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India's Loud Democracy Is Becoming More Quite

The candidate that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has put forward for the largely ceremonial post of president looks like a canny choice: Ram Nath Kovind, a longtime devotee of a Hindu group allied with the party, but also a dalit—the bottom rung in India’s caste system. He should appeal both to the party’s religiously motivated base, but also to other dalits, who make up close to 20% of the population. Given the strength of the BJP and its allies in Parliament, which elects the president, his ascent is all but assured.
Narendra Modi's government is extremely sensitive to criticism


The BJP is always looking for ways to shore up its support, but not all of them are so positive. When Mr Kovind’s nomination was announced, Rana Ayyub, a journalist critical of the party, lambasted the choice on Twitter. It took a spokesman for the party less than eight hours to file a complaint with the police, claiming that she was stirring up hatred on the basis of caste—an offence in India—even though the tweet had made no mention of caste.

Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, the BJP has won a string of impressive electoral victories, at both the national and state level. The opposition is in disarray; another BJP triumph seems likely in 2019. Yet the BJP is extremely sensitive to criticism.

Mr Modi has a very easy time with the press. India’s big media conglomerates are either owned by fans of the BJP, or else reliant on the government’s favour. There are few legal limits and little oversight of government spending on advertising. Mr Modi’s image is everywhere: on giant billboards trumpeting new roads and bridges, in full-page newspaper spreads for BJP election campaigns, in television spots touting myriad government programmes. During the first week of June, state-sponsored projects accounted for three of the top five brands advertised on television, amounting to some 30,000 “insertions”. The risk of losing such revenue hangs heavily over editorial decisions.

Checks and imbalances

It is not only the media that are largely tame. Agencies such as India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate of the finance ministry, the tax authorities and even local police forces are often accused of doing the government’s bidding. Since the upstart Aam Aadmi Party won control of the local assembly in Delhi, India’s capital, from the BJP in 2015, its leaders have been hit by a barrage of investigations. Their impressive reforms to health and education have won widespread praise, but Delhi’s government has trouble filling administrative posts because career bureaucrats refuse its vacancies for fear of harassment. Not surprisingly, the BJP trounced Aam Aadmi in municipal polls in Delhi earlier this year, as voters abandoned the upstart in favour of a party that faces less resistance in getting things done.
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