A riveting account of how a popularly elected leader has steered the world's largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intolerance Over the past two decades, thanks to Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national-populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in Gujarat and then in India at large. Modi managed to seduce a substantial number of citizens by promising them development and polarizing the electorate along ethno-religious lines. Both facets of this national-populism found expression in a highly personalized political style as Modi related directly to the voters through all kinds of channels of communication in order to saturate the public space. Drawing on original interviews conducted across India, Christophe Jaffrelot shows how Modi's government has moved India toward a new form of democracy, an ethnic democracy that equates the majoritarian community with the nation and relegates Muslims and Christians to second-class citizens who are harassed by vigilante groups. He discusses how the promotion of Hindu nationalism has resulted in attacks against secularists, intellectuals, universities, and NGOs. Jaffrelot explains how the political system of India has acquired authoritarian features for other reasons, too. Eager to govern not only in New Delhi, but also in the states, the government has centralized power at the expense of federalism and undermined institutions that were part of the checks and balances, including India's Supreme Court. Modi's India is a sobering account of how a once-vibrant democracy can go wrong when a government backed by popular consent suppresses dissent while growing increasingly intolerant of ethnic and religious minorities.

Since the right-wing, Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the national level in 2014, and with its consolidation of power in the 2019 general election, India has witnessed a significant realignment of its national politics and a shift toward the right of the political spectrum. The Politics of India under Modi: An Introduction to India's Democracy, Economy, and Foreign Policy by Vikash Yadav and Jason A. Kirk provides a detailed overview of India's political trends, economic prospects, and international relations in the twenty-first century. The book grew out of questions and concerns expressed by students about India's political economy in the contemporary moment--and responds to this pedagogical need. In five chapters, the authors seek to answer these questions through explorations of India's democracy and elections, emerging market economy, and complex foreign policy. Chapter one provides a political overview, including a brief biography of Narendra Modi. Chapter two outlines India's subnational politics, with detailed case studies of Bihar, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh. Chapter three tackles the economy, with a focus on demographics, poverty, employment, growth, and lastly, corruption. Chapters four and five discuss India's economic and foreign policy specifically under Modi, covering topics like the economic boom, India-China relations, the "Act East" policy, and military modernization. The Politics of India under Modi is designed as a supplement and update for existing syllabi that trace India's political economy from the birth of the republic to the quest for economic liberalization and great power status. Undergraduates and scholars interested in India's foreign policy and political reform will find value in this timely book.

Narendra Modi’s energetic personal diplomacy and promise to make India a ‘leading power’ surprised many analysts. Most had predicted that his government would concentrate on domestic issues, on the growth and development demanded by Indian voters, and that he lacked necessary experience in international relations. Instead, Modi’s first term saw a concerted attempt to reinvent Indian foreign policy by replacing inherited understandings of its place in the world with one drawn largely from Hindu nationalist ideology. Following Modi’s re-election in 2019, this book explores the drivers of this reinvention, arguing it arose from a combination of elite conviction and electoral calculation, and the impact it has had on India’s international relations.

Narendra Modi has been a hundred years in the making. Vinay Sitapati's Jugalbandi provides this backstory to his current dominance in Indian politics. It begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s, moves on to the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980, and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004. And it follows this journey through the entangled lives of its founding jugalbandi: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Over their six-decade-long relationship, Vajpayee and Advani worked as a team despite differences in personality and beliefs. What kept them together was fraternal love and professional synergy, of course, but also, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity. Their partnership explains what the BJP before Modi was, and why it won. In supporting roles are a cast of characters-from the warden's wife who made room for Vajpayee in her family to the billionaire grandson of Pakistan's founder who happened to be a major early funder of the BJP. Based on private papers, party documents, newspapers and over two hundred interviews, this is a must-read for those interested in the ideology that now rules India.

Hailed as the world's largest democracy and feted by the Trump administration in events like "Howdy Modi" in Houston, India is fast slipping into autocracy under the bigoted rule of Prime Minister Modi and this blistering critique shows how.

States today are far more engaged in diplomacy than ever before, actively building relations with other states to harness their mutual commercial and cultural strengths. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s outlook to global affairs is no different, yet there is a nuanced approach in linking India’s foreign policy to domestic transformation. While on the one hand, his policies seek to attract foreign capital, technology and open foreign markets for Indian products, on the other, they are geared towards regional stability, peace and prosperity. All events are texts to be analysed and the authors in this volume do so but emphatically underline that India’s diplomacy under Modi has got a go-getting edge, that it is no longer foreign anymore but a matter of public affairs and that with Modi at the helm, India is set to leverage its role and make itself a ‘diplomatic superpower’. The nuanced and thought-provoking essays, by some of the most well-respected analysts and practitioners of diplomacy, make this book a must-read for not just professionals and serious readers but for the uninitiated as well.

The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.