send a message to their Prime Minister. A relative sanction, because everything indicates that Narendra Modi will remain Prime Minister. And everything is already ready. A precise economic reform plan has already been imagined to mark the first hundred days of the new Modi era: development of free trade agreements, to anchor India’s central role in targeted sectors, medicines, medical equipment, electric cars, green energy and electronics. Narendra Modi also plans to tackle labor law to give companies more flexibility in laying off workers. “Modi 3.0” planned to go even faster, without presuming that he would need broad support in Parliament and that is not the way to go.