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These conditions have resulted in more despair, disillusionment and disdain amongst the exploited classes leading to a certain regression of the political consciousness amongst large swathes of the workers and the poor in India. This reminds one of the situation in Russia in the first decade of the last century. Leon Trotsky wrote in 1909: “When the curve of historical development rises, public thinking becomes more penetrating, braver and more ingenious, it grasps facts on the wing, and on the wing links them with the thread of generalisation…when the political curve indicates a drop, public thinking succumbs to stupidity, the priceless gift of political generalisation vanishes without leaving even a trace. Stupidity grows in insolence, and baring its teeth, heaps insulting mockery on every attempt at a serious generalisation. Feeling that it is in command of the field, it begins to resort to its own means…The leaders who blame the masses for being too inept, too incapable, and too lethargic to launch a revolutionary movement also use the excuse of the low level of consciousness of the masses for the delay of the movements. This is due to their inability to understand the dialectics of the historical process and the dynamics of class struggle.”

This landslide Modi victory will prove to be a pyrrhic one. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is already riddled with crisis, internal strife, squabbling, factional disputes, bickering, conspiracies, palace intrigues and personal vendettas of the leaders in their lust for power, lucrative ministries and amassing wealth. In an article in Khaleej Times, Rahul Singh wrote, “It remains to be seen if the now victorious Bharatiya Janata Party, which is sweeping to power on its own, without the need of any allies like Shiv Sena, also fritters away its advantage as the Janata Party did (after the 1977 elections).”

There will be clashes on policy issues from economic austerity to cuts in social spending to matters of foreign policy, especially regarding Pakistan and China. There will be more splinter groups emerging from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Bajrang Dal, Vishva Hindu Parishad and other Hindu fundamentalist outfits on issues of jobs, perks, postings, contracts and other political benefits and privileges. The Gujarat model of trickle down economics producing high growth rates being dubbed as a proof of Modi’s triumph and portrayed as a recipe to retrieve India’s growth rates and invigorate its crumbling economy has proved to be a disaster for the ordinary people of Gujarat. Kavita Krishnan recently challenged the story of Gujarat as a shining example of economic success in an article in Countercurrents: “What, if anything, is special about the development model of Gujarat under Modi? […] Gujarat’s neoliberal development model has displayed all the distressing effects on people’s lives and the economy that have been felt in the rest of the country. […] Jobless growth has been the norm. […] In education, health and nutrition, indicators are dismal, especially for women and children. In the Global Hunger index, Gujarat is part of the bottom five states in India, and globally, performs worse even than states like Haiti. 80 percent of children below four years and 60 percent of pregnant women are anaemic in Gujarat (a virtual anaemia epidemic that Modi laughs off as a case of ‘beauty conscious girls’ starving themselves!). What about corruption and corporate plunder? […] The ‘Modi model’ is no different in its economic essentials than the Manmohan model. Why, then, is Gujarat a preferred destination for the corporations?” (Towards Lok Sabha 2014).

The same article also highlights a comment by Atul Sood, in a recent collection of essays on Gujarat, where he notes that it “witnessed not merely jobless growth but also the lowest share of wage income, highest use of contract workers in industry. Not surprisingly, Gujarat witnessed the maximum incidences of strikes, lockouts and other forms of unrest on various financial and disciplinary grounds (wage and allowances, bonus, personnel, discipline and violence) at a time when these were actually declining in the rest of the country.”

Modi has been ferociously attacking the trade unions and the workers’ struggles. It is not an accident or for sentimental reasons that Modi is so much of a darling for the bourgeois bosses in India and internationally. He imposed severe conditions for workers and carried out brutal neoliberal policies of privatisation, downsizing, liberalisation, restructuring and reductions in corporate tax with added benefits to the capitalists. His aggressive economic policies have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of children, women and the elderly from hunger and curable diseases. Modi becoming prime minister will further exasperate the terrible misery, disease, poverty, price hikes and unemployment the Indian masses are currently going through.

It is one thing to impose austerity and control bureaucracy by bullying and other tactics in one state, but a totally different thing in a country as diverse and fractured as India. The expectations are too high, the crisis too deep, severe and convoluted. To begin with, India is gripped by stagflation, where consumer inflation is at a wage-eroding 8.6 percent, the highest among the ‘emerging economies’. The economic experts on India at J P Morgan, one of the world’s top financial investment companies, have warned in a report against overly high expectations, noting that under India’s federal system “75 to 80 percent of problems on the ground are outside the direct jurisdiction of the central government. Some shovel-ready projects could be implemented, which could produce a growth pop for a quarter or two…But a more sustained recovery would be far more challenging and time consuming.”

The infrastructure needed to underpin the industrialisation process is poor in large parts of the country, and a new land acquisition law has further complicated the process of buying space for new factories. An AFP report says, “Arun Jaitley, who is tipped to be the finance minister, told a group of foreign reporters that there was little prospect of early reforms of the labour market or any major rollback of pro-poor welfare programmes. For all his reform talk and first parliamentary majority for a single party since 1984, Modi will have to contend with entrenched resistance to radical change in many quarters, which could disappoint foreign companies eyeing new opportunities.” Hence the euphoria and intoxication of the corporate bosses may be very short lived and they could end up with a terrible hangover.

However, if Modi does not deliver fast enough in a situation of world capitalism reeling in recession, the flight of foreign and even domestic capital could take off at startling speed, devastating the neoliberal model of higher rates of growth. But what is being concealed in the mainstream press is the reaction that can come from the Indian proletariat and the oppressed millions. The support of the impatient and whimsical middle classes can evaporate precipitously and the Modi regime would be in all sorts of crisis lurching from one blunder to another, both in domestic and foreign policies. But what may surprise many would be a revolt of the Indian youth and the workers against a reaction that has peaked with a regime offensively hostile to the toilers. In such a scenario, Modi could end up being a provocation that could ignite a revolutionary upheaval.

(Concluded)

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com