May 08, 2024 (MENAFN via COMTEX) --
(MENAFN - Live Mint) " (Bloomberg Opinion) -- As India's six-week-long general election grinds past
the halfway mark, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's messaging has shifted from confident to shrill.
After the first couple of phases
of polling showed a 3-percentage-point drop in turnout, both Modi and his party leaders have largely stopped promoting
their accomplishments of the past 10 years, or, for that matter, the"Modi guarantees" offered in the
Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto for the next five.
Instead, making
the majority Hindu population fear and loathe
Muslims
seems to be the BJP's preferred talking point. Modi went on the offensive in an April 21 speech where
he suggested that Rahul Gandhi's Congress Party, if elected, would
"calculate the gold with mothers and sisters,"
and redistribute it"among those who have more children... among infiltrators," tropes that his supporters routinely use to refer to
Muslims, the
largest religious
minority.
The third of seven rounds ended
Tuesday amid a
deadly
heat wave that
is gripping
much of South Asia and keeping voters from queuing
up to cast their ballots. The Election Commission, which is meant
to ensure that campaign publicity
doesn't
end up accentuating communal fault lines, would have sanctioned any other political figure for the kind of comments that the prime minister is
making. But the watchdog is so reluctant
to take on Modi, it sent
a code-of-conduct violation
notice to his party chief.
A record turnout in 2019
had helped Modi's BJP tremendously, and the party was hoping that its star campaigner's
popularity -and his consecration of a Hindu temple
at a disputed
site earlier this
year - would lead to a repeat. That doesn't seem to be happening, and people have already voted (or chosen not to) for a little more than half of the 543 parliamentary seats that have gone to the polls. While the BJP is still the pollsters' favorite to win,
the party and its leaders appear to be oddly nervous, and
are ramping up the fear-mongering accordingly."If you have two buffaloes, the Congress will take one," Modi
said at a
rally in Gujarat, his home state.
The Congress Party
hasn't said anything about wealth redistribution. It has, however,
promised an
expansion of affirmative action. This is where the BJP
sees an opportunity to pit Muslims against other disenfranchised
groups."If you are a non-Muslim," says a now-deleted video,
posted under the party's
Instagram handle,
"Congress will snatch your wealth and distribute it to Muslims. Narendra Modi knows of this evil plan. Only he has the strength to stop it." Next came a 17-second cartoon clip, in which Gandhi is shown hatching just such a plan of favoring
Muslims at the expense of marginalized Hindu groups.
But is that what Gandhi is really proposing? Muslims can't anyway be given religion-based reservation in higher education and government jobs. To do so
would run afoul of India's
secular constitution. What the main opposition grouping
has vowed
in its manifesto
is that it will
increase the overall 50% limit on affirmative action, after first doing a caste census. The last such exercise,
which
divided the population into roughly 4,000 groups and sub-groups, was
under British rule in 1931. After independence in 1947, the government gave itself constitutional powers to make special provisions for the advancement of any deprived classes,
castes
and
tribes. India's affirmative action program, which predates the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, began with the most marginalized castes, often referred to as Dalits (broken people) and Adivasis (aboriginals). They are counted every 10 years, but other underprivileged
groups are not. The caste data from a 2011 socioeconomic survey
wasn't made public.
To refuse to gauge the extent of a malaise won't
make it go away.
Although the over-representation of disadvantaged castes in certain industries
such as leather and waste handling
has reduced sharply, it hasn't ended even after eight decades of affirmative action.
In the 1980s, more than 80% of casual-wage workers' sons were also in irregular employment. That figure has come down to 53% for higher castes, but is still stuck at 76% for Dalits, according to last year's State of Working India report by the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. Female participation in the economy is abysmal: Every second young woman is neither working, nor
studying.
Separate data shows that when it comes to education, India's Muslim youths
are
faring worse than Dalits.
Can some Muslim communities be given quotas, not because of their religion but because of their socioeconomic deprivation? Creating any new entitlement won't be politically easy. When I was at Delhi University in 1990, massive protests broke out over a 27% quota in federal jobs for so-called other backward classes. The policy survived, though not the government that had introduced it.
Muslims in Karnataka and Kerala are already eligible for state-level quotas. Tamil Nadu offers them to 95% of Muslim communities. Andhra Pradesh, too, reserves jobs and educational seats for some Islamic sects. These states happen to be in the country's more prosperous south. It's time to begin a mature conversation on how to create more opportunities for Muslims in a rapidly modernizing economy. Demonizing them, as the BJP is doing with its animated videos, is hardly a way to go about such a dialogue.
Even as
a pliant Election Commission looks the other way, Modi
must weigh the consequences of his dog whistles.
The Indian prime minister's desperation for a third term
is putting a target on the back of a
vulnerable
minority - and placing millions of lives at
risk.
More From Bloomberg Opinion: This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg/opinion (C)2024 Bloomberg L.P.
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