India Needs a Leader for All Indians
From the beginning, Modi cast the recently concluded vote as part of a larger battle against thinly disguised enemies.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- In the world’s biggest election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory looks to be even bigger than expected: His ruling Bharatiya Janata Party appears set to win an outright majority for the second time, possibly improving on its 2014 showing. Clearly, he has a mandate for a second term. Now he needs the ambitions to match.
Two challenges need immediate attention.
The first is economic. Although Modi introduced praiseworthy reforms in his first term — in particular, a new bankruptcy code and a nationwide goods-and-services tax — he hasn’t yet put the economy on a path to structurally higher growth. The only way to create the nearly 1 million jobs per month India needs for its swelling population is to expand the country’s manufacturing sector, particularly goods for export. That will require making fundamental changes to labor-market rules and land-acquisition laws that will allow companies to expand and integrate with global supply chains.
India also needs to reverse a disappointing recent trend toward protectionism, both to forestall a backlash from trading partners and to boost its competitiveness. Modi needs to start living up to his 2014 pledge to provide “minimum government, maximum governance.” Inefficient state banks need to be shut down or privatized to get investment flowing again. So do state companies such as Air India Ltd. that are little more than a drain on the exchequer.
These aren’t new problems. If Modi bears any blame, it’s for not spending more political capital on addressing them. The same can’t be said for his other central task: to tamp down the divisiveness that he and the BJP exploited to return to power.
From the beginning, Modi cast the recently concluded vote as part of a larger battle against thinly disguised enemies. He accused the opposition Indian National Congress of a treasonous sympathy for Muslim-majority Pakistan, with which India had just fought a dangerous air duel. His top lieutenant vowed to expel illegal Muslim immigrants, whom he likened to “termites.” Mocking worries about rising Hindu militancy, the BJP even put forward as a candidate a self-styled holy woman charged in a bombing that killed six Muslims.
Modi, a career-long acolyte of the Hindu nationalist movement, has never disguised his conviction that India needs to promote its Hindu heritage more loudly. In power, he has at least tolerated a rising strain of anti-Muslim prejudice encouraged by BJP supporters and party officials. This has led to violence — at least three dozen Muslims have been lynched since Modi took office, supposedly for eating or trafficking in beef — while the willingness of local BJP politicians to embrace suspects and undermine police investigations has encouraged a sense of impunity among Hindu radicals.
Such signals from the top have done more than erode faith in the police and judiciary. They’ve poisoned intercommunal relations and made overt prejudice against Muslims far more acceptable than it’s been in decades. Even if this reflects cynical politics, it’s dangerously short-sighted: It will make the kind of bipartisanship needed to promote serious economic reforms impossible, and threatens to do grave damage to India’s fragile social fabric.
Modi has once again proved himself a preternaturally skilled politician. If he wants to be a great leader, though, he has to show he can be one for all Indians.
Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.
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