tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/india-tomorrow-68766/articlesIndia Tomorrow – The Conversation2019-05-24T18:32:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1177692019-05-24T18:32:51Z2019-05-24T18:32:51ZIndia Tomorrow part 7: what Narendra Modi’s landslide victory means for India<p>After the world’s largest ever democratic exercise, Narendra Modi has been re-elected as prime minister of India for another five year term. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured an <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-election-how-narendra-modi-won-with-an-even-bigger-majority-117476">even bigger majority</a> than in 2014. </p>
<p>In this, the final part of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a> series from The Anthill podcast, we analyse the results with a panel of academics to find out what such a large majority – of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/indian-general-elections-2019-latest-updates-190521080547337.html">more than 300 seats</a> – means for India.</p>
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<p>Mujibur Rehman, assistant professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at Jamia Milia Islamia University in New Delhi, says the size of the victory has taken many analysts in the media by surprise. </p>
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<p>The question is not about winning 300 seats, but the huge margin through which the BJP candidates defeated their nearest rivals … that is a huge, huge surprise.</p>
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<p>Nikita Sud, associate professor of development studies at the University of Oxford, says the fact that Modi ran an almost presidential campaign, harks back to the slogans of the 1970s, when prime minister Indira Gandhi ran on the slogan, “Indira is India and India is Indira”.</p>
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<p>It is to be commended on the part of the BJP that we are back to this very, person-centric politics where (in) every constituency people are talking about Modi … In 2014, people were testing him, but now that he’s a known entity, I think this personality-centricness can go both ways … because everything now centres even more on him, especially after this thumping victory. </p>
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<p>The opposition Congress Party, suffered a crushing defeat at the polls, winning fewer than 50 seats and its leader Rahul Gandhi <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/rahul-gandhi-loses-amethi-seat-biggest-upset-2019-polls-190523134545989.html">even lost his own parliamentary seat</a> in Amethi, a traditional stronghold of India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the Congress in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Rehman said the defeat was “massive” for Gandhi and the Congress party:</p>
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<p>It signals that they are almost a non-entity today in the northern India politics, the heartland of Indian politics. Because he has a huge victory in (the southern state of) Kerala, but in the north they are almost a non-entity now.</p>
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<p>Indrajit Roy, co-host of The Anthill’s India Tomorrow series and lecturer in politics at the University of York, says that while Modi’s victory is an example of populism, it also a victory for what he calls a “politics of passion”. </p>
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<p>I think if you look at the results, you just look at the huge majorities that the BJP has won, not only at the country level, but in the constituencies that they’ve won … that’s not possible unless you’ve touched people’s hearts.</p>
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<p>He stresses how different Modi’s journey to power is from that of US President Donald Trump, or Jair Bolsonaro, the newly elected president of Brazil – though he says there are similarities with Reccip Tayip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey. </p>
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<p>Like Erdoğan, Modi very much belongs to the political system. He’s not an outsider. He was a chief minister of a state, he’s a fully fledged member of the party. He was groomed by the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh], which is the ideological mentor of the BJP, so he’s very much a part and parcel of the political system. I do think that these elections were of course about Modi, but it was also about the ideas that Modi holds and that the ideas that he expressed, which is something which his party and the RSS have been working on for nearly 90 years – the ideas of India being a Hindu nation. </p>
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<p>To find out more about the big issues facing India as Modi settles into his second term as prime minister, check out our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">episode guide</a> for this series. Do get in touch with any questions via podcast@theconversation.com or reach out on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/anthillpod">@anthillpod</a>. </p>
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<p><strong>Credits</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: BJP handout/EPA</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a> via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>News clips:</em></p>
<p><em>India PM Modi wins landslide victory in world’s largest election, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odvN_nuJTzI&t=31s">France 24</a></em></p>
<p><em>Election Results: Total BJP Sweep, India Chooses Modi 2.0, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuYpojVJirM">NDTV</a></em></p>
<p><em>Narendra Modi thanks voters for ‘historic mandate’, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48389130">BBC News</a></em></p>
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A panel of academic experts assess Narendra Modi's victory in the final episode of our India Tomorrow series.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174762019-05-23T16:08:27Z2019-05-23T16:08:27ZIndia election: how Narendra Modi won with an even bigger majority<p>The stunning majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 Indian election is a massive political achievement for its leadership: the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the party’s president, Amit Shah. Early results from the world’s biggest democratic exercise show the BJP is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48347081">likely to win</a> more than 300 seats in India’s parliament, the Lok Sabha, more than the 282 it won in 2014 and the 272 needed for a majority. </p>
<p>In early 2019, such a result had looked uncertain in the wake of state election <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/11/modi-bjp-election-defeats-hindi-heartland-rajasthan-chhattisgarh-madhya-pradesh">defeats</a> in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – part of the Hindi heartland that had helped Modi to victory in 2014. Opponents of the BJP dared to think that the Congress Party – the former “Grand Old Party of India” which had been reduced to only 44 seats in 2014 – was sufficiently revitalised to mount a credible challenge in 2019. </p>
<p>As the early months of 2019 dawned, scandals about the allocation of a defence contract as well as rising unemployment figures – and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-india-tomorrow-part-5-podcast-transcript-116688">suppression of these figures</a> – made a bad start to the campaign. The <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/web-exclusive/story/20190204-motn-poll-nda-seat-share-lok-sabha-election-2019-1439262-2019-01-25">Mood of the Nation</a> survey conducted in December 2018 and January 2019 concluded that the National Democratic Alliance, the coalition the BJP heads, would not win a majority in the general elections. </p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">Read our episode guide for India Tomorrow, a podcast series from The Anthill.</a></em></p>
<h2>Security</h2>
<p>We will have to wait for results from post-election surveys to get detailed analysis of the segments of society that voted for the BJP, but several points are clear about Modi’s victory.</p>
<p>Modi benefited tremendously from the fallout from a suicide attack in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-47302467?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cgmkz7g3xn0t/pulwama-attack&link_location=live-reporting-story">Pulwama</a> in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 40 Indian soldiers in February 2019. Although responsibility for the attack was claimed by a Pakistani terrorist group, it was carried out by a local Kashmiri. One reading of this could have been that Modi’s policies in the Kashmir valley, such as the increase <a href="http://time.com/longform/pellet-gun-victims-kashmir/">in the use of pellet guns</a>, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IN/DevelopmentsInKashmirJune2016ToApril2018.pdf">blinding hundreds</a> and killing at least 14, had led to the attack. But Modi swiftly turned it to his advantage. </p>
<p>Not only did he pursue an aggressive course of action with airstrikes against militants on Pakistani territory, he also successfully sold it as a huge success, <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/indias-strike-on-balakot-a-very-precise-miss/">despite some evidence</a> that the fighters had missed their target. The national security narrative took centre stage in the 2019 election, something that the opposition parties were unable to counter. </p>
<h2>Opposition failings</h2>
<p>The second factor was the Congress campaign. The party’s leader, Rahul Gandhi, has come a long way since his debut in a national election in 2014. But the Congress campaign failed on two fronts. The first was the messaging: it was a mistake to try and attack Modi on <a href="https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/congress-vs-bjp-on-rafale-deal-four-key-questions-answered">allegations of corruption</a> rather than focusing on the economic failures of his first term. Focusing on corruption only served to remind the electorate of the Congress party’s involvement in previous (very large) corruption scandals. </p>
<p>Yet, even had Congress focused solely on the economy, this may not have led to a very different result. The BJP <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/12/bjp-landslide-in-uttar-pradesh-a-boost-for-india-prime-minister-narendra-modi">swept the board</a> in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh state elections, held only a few months after Modi’s disastrous demonetisation policy which saw <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/india-withdraws-500-1000-rupee-notes-fight-corruption">the withdrawal of 86%</a> of India’s currency. The second failure was the high-handedness with which Congress approached the formation of its own political alliances. The BJP was extremely accommodating of its alliance partners in states such as Bihar and Maharashtra, but Congress did not manage to agree a deal with its potential partners in <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/lok-sabha-2019/story/arvind-kejriwal-rahul-gandhi-congress-aap-alliance-failed-inside-story-1511415-2019-04-27">Delhi</a> and in <a href="https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/congress-out-of-sp-bsp-alliance-in-up-but-theres-little-reason-for-bjp-to-cheer">Uttar Pradesh</a>.</p>
<h2>NaMo appeal</h2>
<p>The third factor was the presidential nature of the campaign. Modi successfully portrayed the campaign as Modi v Rahul. Such a framing benefited Modi – a fantastic campaigner. He built on the national security narrative by framing himself as a <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1131539657794183168"><em>Chowkidar</em>, or watchman</a>, who would protect India. This built on his reputation as someone who would make India great – something that played extremely well in the campaign. </p>
<p>Modi’s profile in India is huge – he takes personal credit for all initiatives, and his picture appears multiple times in the same editions of the daily newspapers when government initiatives are flagged.</p>
<p>But curiously, for such an effective campaigner, he held his first <a href="https://thewire.in/media/narendra-modi-press-conference">press conference</a> as prime minister in the final weeks of the 2019 campaign. And even then it was dominated by Shah – and Modi didn’t <a href="https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-the-narendra-modi-press-conference-that-really-wasnt/330509">answer a single question</a>.</p>
<p>The BJP has had extraordinary control of the political narrative during this election, aided by its extremely <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-spending-bjp-congress/modis-war-chest-leaves-india-election-rivals-in-the-dust-idUSKCN1S7390">large war chest</a> which has helped it penetrate even deeper into traditional and social media. While only a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9fe88fba-6c0d-11e9-a9a5-351eeaef6d84">quarter of Indians</a> use WhatsApp – still 300m people – the creation of promotional material <a href="https://qz.com/india/1553765/bjps-whatsapp-ops-is-what-cambridge-analytica-can-only-dream-of/">specifically targeted</a> at different segments of society has played a huge role in advancing a particular political narrative. </p>
<p>In addition, the Election Commission has been criticised <a href="https://scroll.in/article/924268/the-silent-army-10-reasons-why-public-trust-in-the-election-commission-stands-eroded">for clearing</a> BJP leaders of many alleged election code violations, and only <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/elections/news/election-commission-bans-screening-of-biopic-on-pm-modi-during-election-period/articleshow/68810315.cms">belatedly banning</a> the showing of a biopic about Modi on the eve of the elections. It also allowed the BJP’s TV channel, NaMo TV, to run without challenge <a href="https://thewire.in/media/as-polls-draw-to-a-close-namo-tv-slips-off-air">throughout the campaign</a>. It has now gone off air. </p>
<h2>Concerns for minorities</h2>
<p>The final point to make relates to the opinions of voters. The BJP ran a very <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/modi-party-chief-raises-anti-muslim-rhetoric-as-polls-kick-off">polarising campaign</a>. In 2014, 51% of those who responded to India’s <a href="https://www.lokniti.org/media/PDF-upload/1536130357_23397100_download_report.pdf">National Election Studies</a> said they believed that democracy meant that the will of the majority community should prevail – a steep rise from 2009. This demonstrates a move towards the right and an acceptance of <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">Hindu majoritarianism</a> in Indian politics – a position that questions whether religious minorities, particularly Muslims, should have special rights within India. This trend of Hindu majoritarianism is higher among the young – a growing demographic within India – who have grown up in an era in which the BJP has been a national player. </p>
<p>This does not bode well for religious minorities in the world’s largest democracy, 20% of whom are non-Hindu. Although Modi <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1131488026247323648">tweeted</a> after the results that “together we will build a strong and inclusive India”, the attacks on Muslims, both <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/what-is-the-citizenship-amendment-bill-2016/article23999348.ece">political</a> and <a href="https://www.indiaspend.com/2017-deadliest-year-for-cow-related-hate-crime-since-2010-86-of-those-killed-muslim-12662/">actual</a> during his first term cast doubt over the second part of this promise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117476/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharine Adeney has received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Economic and Social Research Council for her work on India in the past.</span></em></p>The Bharatiya Janata Party of Narendra Modi has claimed victory in the world’s biggest democratic exercise.Katharine Adeney, Professor of Politics and Director of the Asia Research Institute, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174402019-05-21T13:10:57Z2019-05-21T13:10:57ZIndian elections 2019: women candidates to watch out for<p>The outcome of the world’s largest election is almost upon us – the counting of votes by 900m eligible voters begins on May 23. With more than 500 directly elected seats being contested in India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, all eyes are on who will win and what this means for the next government. </p>
<p>One hope is that India’s lower house of parliament will improve upon the meagre number of women MPs elected to date. A depressing statistic revealed in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/performing-representation-9780199489053?cc=gb&lang=en&">Performing Representation</a>, a book I co-authored with Shirin M Rai, is that if you count every woman MP elected to the Lok Sabha over every parliament since independence, these together would not fill a single Lok Sabha of 543 directly elected seats. This is despite the prominence of several senior women leaders in Indian politics and the fact that women make up between one third to one half of local government representatives around the country as a result of gender quotas implemented in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there are many women politicians that we should look out for. Of the 8,000+ candidates, there are <a href="https://twitter.com/gilkumar/status/1126579421446414336">more than 700 women</a> – proportionally slightly higher than in previous elections. </p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-4-women-gender-and-love-116115">Listen to part four of The Conversation’s podcast series, India Tomorrow, on women, gender and love.</a></em></p>
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<p>On May 23, when the results are announced, it won’t just be a question of how many women were elected. If we are to do justice to the diversity of women in Indian politics, we must also consider who the women are, where are they from, which party they represent, and what they seek to represent in parliament. </p>
<h2>Candidates and controversy</h2>
<p>There are two women candidates who have captured the public imagination in this election. They illustrate, for very different reasons, why the last six weeks of voting have been dubbed a <a href="https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/opinion-if-they-can-t-have-democracy-let-them-have-bed-tea-1557471058097.html">toxic election</a>. </p>
<p>One is a progressive candidate, Atishi Marlena, contesting in East Delhi for the Aam Aadmi Party. She has been <a href="https://scroll.in/article/922212/inside-atishis-campaign-what-will-it-take-for-an-urban-liberal-to-win-a-seat-in-delhi">widely praised</a> for her contribution to reforming government schools in Delhi as an adviser to the government, improving the quality of both teaching provision and infrastructure. But, as many women in politics sadly experience, she has also been subjected to some severe misogynistic and casteist <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/attacking-atishi-marlena-aap-bjp-delhi-lok-sabha-elections-5722144/">abuse on the campaign trail</a>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275628/original/file-20190521-23823-186mztk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Atishi Marlena.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atishi#/media/File:Atishi_Marlena.jpg">Akshaymarathe via Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Atishi is not the first woman candidate to experience such abuse, even during <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/don-t-let-him-contest-polls-jaya-prada-on-azam-khan-s-remark/story-piJ5UxR5JGvpB3SInKhTfL.html">this</a> <a href="https://thewire.in/politics/elections-2019-priyanka-chaturvedi-shiv-sena">election</a>. But her experience is a stark reminder of how poisonous electoral politics can be and why many women are put off careers in politics.</p>
<p>In contrast, the controversial Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur is contesting for the BJP in the city of Bhopal, in the Hindi heartland state of Madhya Pradesh. She is a Hindu holy woman and member of the Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation, the RSS, which has links <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">with the governing BJP party</a>. Her nomination was heavily criticised because of her alleged links to the 2008 Malegaon bombings, for which she was arrested but granted bail on health grounds in 2017. </p>
<p>She courted further controversy when she referred to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/lok-sabha-elections/outrage-as-bjp-s-pragya-calls-mahatma-killer-godse-a-patriot/story-mUy7Tnk8X5hL08veZxQHoM.html">as a “patriot” (“<em>deshbhakt</em>”)</a>. Senior BJP leaders condemned these remarks saying that this is not in line with party ideology, but they have not rescinded their support for her. </p>
<p>Her victory or defeat in the election will serve as a litmus test for the level of public support for the BJP’s right-wing Hindu nationalist majoritarian agenda, and the extent to which parties and voters are willing to overlook alleged criminal behaviour of candidates. </p>
<h2>Banerjee and Mayawati</h2>
<p>Some of the most prominent women in the 2019 election are not candidates but are leading their party campaigns. This includes the chief minister of West Bengal and head of the All India Trinamul Congress party, Mamata Banerjee, who has been fighting hard this election to prevent the BJP from gaining strength in her state of West Bengal. </p>
<p>Another is the head of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mayawati, in the northern, most populous Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. She has entered into an alliance with her opponent, the Samajwadi Party, in order to fight the governing BJP party and avoid splitting the anti-BJP vote. </p>
<p>Both Mayawati and Banerjee have directly confronted incumbent prime minister, Narendra Modi in their campaigns, and will likely play an important role in the immediate aftermath of the results.</p>
<h2>The new generation</h2>
<p>We know that almost two thirds of sitting women MPs are running again in 2019. This is significant because Indian politics has a high turnover of elected representatives. The male-dominated terrain of party politics in India, as well as a perception that men have higher “winnability” within party selection committees, means it is significant when women are re-nominated by their parties. </p>
<p>Prominent women MPs to look out for are Meenakshi Lekhi (BJP) from Delhi, Supriya Sule (NCP) from Maharashtra, Susmita Dev (Congress) from the northeastern state of Assam. They are among a newer generation of senior women political leaders from across the political spectrum. </p>
<h2>Returning veterans</h2>
<p>After passing the leadership of the Indian National Congress Party to her son Rahul Gandhi, four-term veteran Sonia Gandhi is contesting again in Uttar Pradesh. </p>
<p>Other veterans who lost in 2014 have been given another chance by their parties in 2019. Meira Kumar, former speaker of the Lok Sabha (2009-2014) is back, fighting for her former constituency in the northern state of Bihar. Sheila Dikshit, a three-time chief minister of Delhi (1998-2013) and former MP, is again contesting in Delhi for the Congress party. </p>
<h2>The south</h2>
<p>National media coverage of Indian elections is often dominated by north Indian politics, but women candidates from south India are also worth watching. The south has higher development indicators, but this has not <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/performing-representation-9780199489053?cc=gb&lang=en&">always led to women’s participation in politics</a>. </p>
<p>The low number of women nominated by major parties in these states in 2019 means this trend is likely to continue. This will be the first election in decades without J Jayalalithaa, the longstanding chief minister of Tamil Nadu who died in December 2016. But we may see incumbent MP and senior TRS leader Kavitha Kalvakuntla, contesting in the state of Telangana, return to parliament. There are also two women Congress candidates, Jothimani (in Tamil Nadu) and Ramya Haridas (in Kerala), who may not have garnered much national media coverage but are interesting candidates to watch out for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carole Spary has received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the British Academy. She is Deputy Director of the University of Nottingham's Asia Research Institute, one of whose research partners is the Trivedi Centre for Political Data, Ashoka University.</span></em></p>Women are vastly outnumbered in India’s parliament but there are some key names to look out for.Carole Spary, Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1170242019-05-14T12:38:51Z2019-05-14T12:38:51ZIndia Tomorrow part 6: what young Indians want<p>Like many young people around the world, young Indians have big dreams for their future. But for a lot of people in India in their 20s and 30s, there is a large gap between their aspirations and the jobs and opportunities available to them. </p>
<p>In part six of <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a>, a series from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill podcast</a>, we’ll examine the concerns and demands of these young Indian voters. </p>
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<p>One in eight people in the world is an Indian under the age of 30. It’s an astonishing statistic – and the reason, according to Craig Jeffrey, why India’s young people are such an important demographic for the future of Asia and the world. </p>
<p>In this episode of India Tomorrow, we feature an interview that Jeffrey, the director of the Australia India Institute and professor of development geography at the University of Melbourne, did with Bageshri Savyasachi, an editorial intern at The Conversation Australia, for their podcast <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/trust-me-podcast">Trust Me I’m An Expert</a>. </p>
<p>Jeffrey says that jobs, education and healthcare will be driving the decisions of India’s young people as they vote in the 2019 elections.</p>
<p>In this episode, we also hear some examples of what young Indians want their future to look like. Sneha Krishnan, assistant professor in human geography at the University of Oxford, explains that many of the young women going through college who she’s interviewed wanted a “sophisticated” life. She said this largely referred to a desire to: “Being able to live a life where they felt kind of able to make their own choices.”</p>
<p>And we hear from Suryakant Waghmore, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, about the organisations working to turn caste into community for young people moving into large urban environments. Waghmore also explains what he found during a research project on inter-caste marriage which analysed the preferences of 2,000 profiles on marriage dating websites. </p>
<p>You can listen to a longer version of Savyasachi’s interview with Jeffrey on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-election-2019-millions-of-indian-youth-are-underemployed-and-going-to-the-polls-113563">May 6 edition of Trust Me I’m An Expert</a>, a podcast from The Conversation Australia, available wherever you get your podcasts from.</p>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-young-indians-want-india-tomorrow-part-6-podcast-transcript-117045">transcript of this episode here</a>, and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</p>
<p>This is the last episode of our India Tomorrow series before the results of the 2019 election results are due to be announced on May 23. Stay tuned for our special results episode in which a panel of academic experts will discuss the results. Do get in touch with any questions for the panel via podcast@theconversation.com or reach out on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/anthillpod">@anthillpod</a>. </p>
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<p><strong>Credits</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill, and to Sunanda Creagh at The Conversation Australia for her production help.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: Sanjeev Gupta/EPA.</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_05_Intervention">Intervention by Lee Rosevere</a>, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, and <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Super_1222/07_Endeavour">Endeavour by Jahzzar</a> all via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://pca.st/5Hul"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321533/original/file-20200319-22598-afljnr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Pocket Casts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Anthill-id2625863?country=gb"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321531/original/file-20200319-22632-t8ds9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
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<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p>Part six of The Anthill podcast's India Tomorrow series focuses on the concerns of young Indians.Indrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkAnnabel Bligh, Host of The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1170452019-05-14T12:38:48Z2019-05-14T12:38:48ZWhat young Indians want: India Tomorrow part 6 podcast transcript<p><em>This is a transcript of part six of The Anthill podcast series, India Tomorrow. <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-6-what-young-indians-want-117024">Click here to listen to the full episode</a> and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</em></p>
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<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/craig-jeffrey-114246">Craig Jeffrey</a>:</strong> One in eight people in the world is an Indian under the age of 30. It’s worth repeating that. One in eight people in the world is an Indian young person. Someone under the age of 30. Now that’s an extraordinary statistic. And it gives a sense of the importance of that demographic for the future of Asia and of the world. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> This is Craig Jeffrey, director of the Australia India Institute and a professor of geography at the University of Melbourne. He’s done decades of research on young Indians and social change. </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> Now, unlike the same generation 25 years ago, that set of young people are very well aware of events in other parts of the world, which are streamed to them via their mobile phones or on the internet. They are increasingly in secondary school, including young women. And in school they’re learning to obviously dream big. And the government is also encouraging those young people to see themselves as part of a new India, that’s modern, in which people are based often in urban areas doing kind of what historically has been described as middle class work, service work.</p>
<p>And where you’ve got that situation of both demographic growth and a rapid revolution of rising aspirations, you need an outlet for young people so that they feel, as they move into their 20s and 30s, that they’re achieving the goals that they desire. And that’s not happening. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> From The Conversation’s Anthill podcast, this is India Tomorrow. I’m Annabel Bligh from The Conversation. And I’m joined by my co-host, Indrajit Roy, lecturer in politics from the University of York. Hi Indrajit. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Hello Annabel. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> In this, the sixth part of our podcast series India Tomorrow, we’re going to be focusing on young Indians, the concerns they face as they go about their lives and the key issues they’re likely to be thinking about as they head to the polls in 2019. We’ll also be hearing about their views on caste and marriage – and about their aspirations for the future. </p>
<p>For this episode, we’ve teamed up with our colleagues at <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-election-2019-millions-of-indian-youth-are-underemployed-and-going-to-the-polls-113563">Trust Me I’m An Expert</a>, a podcast from The Conversation Australia. It was Bageshri Savyasachi, a multimedia intern at The Conversation, who spoke to Craig Jeffrey about his research. You can actually hear a longer version of their conversation on the Trust Me I’m an Expert podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from. </p>
<p>So, there will be an estimated 84m first time voters going to the polls in 2019. Here’s Bageshri. </p>
<p><strong>Bageshri Savyasachi:</strong> What do you think India’s young voters want? What are the overarching political imperatives and demands of India’s huge generation Z? </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> I think it’s a great question. Those numbers are astonishing aren’t they? And it’s very difficult I think for pundits to predict what precisely they’ll do in terms of the elections. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Craig says there are three things which are crucial in the minds of these voters. </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> One is jobs. So young people across India and particularly in parts of India where the economy’s been less successful at creating jobs. So some of the northern states, for example, are going to be really concerned with the capacity of the government to provide better employment opportunities.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The second is education. </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> They’ll be looking to see which political parties and politicians are promising to improve higher education, tertiary education more generally, the skills environment, and school education. Because for a lot of young people who aren’t part of the elite in India there is a mismatch often between the educational opportunities they obtain in school or university and then the employment market and the demands of key private sector firms. </p>
<p>A third area that’s perhaps less obvious is the issue of healthcare and public health. And my own observations as an anthropologist and human geographer working in mainly Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand over the past 25 years on social change is that young people are often demanding access to health services that are poorly provisioned in provincial India, particularly in relation to issues like sexual health, mental health, reproductive health. And that’s an area where I think young people are looking to government for more action. And I think that will also be in young people’s minds in the lead up to the elections. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> As we heard about <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-5-economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-116678">in the last episode of this series</a>, jobs and unemployment are a key election issue. And particularly so for young people. In rural India, 17% of men and 14% of women under 30 are looking for jobs. And, in urban India it’s 19% for men and 27% for women, according to data leaked <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-47068223">from the official statistics office</a>. And there is also a big problem of underemployment, where young people are doing jobs for which they’re overqualified. </p>
<p><strong>Bageshri Savyasachi:</strong> What jobs are available to young people? And do they want to do those jobs?</p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> Well I think one of the stories of Indian economic growth since 1990 is its failure to create large numbers of what might be regarded as white collar, or middle class jobs for the increasing numbers of young people who are getting high school matriculation certificates or degrees in India. Now India’s not especially unusual in that regard, particularly since the global financial crisis in the late 2000s economies around the world often found it difficult to create secure employment opportunities for people. Of course automation, mechanisation is changing the nature of work throughout the world. So this isn’t specific to India. But India is a almost, a very condensed or intense example of the failure of economic growth to create lots of good quality jobs. That long predates 2014 and the coming to power of the BJP. It’s a structural feature of the Indian economy since 1990 and especially since the mid-2000s period. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> But what does this mean for the jobs that are available for young people? </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> In many cases what we’re seeing in India is that people are having to realign their expectations of what work they’re going to do in that five or ten year period after they graduate from high school or university. This is not new. Ronald Dore wrote in his book <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED153584">The Diploma Disease</a> in 1970 that India was the country of the BA bus conductor. So that sense of having to downplay your expectations in light of circumstances is quite old in India. But now I would argue that a lot of people with bachelor’s degrees in India would be very keen to have a job on a state roadway as a bus conductor, so intense and cutthroat has the employment market become.</p>
<p>So you’re seeing people with master’s degrees, with PhDs having to do very small scale, entrepreneurial business work. You’re seeing them especially having to go back into agriculture, not as large scale agricultural innovators making large amounts of money and employing other people, but rather working on quite small plots of land in an environment where they didn’t imagine that they would go back into farming.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So young Indians in their 20s and 30s are struggling to achieve the goals they’ve set themselves. But just how big a problem is that for the country? </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> Well obviously for the young people concerned it’s a big problem and for their families. And young people are not passive in that situation. They actively and creatively seek ways to make do. That may be entering into fallback work in agriculture. It may be finding jobs that perhaps that they weren’t aspiring to originally, but which provide a means for establishing a family and getting by, in areas like sales and marketing.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> But, Craig says, it also means there is a lot of disappointment among young people who are living their lives in limbo – something he wrote about back in 2010 in a book called <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=17650">Timepass</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> What’s surprising perhaps is that that sense of social suffering hasn’t led to more unrest in India. And I think there are several reasons for that. I think partly because India is a democracy, people have an outlet for frustration, through the political system, through voting, through demonstrating on the streets. I think the second reason why there haven’t been more political mobilisation is that people often perceive this as a personal failure rather than a failure of government or of society, or as a structural failure, as social scientists would put. They see it as, “well I didn’t try hard enough” or “I wasn’t successful enough in that examination”. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> He says that quite often this failure is personalised, people blame themselves rather than the structural problems with India’s economy or its institutions. </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> There’s a whole history of commentators on India talking about the country as being poised to sort of fall into unrest. I’m not going to do that. I think India, it holds together. And as I said people, young people are actively finding ways to make do. But I do think it’s a major social issue at the moment – the lack of capacity for young people to realise their aspirations. It should be and will remain an absolutely critical issue for government in India.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So what do young Indians, going through college, want their future to look like?</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sneha-krishnan-431019">Sneha Krishnan</a>:</strong> By and large what they want to do is find a way to live a life that feels to them, I would say “dignified”. And I think how they would put it is “sophisticated”.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> This is Sneha Krishnan, an associate professor in geography at the University of Oxford. You may remember her from <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-4-women-gender-and-love-116115">part four of this series on women</a>, where we heard about the fascinating research she’s done with young Indian women, many of whom live in student hostels or dorms under strict curfews. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Sneha’s research is ethnographic, meaning her work focuses on particular examples or case studies. She pointed to one from her research that illustrated young people mean by a sophisticated life. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> So there was one young woman who emphatically told me she didn’t want a job. Right. She was going to college. She was studying something like computer programming which you know is applicable across a range of industries and so on. So she could easily find herself some kind of job in the future. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> But, Sneha says this young woman didn’t really want to work. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> She had a boyfriend who had really wanted to study art and she threw a fit. And so he ended up in an engineering college because she was really upset at the idea that she might end up with a poor artist. And she did not fancy herself living like that. Right. So she was very emphatic that what she wanted was a husband with a well-paying job. She wanted them to be able to own a three bedroom house that she and her husband would have a room, the children they had would have a room and there would be a third room in which her parents or his parents could stay when they came to visit. And the reason she had this idea was that she had grown up herself in a one bedroom house and had shared a bedroom with her parents her whole life. And any visiting relatives ended up in the same room.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> She didn’t want that to be her future. She wanted something different. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> So sophistication is a word that I think meant different things to different people. But, by and large, I think what it referred to was being able to live a life where they felt kind of able to make their own choices. Whether it was choices like not working and having a highly paid engineer for a husband. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> I also asked Sneha whether she felt young people in India were actually becoming more liberal in their views – by which I meant more progressive rather than more economically liberal.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> So I want to cautiously say that maybe young people are getting, as you said in the English language colloquial sense of it, more liberal. And the reason I say that is because when I left field work when I initially did it in 2013, right, before the elections happened, I was seriously disappointed during that time and I wasn’t surprised at all with the BJP victory.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Sneha points to the national debates going on at the time about rape, which took place after the high-profile gang rape and fatal assault of a 23-year-old woman, Jyoti Singh in Delhi in 2012. This helped foster a conservative narrative which emphasised the need to protect women.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> A lot of upper caste, middle class young women seemed to subscribe to that sort of view and it left me feeling sort of quite negative at that point.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> While Sneha says she hasn’t done any more direct fieldwork since then, she believes there has been a shift in thinking.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> From the sort of smaller interactions I’ve had, that doesn’t seem to be the case this time. In that there are a lot of reasons for young people to be very disappointed with this government. One of them was demonetisation. What a fiasco.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> We heard about Modi’s demonetisation policy <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-5-economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-116678">in our last episode</a>, in which the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes were scrapped overnight in an effort to combat corruption. Sneha says it was really inconvenient for young people. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> A lot of young people are incredibly busy people trying to sort of make careers in a bad economy. And they just don’t have the kind of time that that moment required for them to stand in queues and still not get the money they needed. To be running around and helping you know elderly relatives stand in queues and still not get the money they needed.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> She says that the growing number of attacks in India on ex-untouchables or Dalits, and Muslims in recent years, which we heard about earlier in this series, hasn’t created a backlash against far-right Hindu nationalism. But it has given some young people pause for thought. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> I do think that the sort of enormous scale at which that’s happened in the last few years has kind of gotten through to people, in that I am sensing a certain sort of exhaustion with the way things are. And you know, again, urban middle class young people really like their personal rights. Right? And there’s a lot of talk about, you know, if I can’t marry a Muslim without people hounding me. If I can’t make out with the Dalit boy on the beach without someone hounding me. Do you know what I’m saying? So I think there’s a lot of anxiety that their rights to a certain sort of global lifestyle where they make choices, which are unfettered, is somehow under threat.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Bageshri also asked Craig Jeffrey for his thoughts on this issue. </p>
<p><strong>Bageshri Savyasachi:</strong> Do you think there is a growing shift towards illiberalism among India’s youth?</p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> I think that’s a really interesting question. First one has to think about well what is liberalism. And if we define that relatively narrowly in terms of a commitment to formal equality and individual freedoms, then I think there’s evidence both ways. There’s evidence of young people contesting those visions of formal equality and individual freedom. For example through their views on on areas like sexuality. So there was a recent <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/04/04/young-india-is-conservative-opposed-to-homosexuality-likes-to_a_22025362/?guccounter=1">Centre of the Study of Developing Societies survey</a> that showed that the majority of young Indians didn’t approve of homosexuality. So there’s some evidence there of a certain kind of inverted commas “illiberalism”. </p>
<p>There’s evidence of young people’s involvement in societies or organisations that are policing people’s right to eat certain foods – again which would suggest the rise of a certain form of illiberalism. But there’s also of course a great deal of evidence the other way that young people are very active in nongovernmental organisations that are seeking to protect people’s formal equality, protect people’s freedoms. The number of youth NGOs in India is growing very very quickly.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Craig says there is also an interesting debate going on about the relationship between the individual and liberalism in India. </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> An argument that’s mean made by several people is that actually liberalism in India is organised around a sense of group rights, rather than around individual rights. So it’s perfectly possible to be part of a caste organisation or religious organisation that’s about equality and freedom, but nevertheless is articulating those notions of equality and freedom through reference to caste and religion. So that would be an argument that I think lots of Hindu nationalists would make, is that even though Hindus are the majority and even though they’re making an argument in Hindu terms, it’s an argument about tolerance and about liberalism, rather than about violence or exclusion or limiting people’s freedoms.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> We asked Suryakant Waghmore, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, to help explain more about the caste organisations that Craig mentions here. You may remember Suryakant from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">second episode on Hindu nationalism</a>. His research looks at the way different types of caste associations work in different cities, particularly Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Suryakant explains why caste associations for so-called higher castes began. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/suryakant-waghmore-719872">Suryakant Waghmore</a>:</strong> The caste associations of the pure and privileged groups, you know, when most of these came up during the colonial rule, with cities becoming important hub of economy, of society, of politics. And these castes associations kind of negotiated this urban space for several of these rural inhabitants from the privileged caste to come to city and negotiate urbanism; especially gain education and you know become mobile so that they could kind of mimic the Western way of life. But, this was rooted in caste.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Today, Suryakant says, associations for higher castes, such as those for Brahmins, remain important, but for different reasons.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> In fact quite a few of these castes associations are also finding it difficult to attract youth in these associations. And most of the volunteers who kind of work in these associations are about 50 and are trying to attract the youth to kind of root them again in caste as their primary identity. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> He tells us they have an anxiety of people “losing their caste”. And in cities like Mumbai, which are large, cosmopolitan, urban environments, these associations are trying to turn caste into community. </p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> And the most important fear for these castes associations and these volunteers is that the female members of the caste marrying outside the caste or falling in love outside the caste.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Only around 7% or 8% of marriages are considered inter-caste marriages, according to Suryakant. In another research project on inter-caste marriage, he studied 2,000 profiles on marriage dating websites to look in more detail at how ideas of caste and marriage interact. </p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> So what a typical profile, you know, would have your caste. Then your income, then your skin colour and then your preference about the person who you’re going to marry. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> By that he means stating your caste preference. In the past, he says some of these dating profiles would state that caste was no issue, except for two important exceptions: the ex-untouchables or Dalits, and people from scheduled tribes, known as Adivasis. Now, Suryakant has found, some people say caste doesn’t matter at all. </p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> Now, what is interesting is that, when they say caste does not matter, it’s just a way of saying that they would not necessarily marry outside caste. But there are some who really mean caste does not matter. What they do is that they list out castes they would be open to marry into.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Suryakant looked at who was listing what. </p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> Now what we saw in this preference was that, that the middle castes want to marry in the middle range and upwards. The upper castes would want to marry upper range and a little to the middle order.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So even if the ex-untouchables are not specifically mentioned or barred, Suryakant says there is still an unwritten inclination to avoid them. </p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> Whoever is kind of trying to move beyond caste, even then there is this line of purity and pollution and those castes that are considered kind of permanently polluted, that would be the ex-untouchable caste, are not really preferred to be married. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> But he stresses that this also depends on which cities people live in. </p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore:</strong> Quite a few youngsters tend to think beyond caste, you know, especially in Mumbai. This is not the case in Ahmedabad, you know, there is a general kind of belief that one can not marry the ex-untouchable castes and so forth. But in Mumbai what we see is that there’s definitely adventure in the space of friendship and love. So people transgress these boundaries and do not necessary think so much about the caste. In Ahmedabad, also, it’s there too at some extent, but it is lesser.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So Indrajit, I found this idea of a post-caste society really interesting, especially in light of everything we’ve been talking about on this series. It seems that some parts of Indian society may feel threatened by a future in which caste no longer mattered, whereas others think it’s a long overdue idea? </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> That’s quite right. I think people who have been privileged by the caste hierarchy would obviously see its disappearance as a threat. But for those who’ve been oppressed under the caste system, or those who’ve found themselves being marginalised or stigmatised by it, would certainly want caste to disappear. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So is this particularly pertinent with Modi being up for re-election? </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Oh I think so. Remember a number of the people who voted for Modi actually wanted him in power because they thought he would preserve Hinduism, preserve the caste hierarchies that came with it. Others saw him as – because he was a low-caste person himself, or at least he claimed to be from one of the lower castes – they thought him being at the top position of the country would actually challenge the caste hierarchy and contribute to its dissolution. So in a way you have both groups, those who believe that caste should not matter any more, as well as those who believe that caste is disappearing too fast and it should be preserved. Both groups have ironically vested a lot in Modi and his up for re-election actually shows the contests between these two groups. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So whatever future they want for themselves, it’s clear that young Indians are a political force to be reckoned with. And Indian students have found themselves at the forefront of national politics in recent years, with a couple of high profile controversies over the way some student protesters have been treated. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, or ABVP, a student youth organisation associated with the Hindu nationalist RSS that we heard about in <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">episode two</a>, has become an ever more powerful political force on some campuses. But all of India’s political parties have strong youth wings, which are key to their electoral efforts. </p>
<p>Back in 2014, Modi’s BJP was successful at winning the support of young people. According to the National Elections Survey – that’s a survey done with people as soon as they’ve left the booth, after casting their vote – 44% of upper-class 18 to 22-year-old first time voters preferred the BJP. This compared to 40% of middle-class voters from the same age group, 35% for lower-class voters and 24% for the poor. But the support varied widely by state – from 65% in Madhyar Pradesh, to 32% in Maharasthra. Bageshri asked Craig Jeffrey whether this is still the case going into 2019. </p>
<p><strong>Bageshri Savyasachi:</strong> Is young people support for Modi on the wane? My impression based on the conversations I have with my friends and what I read is that Modi doesn’t have a lot of support among the youth. A lot of young people supported him when he was first running for prime minister, but now a lot of young people are feeling disappointed with how he has handled Hindu nationalists and violence. What do you think?</p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> I should do that classic academic thing of saying that I’m not an expert on contemporary views of young people in India. Where I’ve done …</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Craig explains that it’s been some time since he did the bulk of his research, and most recently it’s been focused on a village in a remote part of Uttarakhand in northern India. </p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> … I try to pick up on the streets a sense of the mood but in that regard I’m an armchair or amateur interpreter of young people’s political views at the moment. And with those caveats in mind, my sense is that young people may not support Modi as much as they did five years ago, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t vote for him.</p>
<p>So one needs to maybe distinguish between support and how people will actually behave in the ballot booth. I think lots of people that I speak to recognise that given the high pitch to which Modi raised people’s aspirations in 2014 there was always going to be a sense of disappointment. That skilling hundreds of millions of people quickly was going to be a very tough ask and that the vision of new India while attractive in certain respects is not borne out in social reality for those outside of the elite and particularly in provincial parts of India, in small town and rural India. So people see on the social and economic side a kind of mismatch between promise and actuality. And I think that’s undermined a certain enthusiasm for the ruling BJP government.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> There are only a few more weeks now to find out what does happen. The final round of voting in the 2019 elections is on May the 19th, with the results announced a few days later on the 23rd. We’ll be taking a pause in this series until then, when we’ll be back with a panel discussing the election results, and answering any questions you might have. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Until then, thanks very much to everyone who’s been in touch so far about our series. And do keep those questions coming. You can get in touch via email on podcast@theconversation.com or on twitter @anthillpod.</p>
<p>You can read more of The Conversation’s coverage of India <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/indian-elections-2019-68064">by academics around the world on theconversation.com</a> or follow us on social media. And you can also find a transcript of this episode, and other episodes in this series, on The Conversation.com. </p>
<p>Don’t forget you can hear a longer version of Bageshri’s interview with Craig Jeffrey on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-election-2019-millions-of-indian-youth-are-underemployed-and-going-to-the-polls-113563">Trust Me I’m An Expert</a> podcast from The Conversation Australia. Find a link to it in our show notes too. </p>
<p>And if you’re looking for some other podcasts to listen to in the meantime, check out Pasha from our colleagues at The Conversation Africa. Pasha means ‘to inform’ in Swahili and each week features a short interview with an academic expert. Recent episodes have focused on the health impacts of cyclone Idai in southern Africa, and the social stigma facing women in Ghana who don’t have children. Search for Pasha from The Conversation Africa wherever you get your podcasts. </p>
<p>A big thanks to all the academics who spoke to us for this episode and to the journalism department at City University for letting us use their studios. The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and me, Annabel Bligh. Sound by Alex Portfelix. And an extra big thanks to my co-host Indrajit Roy. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Thanks Annabel. See you soon. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Thanks for listening. Goodbye!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This is a transcript of part 6 of India Tomorrow, focusing on India’s huge population of young people.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1141332019-05-09T10:06:03Z2019-05-09T10:06:03ZIndia: how some Hindu nationalists are rewriting caste history in the name of decolonisation<p>With India in the middle of the world’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-whats-at-stake-in-the-2019-elections-114648">largest democratic exercise</a>, universities are under the spotlight as never before. Over the past five years – as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has driven forward an agenda of Hindu nationalism – university campuses have been caught in the crossfire. </p>
<p>Some commentators have <a href="https://qz.com/india/954042/the-very-idea-of-what-universities-are-meant-to-be-is-under-severe-attack-in-india/">even wondered</a> whether the aspiration of the founding fathers of modern India – the ideals of a secular, egalitarian republic – will <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/06/indias-dangerous-new-curriculum/">endure much longer</a> under the “saffronisation of education”. </p>
<p>In 2017, the Universities Grants Commission – the higher education arm of the Indian government – pitched into the debate by <a href="https://www.news18.com/news/politics/ugc-tells-colleges-dont-miss-prime-minister-narendra-modis-speech-on-new-india-bengal-says-we-will-1513229.html">insisting</a> that 40,000 colleges across the country show a live transmission of the prime minister’s speech on the occasion of the centenary anniversary of the founder of the BJP, Deendayal Upadhyaya. In autumn 2018, Hindu nationalists in Ahmedabad <a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/after-abvp-protests-ramachandra-guha-says-he-won-t-teach-ahmedabad-university-90950">protested</a> against the appointment of eminent Indian historian, Ramachandra Guha, on the grounds that he was “anti-national”. He later said <a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/after-abvp-protests-ramachandra-guha-says-he-won-t-teach-ahmedabad-university-90950">he wouldn’t take up</a> the post. </p>
<p>But most alarming of all is how Indian universities have become caught up in the communal and caste politics of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-the-origins-of-todays-hindu-nationalism-55092">Hindu nationalist populism</a>, also known as “Hindutva”.</p>
<h2>Caste reservations</h2>
<p>In January 2016, Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student and anti-Hindutva activist at Hyderabad University, took his own life <a href="https://theconversation.com/suicide-of-dalit-student-sparks-rage-over-caste-discrimination-in-indian-universities-53653">following an incident</a> in which he and his fellow protesters were suspended from the university. Vemula’s death sparked a widespread reaction across Indian campuses. Universities were supposed to be delivering equality and religious tolerance, yet here was a wake-up call that low-caste – and in <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/lok-sabha-elections/ideological-conflict-takes-centre-stage-at-aligarh-muslim-university/story-70hVdVW1HwOATL8YibHV4N.html">other cases</a> Muslim – students were facing institutional discrimination. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/university-freedoms-in-india-under-threat-as-student-leader-charged-with-sedition-54793">University freedoms in India under threat as student leader charged with sedition</a>
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<p>In fact, despite paying lip service to uplifting <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/lok-sabha-elections/lok-sabha-elections-2019-in-up-bjp-woos-dalits-but-must-win-trust/story-cOSbaQNAcRVTrJhdGye2MN.html">so-called lower castes</a> in the run-up to the 2019 general election, denying the inequality inherent in the caste system has become a long-term clarion call for the BJP, the Rashstriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the militant youth wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, that it has spawned. </p>
<p>Hindutva activists have challenged the legitimacy of what are called caste reservations through which lower-caste groups benefit from quotas in the civil service and education. At independence in 1947, such reservations were a cardinal principle of the new state, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/caste-society-and-politics-in-india-from-the-eighteenth-century-to-the-modern-age/097D56E007498073B691A17EC3441FEB">compensating for</a> the thousands of years of caste deprivation, a culture in which the so-called “untouchables” (those outside the caste system) could only work impure trades – cleaning, including manual removal of domestic sewage, leather tanning, and corpse removal. </p>
<p>Yet, alongside a wider push to <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/new-education-policy-in-december-says-union-minister-satya-pal-singh/article19906224.ece">“decolonise”</a> the education curriculum, Hindutva ideologues in India and the West, have <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/RSS-chief-Mohan-Bhagwat-pitches-for-review-of-reservation-policy/articleshow/49041309.cms">gone into combat</a> against caste reservations. They have done so by re-appropriating history: by <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rss-mohan-bhagwat-hindu-dalits-tribals-muslim-invasion-293816-2014-09-22">claiming</a> that the caste system was a colonial construction or a result of foreign “<a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rss-mohan-bhagwat-hindu-dalits-tribals-muslim-invasion-293816-2014-09-22">invasion</a>”. In 2015, Mohan Bhagwat, the leader of the RSS, called for a review of <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/RSS-chief-Mohan-Bhagwat-pitches-for-review-of-reservation-policy/articleshow/49041309.cms">caste reservation policy</a>.</p>
<p>Mechanisms of governance such as the census and codification of laws under colonial rule <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/caste-society-and-politics-in-india-from-the-eighteenth-century-to-the-modern-age/097D56E007498073B691A17EC3441FEB">undeniably led to a</a> proliferation of political identities based on religious or caste affiliation in colonial India. But many scholars insist that it is <a href="https://www.dailyo.in/arts/caste-conflict-shudras-brahminism-golden-age-indian-cultures-as-heritage-romila-thapar/story/1/22790.html">historically inaccurate</a> to claim that castes and a system of caste hierarchy did not exist before colonial rule. </p>
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<span class="caption">Some scholars have claimed that caste was a colonial construction. A photograph from the 1860s of Rajputs, classified as a high-caste Hindu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#/media/File:Charles_Shepherd_and_Arthur_Robertson01.jpg">Charles Shepherd and Arthur Robertson via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>According to Hindutva supporters, in perpetuating caste reservations previous Indian governments since 1947 have maintained this colonial system. To <a href="http://indiafacts.org/decolonizing-the-humanities/">“decolonise India”</a>, as Modi’s intellectual cheerleaders <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319387604">describe their project</a>, means removing the caste system as part of a wider move of ridding India of the vestiges of the British colonial system. </p>
<h2>Dangerous decolonising</h2>
<p>Some Indian scholars, working <a href="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/hindutva-and-historical-revisionism/">at Ghent in Belgium</a> and in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3il9qw/hello_all_this_is_dunkin_jalki_a_member_of_sn/">Karnataka</a> in south-west India, have joined in this spurious decolonisation agenda, purporting to free modern Indians from their former rulers, Mughal (aka Muslim) “invaders” and British (aka Christian) “invaders”. Central to <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-of-hindu-nationalism-india-tomorrow-part-2-podcast-transcript-115505">Hindutva is the idea</a> that Indian religions are those born in India – and thus Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism fall into this bracket. But followers of Islam or Christianity pray to a foreign religion and so are considered by some to be outside the Hindu nationalist fold.</p>
<p>History books in schools <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/11/hindu-right-ideology-indian-textbooks-gujarat-20141147028501733.html">are being rewritten</a> to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/01/indias-new-textbooks-are-promoting-the-prime-ministers-favorite-policies-critics-allege/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c4b9047a04b4">minimise the contribution of Muslims</a>, while predominantly Muslim cities <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-46015589">such as Allahabad</a> and streets in countless towns are being renamed with more “appropriate” Hindu titles. Heroic founders of the new India, such as Mahatma Gandhi, are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-38794202">now being reassessed</a> as divisive figures who undermined Hindu unity. </p>
<p>All this is deeply antithetical to current global attempts to rethink and overturn social inequality and communal conflict. So it is ironic that the language of “decolonisation” in India now means something completely different to similarly named movements in the UK and South Africa that aim to “decolonise” educational culture and public life. An ideological sea-change <a href="https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/how-rss-infiltrating-india-intellectual-spaces">is taking place</a>. In India, “decolonisation” has become the rhetoric of militant nationalism.</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">Listen to part two of The Conversation’s podcast series on India about Hindu nationalism from The Anthill.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shalini Sharma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Text books are being rewritten and the history of caste in India questioned as ‘decolonisation’ has become the rhetoric of militant nationalism.Shalini Sharma, Lecturer in Colonial/Post Colonial History, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164852019-05-08T10:26:13Z2019-05-08T10:26:13ZNarendra Modi’s performance on the Indian economy – five key policies assessed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273148/original/file-20190507-103085-8kfzli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">India's new ₹2,000 note.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/brand-new-indian-currency-notes-2000-532726012">Shutterstock / Santhosh Varghese</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in spring 2014 the Indian economy was in the doldrums. There was a clear policy paralysis in India’s central government, in large part due to the high profile corruption cases that involved the central government bureaucracy and politicians at the time. Modi <a href="https://www.narendramodi.in/be/narendra-modi-addresses-rally-in-jharkhand-questions-the-congress-disruptive-practises-that-have-ruined-the-nation-6094">promised</a> Indians that “<em>acche din</em>” (good days) were coming. And there was expectation that the Indian economy would do well under a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-election/indias-pro-business-modi-storms-to-historic-election-win-idUSBREA4E0XG20140516">pro-business political regime</a>, headed by a politician known for <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2014/05/22/indias-strongman">acting strongly and decisively</a>.</p>
<p>Modi has had mixed successes in delivering on his promises. Here’s a breakdown of some of Modi’s key policies and how he has performed.</p>
<h2>1. Demonetisation</h2>
<p>India’s economic growth has not recovered to the high levels that were witnessed in the first decade of the 2000s. One important reason for the slow recovery was to do with the Modi government’s demonetisation policy. On November 8 2016, the government withdrew all 500 and 1000 rupee notes from circulation, announcing the issuance of new 500 and 2,000 rupee banknotes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0a8VWQhfw">in exchange for the now-defunct old ones</a>.</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-5-economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-116678">Listen to part five of The Conversation’s podcast series, India Tomorrow, which explores Modi’s record on the economy further.</a></em></p>
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<p>The aim of demonetisation was to deal a death blow to the black economy by reducing the perceived use of illicit cash to fund terrorism and illegal activities. Instead, the policy led to a <a href="https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/money-finance/consequences-of-the-demonetisation-shock.html">contraction of the Indian economy</a>, and economic growth slowed down <a href="http://theasiadialogue.com/2019/04/30/indias-general-elections-2019-the-potential-electoral-consequences-of-demonetisation/">to a four-year low in 2018</a>. </p>
<p>Further, by 2018, around 99% of the bank notes that were made invalid <a href="https://qz.com/india/1373030/modis-demonetisation-did-nothing-for-india-shows-rbi-report/">had been deposited with the banking system</a>, suggesting that a large proportion of the 500 and 1000 rupee notes in circulation were not counterfeit notes or black money, as the government thought. Thus, demonetisation led to a large economic loss without any clear benefits in terms of reducing the role of the black economy or corruption.</p>
<h2>2. Goods and services tax (GST)</h2>
<p>The Modi government’s second bold policy step was to launch the goods and services tax (GST) in July 2017. The aim of the GST policy was to create a common market in India, as opposed to the many different sales taxes that existed in different Indian states. The initial effect of the introduction of the GST was negative on the economy. This was especially the case for India’s large informal sector – which employs the vast majority of people <a href="https://www.ilo.org/newdelhi/areasofwork/informal-economy/lang--en/index.htm">outside of agriculture</a>.</p>
<p>The initial implementation of the GST was not handled well – small businesses in particular were confused about onerous reporting requirements, which placed a large compliance burden on them. At the same time, the GST policy could be seen as one of the most important policy initiatives since the country’s landmark 1991 economic reforms and as the one of the <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/indian-eonomic-reforms-institutionalisation-of-the-gst-regime-a-constitutional-adventure-2956335/">most significant constitutional innovations since 1950</a>. While the initial effect of the GST policy on the Indian economy was a negative shock, the long-term impact is likely to be strongly positive.</p>
<h2>3. Delivery of public goods</h2>
<p>Modi delivered on a large number of important public goods schemes, which built on the initiatives of the previous government. For example, toilet coverage in rural India <a href="http://mofapp.nic.in:8080/economicsurvey/pdf/001-031_Chapter_01_ENGLISH_Vol_01_2017-18.pdf">increased from 47% of all households in 2015 to 74% in 2017</a>, in large part due to the Modi government’s sanitation programme. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273150/original/file-20190507-103071-di5nok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Modi’s modernisation plan has included building more than 90m toilets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bikaner-india-mar-4-pictures-indicate-275325071?src=S1HITle4lLdFAxbSAUjuUg-1-0">Radiokafka / Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>As part of the <em>Pradhan Mantri Awaz Yojana</em> initiative, the number of rural houses built increased threefold from 2014 to 2016. There was also a large push on rural electrification to ensure all villages had an electricity connection by 2018.</p>
<h2>4. Agriculture</h2>
<p>Around 50-60% of India’s population have some form of economic reliance on agriculture. This sector has experienced <a href="https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/farm-crisis-runs-deep-higher-msps-and-cash-handouts-are-not-enough">a prolonged period of decline in rural incomes since 2011</a>, leading to what may has been termed an agrarian crisis. </p>
<p>While the roots of this crisis are deep seated, it could also be attributed to the Modi government’s reluctance to increase minimum support prices for staple crops such as rice, wheat and pulses – something he promised to do in his 2014 campaign. This would have prevented the return of food price inflation, which was a major source of discontent with the previous government.</p>
<h2>5. Jobs</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most disappointing feature of the Modi government has been its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/opinion/india-unemployment-jobs-blackout.html">lack of success in creating jobs</a> for the large proportion of India’s labour force who are unskilled and poor. <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/unemployment-rate-at-five-decade-high-of-6-1-in-2017-18-nsso-survey-119013100053_1.html">Unemployment rose to a 45-year high</a>, according to a leaked report from India’s National Sample Survey Organisation. </p>
<p>The Modi government’s weak record in job creation was particularly surprising, given its original intention to rejuvenate the manufacturing sector as a source of job creation, with the much-heralded <a href="http://www.makeinindia.com/about">Make in India programme</a>. Here, as in the case of agriculture, the roots of India’s manufacturing malaise run deep. They can be linked to India’s inability to foster the kind of labour-intensive industrialisation <a href="https://indiaincgroup.com/indias-inclusivity-challenge-is-to-provide-productive-jobs-india-global-business/https:/indiaincgroup.com/indias-incluhttps:/indiaincgroup.com/indias-inclusivity-challenge-is-to-provide-productive-jobs-india-global-business/https:/indiaincgroup.com/indias-inclusivity-challenge-is-to-provide-productive-jobs-india-global-business/sivity-challenge-is-to-provide-productive-jobs-india-global-business/">that has taken place in China and other East Asian countries</a>. </p>
<p>The reasons for why this has been the case is complex, and can be linked to the low levels of skills among India’s workers, poor infrastructure and India’s antiquated labour laws. But, for all its reformist credentials, the Modi government made little headway in providing the jobs that India’s aspirational youth so desperately seek. This could prove crucial in the country’s 2019 national elections.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kunal Sen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Modi has had mixed successes in delivering on big promises to transform India’s economy.Kunal Sen, Professor and Director, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), United Nations UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1166882019-05-07T12:44:36Z2019-05-07T12:44:36ZEconomic growth, inequality and jobs: India Tomorrow part 5 podcast transcript<p>This is a transcript of part five of The Anthill’s podcast series, India Tomorrow. <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-5-economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-116678">Listen to the full episode here</a> and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">our series episode guide</a>.</p>
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<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Hello and welcome to India Tomorrow, a series brought to you by The Conversation’s Anthill podcast. I’m Annabel Bligh from The Conversation.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> And I’m Indrajit Roy, lecturer in politics at the University of York. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> In this episode of India Tomorrow, we’re going to be taking a look at India’s economy.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 promising economic changes. It was a key plank of his election campaign. We’re going to explore how he has succeeded – and failed – to transform the Indian economy. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> We’ll also hear how some constituents feel let down by Modi’s failure to deliver on some of the major reforms that were promised. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kunal-sen-95492">Kunal Sen:</a></strong> So Narendra Modi promised quite a few things when he won the elections in 2014.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> That’s Kunal Sen, director of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research and professor of development economics at the University of Manchester. </p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> The first thing he promised was to create jobs, especially because of the sense there was a bit of a problem with jobs being created in the previous years.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> We’ll examine India’s jobs situation a bit later. It’s safe to say at the moment, though, that this is a very hot topic when it comes to India’s economy.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> But first, it’s worth noting that India’s economic growth on the whole is very impressive. According to the IMF, India is the world’s fastest growing major economy. Its growth even outpaced China’s in 2018. </p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> Growth has recovered perhaps not back to the levels that India saw in around the first decade of the 2000s. Around the first decade of the 2000s economic economic growth rate in India was around 9% per annum which was very high, the highest ever India had actually seen in terms economic growth.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> But the economy has grown a lot more under Modi than before he came to power in 2014.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> So there’s been some recovery and that is certainly something that has happened in the last few years, since Modi came to power.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Kunal says that another big promise of Modi’s was around reforming the Indian state and its ability to deliver public goods like infrastructure, health and education.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> On the question of reforming the Indian state, this was a very ambitious promise and some of this has been achieved. For example in electrification, there has been quite a major drive in rural electrification in many villages in India. We have now electricity being provided that wasn’t the case before. They also see significant achievements in sanitation, for example, infrastructure provision, roads and so on, particularly rural roads, which has happened in the last four-five years or so. So on that I would say that we have seen some delivery in terms of public goods. But there have also been big challenges. There have been big challenges around reforming the Indian public sector, which really hasn’t happened. Maybe that was something that was always very difficult to do.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So that’s a kind of overview of how Modi has performed. One of the major policies that he implemented and that has dominated discussion of his time in office was demonetisation. Here’s Kunal again:</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> What he did was quite dramatic and perhaps not something that people expected, which was that on 8th November 2016 the government decided to essentially withdraw 500 rupee note and 1,000 rupee notes, the two major currency denominations, from the money supply and introduce a new 500 rupee note, along with a new 2,000 rupee note – we didn’t have 2,000 rupee notes denomination prior to this policy initiative. And that was done at a stroke of a pen.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Overnight, this demonetisation policy made 86% of the country’s cash worthless. Everyone in India was given 50 days to exchange their old bank notes for the new ones.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Indrajit, can you give those listening outside of India an idea of how much 500 rupees is worth?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> So, 500 Rupees could get you two decent meals in a place like Delhi. It’s slightly more than what a reasonably paid construction worker would be paid per day. So, wage rates in the sector are fixed at about Rs 350 per day, and 500 rupees is slightly more. So, construction workers would probably be paid a week’s wages in a bunch of 500 rupee notes. So these are bank notes are commonly used by people everyday and demonetisation therefore really was a dramatic move. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So, yeah, demonetisation was geared toward delivering Modi’s campaign promise to stamp out corruption and, in particular, to remove black money and counterfeit notes from the Indian economy. Kunal says, however, that this isn’t exactly what transpired.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> Now what actually was surprising was, now we have the estimates from the Indian central bank, is 99% of those notes have been returned to the banking system, which meant actually there were very few counterfeit notes. So therefore the rationale that the government had, that this was a way to get rid of counterfeit notes, didn’t seem to really work in practice.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Not only did demonetisation not achieve its intended outcome, it gave the Indian economy quite a big shock.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> When you withdraw money like that, in an economy which is quite reliant on cash, it can be a huge negative shock to the economy. And particularly in the sectors which are cash intensive, which is obviously the agricultural sector and the informal sector, for those sectors they face the brunt of this particular policy initiative because suddenly you’re in a situation when essential day-to-day activities need money, need cash, there wasn’t any cash. And that cash came back to the system quite late. It took a long time for the government and central banks, banking system to supply the new notes that were in, came into circulation after November 8.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Kunal says that it’s hard to say exactly how much of a shock demonetisation had on the economy – largely because economists don’t have accurate data on the informal sector in India, which is a sector that includes the numerous micro and small-medium enterprises, and roughly comprises at least 80% of India’s workforce.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> The estimates on the loss in GDP is around 1.5% of GDP, which is quite a bit. And given that that loss seems to have been concentrated in the informal sector, the agricultural sector, which is where most of the poor are, that would mean that not only did we see a big loss in GDP but we particularly saw a big loss in incomes of the working poor. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> But, Kunal told us, despite hurting the economy, demonetisation was not altogether unpopular with people he spoke to as part of his fieldwork.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> Many people felt that Modi did a very brave thing, a very bold thing and many people felt that, “OK, we suffered” – and this is my own interviews with lots of poor villagers in different parts of eastern India. When I was talking to them, a couple of months after this particular demonetisation happened, their argument to me was, “Well, OK, you know we’ve lost some income, some ways to ways to maintain our livelihoods. But we think that the rich person in our village suffered more. And we feel that’s actually good that that person suffered more than I did and therefore I feel that this policy, as much as I think I got hurt from this particular policy, I think I support it.” </p>
<p>The perception that was there was that, “yes, we suffered”. But perhaps this particular policy was needed for the national interest and for that very important objective of trying to curb black money and to control corruption. And because we think that this particular policy is going to particularly affect those who are corrupt and those who have lots of money that they gain from illicit means, we actually think the policy is a good thing.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Kunal was also quick to point out, however, that this is what people were saying in the immediate aftermath of the demonetisation policy and once the longer term effect of it began to kick in, people may have gone on to change their minds.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> So for example there was elections in Uttar Pradesh not not very long after the demonetisation policy initiative that, where the BJP government did pretty well. But in the subsequent by-elections that we saw in Uttar Pradesh and other parts in India, the BJP government didn’t do so well. So it could well be that the initial perception was fairly positive. But as things turned out for those who are affected by this policy in a negative way their views might have changed over the over over the course of a year or so.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The reason demonetisation caused an economic slowdown is because India is a cash intensive economy. Lots of people don’t have bank accounts and lots of workers will get paid in cash. Jens Lerche, reader in development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, explains how demonetisation affected all these people.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jens-lerche-733564">Jens Lerche</a>:</strong> It meant a huge cash crunch because, of course, there weren’t enough new currency to go around. So, any sector or any people relying on cash had a problem. That meant small businesses, any cash-in-hand jobs. So construction, street vendors, people working in brick kilns, and so on, couldn’t get paid. So small businesses suffered and so did people in low-end jobs.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Jens was also in India doing field work in villages just after the demonetisation policy was introduced and then again 18 months later. </p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> I work mainly in villages. What I saw there was that many of the low caste, Dalit construction workers, that normally would be working in Delhi, Mumbai, the big cities, were back home because there was simply no work for them in the towns any longer.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Jens also points to the lack of accurate data but says it’s clear that demonetisation, along with another Modi policy, the goods and services tax that was introduced in July 2017, had negative effects on a number of businesses.</p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> But we know that this, together with what came the year after, namely the Goods and Services Tax, which is VAT, that was introduced. Which means that you pay the VAT as a small business but then you get it refunded afterwards, led to even more of an economic crunch on small businesses. Altogether, those two initiatives are estimated to have cost three to four million jobs. Some organisations claim that demonetisation led to a continued loss of jobs of around 1.5m. But these are tricky figures. Together there’s no doubt that both of them led to significant job loss.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Jobs – the lack of them – has been one of the major disappointments of the Modi government. One of his key promises in 2014 was to create millions of jobs for young people and reverse what he called decades of “jobless growth”. Here’s economist Kunal Sen again:</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> In fact, if anything, it seems that Indian unemployment rates in India have increased in the last few years. The most recent estimate we have which has been leaked from the National Statistical survey organisation is that India has the highest unemployment rate ever in its history since independence. Obviously since we do not have access to the actual report, we can’t be sure about this information. But the general sense is that we haven’t seen the kind of jobs growth that was promised by Modi when he came to power in 2014.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> The Modi government has been accused of withholding jobs data in the run up to the election because of how bad the official figures are. But the latest employment survey, which was approved by India’s national statistics commission, was leaked to the Indian newspaper the Business Standard in late January and showed unemployment was at a record high of 6.1%. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> By a lot of standards 6.1% is not a bad unemployment rate. But for India it’s very significant, according to Jens Lerche, because there isn’t strong welfare provision in the country. And the unemployment rate was just 2.2% in the 2011-2012 financial year. </p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> Now unemployment is uncommon in a country such as India because poor people have to work. So, people being without jobs to some extent is people that can afford not to work – educated people that have a family background that they can live off for a while. But, what we have seen here is jobs that have disappeared also within the agricultural sector and low end of manufacturing sector. So it does appear as if poor people are also losing their jobs here. </p>
<p>In fact for the first time ever we are seeing a fall in employment over a year in the Indian economy. I mean, there’s a huge population growth and the issue is normally whether job growth can keep up with the population growth. But, India has, in the words of Manmohan Singh, the ex-prime minister, gone from “jobless growth to job loss growth”. That is a problem. We haven’t got official data but data compiled by a reputable non-governmental research institute argues that employment has fallen 11m jobs in the last year.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The leaked jobs data shows that the unemployment rate is much higher for people under 30 – something we’re going to hear more about in our next episode which is focused on India’s huge population of young people. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> It goes to show how India’s economic growth is not benefiting everyone. Now, all the blame for this cannot be laid at Modi’s feet. There are deep-rooted issues with the Indian economy which predate his tenure. But, Jens says, that demonetisation and the Goods and Services tax have not helped because they hurt so many businesses.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> More generally speaking, inequality is a big issue. Jens points to research which shows how India’s impressive economic growth has not benefited everyone.</p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> Oxfam produces wonderful Oxfam inequality reports every year. Their view is that it’s only the top 10% of the population that really has benefited from that growth. Poverty has decreased in India. But proportionately it is the top part of society that benefits from this.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> And things are getting worse.</p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> And so so the situation today is that if you take the top 1% of the population, they own more than half of all the wealth. And if you take the top nine billionaires, their wealth is equivalent to that of the bottom 50% of the population. So a very very tiny elite that owns the bulk of the wealth.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> A lot of this inequality falls along caste and regional lines, with poverty rates much higher among so-called lower castes, the ex-untouchables or Dalits and the scheduled tribes, who are also referred to as Adivasis.</p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> There are certain sectors where the lowest, where the groups that are discriminated against, the Dalits and the Adivasis, will work. And that is in brick kilns, where you have appalling conditions; it is construction where you work very long hours and it’s very hard work; it is sanitation work, anything to do with human waste; and, it is also low-end factory jobs. If you are from a slightly better background, you are more likely to also have better education and you are more likely to have certificates that will mean you can gain access to proper industrial work. And if you are from higher caste, you may may end up in better jobs. So, there’s a clear hierarchy in the kind of jobs you get.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Jens says the relationship between caste and inequality is incredibly stark.</p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> Low-caste people earn just only a tiny bit more than half of what high-caste people do. They earn 56% of what high caste people do. That means that the caste-based earnings gap is actually worse than the gender-based earnings gap. Women earn less than men but low-caste people earn even less.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The scheduled tribes, or Adivasis, make up a large pool of India’s migrant workforce who move to wherever there are work opportunities.</p>
<p><strong>Jens Lerche:</strong> They end up in the worst jobs across sectors. We’ve seen that, we have, together with my colleague, Alpa Shah, we have done a major study of work at the bottom of the hierarchy in the modern sector. And it’s clear that wherever you go in India you will find Adivasis right at the bottom as migrant labourers. They will not speak the local language, they will not have access to the local social services, such as subsidised food. They will not have any political say because local politicians do not care about the migrant labourers. So, they can be treated much more harshly than the local can be.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Actually a lot of migrant workers may not be able to vote in the upcoming elections because you can only vote where you are registered. And many will be registered in their home towns or villages – and it’s too far and too expensive for them to travel back to vote.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So I know you’ve been working on a research project about India’s migrant workers, Indrajit. What have you found? How have they fared in recent years?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> So we’ve spoken to lots of people from Bihar state in India’s east who move to other parts of the country looking for better opportunities and what they would consider dignified work – you know, what they call <em>ijjat ka kaam</em>. A lot of what they find is precarious work and many people end up moving back to their villages where much of the work is in agriculture. But here too there are problems.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Farmers make up a significant proportion of India’s population.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nitya-rao-733568">Nitya Rao:</a></strong> So when India got freedom 70 years ago it was almost 50-60% of the gross domestic product, was the contribution of agriculture.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Nitya Rao is professor of gender and development at the University of East Anglia and she is an expert in India’s agricultural sector.</p>
<p><strong>Nitya Rao:</strong> Now it’s about 15% or 10-15%. So it has come down, so there is a transition there with development. However, 50-60% of the population of India is still rural and still partly dependent on agriculture.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> So a lot of people are partly dependent because family members are leaving farming to try and find other jobs. Some in cities as we heard before, others in what is becoming a very diverse rural economy.</p>
<p><strong>Nitya Rao:</strong> So that means they would still have some kind of backup within farming, at least 50 to 60% of the population, even though some member of the household may be diversifying into other occupations.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> In the last couple of years there have been a number of protests involving tens of thousands of farmers marching on the capital and other major cities.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> India’s agricultural crisis predates Modi. But, Nitya says, that farmers have been especially frustrated because in 2014 Modi promised to implement a number of reforms that had been recommended by the National Farmers Commission, a group that was set up in 2004 to identify the reforms necessary to alleviate the suffering of farmers.</p>
<p><strong>Nitya Rao:</strong> So over the last decade or so, actually, the agrarian crisis has been building up because of both these factors – climate variability, which is of course beyond the control of the government. But also, of the lack of certainty about prices.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Nitya points out that farmers’ fortunes are dependent on both the climate and the market. While they might not be able to control the climate, the government can help farmers when it comes to the market. They can do a lot to alleviate the suffering of farmers such as guaranteeing certain prices for crops or compensating farmers when harvests are bad and waiving the big loans that they have to pay for seeds and fertiliser.</p>
<p><strong>Nitya Rao:</strong> The protests started escalating in 2017, about one and a half years or two years ago, over the summer, when, in the north Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, they had a very good harvest of pulses, which is a high value crop. And it was not procured by the government at minimum prices. So farmers, which required a lot of investment for growing pulses, they had to literally leave a lot of the pulses on their fields because it was a loss even to spend extra money for transportation, to take it to the markets, since they were getting a lower price, a price below their cost of input.</p>
<p>And thereafter, there was a series of such, crops specific in different parts of India. So there was tomato harvest in Uttar Pradesh State. And last year in Maharashtra, in November, there was a very big protest of about 10,000 farmers who came to the city of Mumbai, from all parts of the state, protesting for three things really. One is a minimum support price; second thing was drought compensation, because it had been a drought so they wanted compensation payments for drought; and the third thing was that they had all taken loans for inputs and they wanted a waiver of these loans.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> These protests have attracted a lot of attention – not least because of the visceral imagery that farmers have used to reflect the struggles they face.</p>
<p><strong>Nitya Rao:</strong> I’ve seen also some protesters, farmers, actually from where I am, from the state of Tamil Nadu, when they went to Delhi, they were I think bearing skulls and so on, to symbolise that, you know, a lot of people were dying and they were almost like dead to people. So I think there was a lot of symbolism around death.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So there is definitely anger toward the Modi government for failing to deliver on the reforms that were promised. But we’ll have to see how this anger from farmers plays out in the 2019 national elections. As with other sections of Indian society that we’ve heard about in this series so far, farmers are a diverse group. Religion, caste, class, and gender will all influence how farmers feel about the incumbent government and what kind of future they want. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Before voting began in April, many thought that the issue of Kashmir, and the recent flare up of tensions with Pakistan, <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-3-kashmir-115733">about which we heard in episode 3</a>, might dominate the political debate. But actually, attentions are turning back to the economy, how it’s performed and what it’s done for different groups such as the farmers and young people.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Yes, there are a whopping 84m first time voters in this election and these young people are the focus of our next episode:</p>
<p><strong>Craig Jeffrey:</strong> Now unlike the same generation 25 years ago, that set of young people are very well aware of events in other parts of the world, which are streamed to them via their mobile phones, on the internet. They are increasingly in secondary school, including young women. And in school they’re learning to obviously dream big.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Do subscribe to The Anthill podcast, if you haven’t already, so you don’t miss out on that. That’s in part 6 of India Tomorrow. You can read more of The Conversation’s coverage of India by academics <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/indian-elections-2019-68064">from around the world on theconversation.com</a> or follow us on social media. If you’ve got any questions relating to what we’ve been discussing in this series, please do get in touch via email on podcast@theconversation.com or on twitter @anthillpod. We’ll put these to a panel of academics we’ve got lined up to discuss the election results at the end of May. And if you’re looking for a transcript of this episode, and other episodes in this series, it will also be available soon on theconversation.com. </p>
<p>Thank you to all the academics who spoke to us for this episode and to the journalism department at City University for letting us use their studios. The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and me, Annabel Bligh. Sound by Alex Portfelix. And an extra big thanks to my co-host Indrajit Roy. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Thanks Annabel. See you next week. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Thank you for listening. Goodbye!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, rode to power in 2014 promising economic transformation.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1166782019-05-07T12:42:02Z2019-05-07T12:42:02ZIndia Tomorrow part 5: economic growth, inequality and jobs<p>Part five of India Tomorrow takes a look at India’s economy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 promising economic transformation. It was a key plank of his election campaign and this episode explores how he succeeded – and failed – to deliver on this front. </p>
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<p>We hear how India’s economy grew during Modi’s time in office. Kunal Sen, professor of development economics at the University of Manchester, tells us how Modi succeeded in reforming the Indian state and its ability to deliver public goods like sanitation, electricity and other important infrastructure.</p>
<p>Despite these successes, however, inequality is on the rise. Jens Lerche, reader in labour and agrarian studies at SOAS, says “if you take the top 1% of India’s population, they own more than half of all the wealth”. We discover which sections of society are not benefiting from India’s impressive growth figures.</p>
<p>We also find out how two major new policies – demonetisation and the goods and services tax – hurt a number of businesses. The withdrawal of all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation (demonetisation) and the bureaucracy that came with the new tax, led to some serious cash flow problems, with lots of people losing their jobs as a result. And when it comes to jobs, controversy over the country’s employment figures (the official data has been withheld) is a really hot topic in the national elections.</p>
<p>Last, we find out why tens of thousands of India’s farmers have been protesting. Nitya Rao, professor of gender and development at UEA, explains the background to India’s agrarian crisis. It long predates Modi’s tenure, but many farmers are angry at the current government for not delivering on reforms promised in the 2014 election campaign.</p>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-economy-india-tomorrow-part-5-podcast-transcript-116688">transcript of this episode here</a>, and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</p>
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<p><strong>Credits</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: EPA-EFE/Divyakant Solanki</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_05_Intervention">Intervention by Lee Rosevere</a>, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, and <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Super_1222/07_Endeavour">Endeavour by Jahzzar</a> all via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>In Depth - Demonetisation, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDaHumiaoNE">Rajya Sabha TV
news clip</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Long Queues Continue In Banks & ATMs After One Month Of Demonetization, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLe4rK5Y8JI">India Today news clip</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Protesting India farmers: ‘We want what we were promised’, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ1Z2_gHVTQ">BBC News clip</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>What’s Ailing Rural India: Farmers Hold Mega March In Delhi, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGKcn2oQXk">CNBC-TV18 clip</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Farmers Go On 10-Day Protest, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDxDF2Jizk0&feature=youtu.be&t=27">ET Now clip</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Thousands Of Farmers Walk To Delhi, Mission Parliament Today <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q18w426Xssg&t=25s">NDTV clip</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p>Part five of India Tomorrow takes a look at India’s economy.Annabel Bligh, Host of The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationIndrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1161972019-04-30T11:25:55Z2019-04-30T11:25:55ZWomen, gender and love: India Tomorrow part 4 podcast transcript<p>This is a transcript of part four of The Anthill’s podcast series, India Tomorrow. <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-4-women-and-the-love-jihad-116115">Listen to the full episode here</a> and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">our series episode guide</a>.</p>
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<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/charu-gupta-725231">Charu Gupta</a></strong>: What lots of us scholars and feminists argued that actually “love jihad” was actually a jihad against love. It was a war against love. You know it was this kind of a mythical and violent campaign. It was emotive. It was a political fantasy, you know, it was a mobilisation strategy. It was a crusade for political mobilisation in the name of women. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Charu Gupta is a historian at Delhi University. She told us how this phenomenon known as “love jihad” or “Romeo jihad” has gained traction in India.</p>
<p><strong>Charu Gupta</strong>: Some examples were quoted of Hindu women actually eloping or running away with Muslim men and then converting. And it was said that this was forceful, that these were actually not elopements, they were like almost like abductions. They were like kidnappings. These young girls were brainwashed, you know, and they were converted to Islam and this was a conspiracy to increase Muslim numbers. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: But this was not necessarily the case at all. Take the example of Hadiya Jahan who is in her 20s. Hadiya and her husband Shafin are a young Indian couple whose marriage was annulled after Hadiya’s Hindu family alleged that she was brainwashed into the relationship and into converting to Islam. Following a legal battle, the marriage was restored by India’s Supreme Court last year. </p>
<p>It’s just one story that exemplifies the conservative backlash that is playing out in India, as women increasingly assert their freedom to marry who they want.</p>
<p><strong>Charu Gupta</strong>: I’m saying it a bit broadly, but women in India have been asserting themselves. They have been going out in public spaces, expressing their desires, expressing their love. They’re crossing religious and caste boundaries – and this is causing a certain degree of anxiety in the conservative forces.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Charu says the “love jihad” idea is not just targeting women’s freedom. It is also linked to Hindu nationalism ideas, which promote the idea of India as a Hindu nation.</p>
<p><strong>Charu Gupta</strong>: On the other hand you can also use it to demonise certain kinds of men, to demonise certain kind of … you know, particularly Muslim men – or to demonise a certain class of people. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And, of course, women in India are not just asserting their freedom to love who they want. In many areas of life, they are asserting their rights as citizens.</p>
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<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: You’re listening to part four of India Tomorrow, a series from The Anthill podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. I’m Annabel Bligh from The Conversation.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/indrajit-roy-312163">Indrajit Roy</a></strong>: And I’m Indrajit Roy, a lecturer in politics from the University of York.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: In this episode we are digging into what life is like for women in India, the extent that they make up an electoral group in Indian politics, and how they are represented among the country’s lawmakers.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Like lots of countries across the world, India suffers from gender inequality. But in terms of global rankings, it scores pretty low – India comes in at number 130 out of 188 countries on the <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data">UN Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: India is also pretty low down when it come to global rankings of violence against women. The gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in 2012 sparked international outrage and led to huge campaigns in India to deal with its rape culture. Nonetheless, you’ll regularly see cases of rape and sexual violence against women of all ages in the local news. India’s National Crime Records Bureau reported more than <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-has-a-sexual-assault-problem-that-only-women-can-fix-101366">300,000 crimes against women</a> – including nearly 40,000 rapes – in 2016, the most recent government data available.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: To find out a bit more about how this affects the day to day lives of young women, we spoke to Sneha Krishnan at the University of Oxford. Sneha studies gender and youth in India and spent a year talking to dozens of young women in the city of Chennai, which is the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sneha-krishnan-431019">Sneha Krishnan</a></strong>: So sexual harassment, as in most other contexts, is a major problem in Indian cities. So the young women I met had interesting ways of dealing with it. So carrying an umbrella with a sharp tip was a common one on the bus. So there was a man behind you who is harassing you, you could push your umbrella into him, right. And they had other ways. They travelled in groups. They texted each other about their experiences. They had ways of coping with the perpetual occurrence of “Eve teasing” or street sexual harassment in their lives.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: “Eve teasing” is how a lot of Indians colloquially refer to street sexual harassment. But a lot of feminists argue this phrase is unhelpful</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: Because they argue that the phrase “Eve teasing” kind of minimises the problem and makes it seem as if, I mean, the women are, frail little creatures to be teased, whereas it’s not really teasing that’s happening.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Sneha pointed out the fact that there sometimes is a blurry line between harassment and flirting. And a lot of that is to do with cultural expectations of how men and women in India should behave.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: As scholars like Caroline Osella at SOAS have written, this harassment can often pale into flirting as well. And the reason for that is that, while it’s very, very, very important, yes, normatively to emphasise that “no” means “no” and “yes” means “yes”; for a good respectable girl to say “yes” immediately is deeply unrespectable. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Sneha gave us an example of one of the young women she knew in Chennai:</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: She played sports for the state of Tamil Nadu, which meant that she met other people from other colleges, including young men who also played the same sport, quite often. And she had met this male athlete whom she kind of had a crush on and she’d seen him staring at her across the field a few times and everything. She told me about how for six months every day he approached her and asked her out and she said no. Six months. She was testing him, right? </p>
<p>So she said that if he’d taken no for an answer and gone away she would have thought that he only wanted something casual with her. But because he persisted for six months she was sure of his love, right. They eventually broke up and that’s why I heard this story. But that said, I think it was really important to this young woman to ensure that the man she was with cared about her enough to persist for six months. However, if she hadn’t wanted him to persist, the same thing could have been sexual harassment, right? And thanks to that I think the line is quite blurry. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So this issue of respectability that Sneha was talking about – how women need to be seen as respectable – is something that extends to other areas of women’s lives. For women at college, this means having their clothing choices scrutinised and how they spend their time controlled in a way that men do not.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> It also has implications for young women, living in student accommodation known as hostels.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: Hostels are sort of fairly restrictive institutions and in my experience have gotten more so in the last ten or 15 years, with the anxiety about young women and sexual violence in Indian cities. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Sneha told us about the strict curfew policies that these hostels have. The curfews range from as early as 4pm in the afternoon to maybe 7pm – if you’re lucky. Sneha actually lived in an off-campus hostel in Chennai for a year, as part of her research, to learn what life was like there.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> In the past, it would have been more possible to sort of evade curfew by having a friend sign for you and so on, but increasingly there’s also cameras everywhere watching them. I counted a hundred-odd cameras in this one college – and the joke is literally the bathroom is the only place where there’s no camera. So the girls are constantly being watched and it’s something that they feel quite keenly. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So young women are kind of kept under lock and key for their own safety. Was it like this when you were at university, Indrajit?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: To be honest, you know, I wouldn’t know because of the male privilege at work here. As boys, we never had any such restrictions, which we know some of our female friends did. But there is a growing movement in India called “<em>pinjra tod</em>” which literally means break the cage in Hindi. It’s all about making hostels less restrictive and reclaiming the public space to make it safer for women.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Young women also find ways of resisting or working around the restrictions that are put on them. Sneha told us about the phenomenon of daytime clubbing that she found going on.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> So there are these clubs, both official clubs – so commercial establishments – as well as unofficial clubs which are, you know, dance parties that happen in people’s houses, or in places that young people stake out for themselves, which only happen in the afternoon. This is because classes typically end around one or two in the afternoon and then people have a period somewhere between you know two and four hours after that, depending on the particular curfews of their hostels, during which they would otherwise go to cafes or, you know, to the – or something of the sort and wander about. Nobody by the way gets back to a hostel before curfew. That is just not done. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So it’s like bang</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: Yeah, bang on. Everybody gets there at exactly that time. So these afternoon clubs were an interesting find because what they do is create the atmosphere of nightlife during the day. So they are really dark inside, right, you can smell the weed, you can smell the alcohol, right? And they feel just as seedy as Oxford’s clubs at two in the morning and people act just as insane inside. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: I’m kind of, like, after everything else you’ve been telling me about, I’m kind of shocked that they exist. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> Why?</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Because why does it matter if people are in a club at 11pm drinking and partying versus 3pm?</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: Oh, because you can get home respectably.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So it comes back to this thing of respectability?</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: Yeah and it’s about visibility – you have to show yourself to be a respectable girl. Right? So, a lot of these women will wear you know nice conservative clothes to college, with say a spaghetti strap-top inside, or will have, you know, clothes that are more revealing that they can change into. And then they’ll change into them in the bathroom of this place and then dance around for a while, have some fun, take a few selfies. And once that’s over change back, right? And go back to the hostel in an auto rickshaw, just hold all of their feelings and their sense of drunkenness in until they sign the hostel’s register, right? And then collapse in bed afterwards. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: I asked Sneha what would happen if someone broke curfew and she told us another great story to illustrate.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: So there was one girl who got an internship at a newspaper whose office was on the outskirts of the city. And she was very keen to succeed, she really wanted to be a journalist. Being a journalist for young women is now an increasingly sort of mainstream aspiration. There are a lot of female journalists in the public eye. And she was very excited about having been given a big story and knew that she might be risking, you know, breaking curfew by actually covering it. And when she was done with her story she realised she had about an hour to travel back into the city, which if anyone has seen the traffic in Indian cities these days is very little time. So she got a ride from a male co-worker – to start with really dangerous, right? Because if the warden of the hostel had seen her on the back of a male co-worker’s motorbike she’d have gotten into a lot of trouble. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So not dangerous because he might do something, but dangerous because of how it would look? </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> Absolutely. So it got worse because they crashed against something on the motorbike and she fell down and she had this massive gash on her knee. And then she finally got an auto-rickshaw and came to the hostel. She was half an hour late for curfew. She should have really been sent to the hospital because she had an enormous gash and clearly needed stitches. The warden left her sort of bleeding on the veranda of the hostel while she went in to call the girl’s parents and kept her bleeding there for the next few hours until they got there.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So her parents were called to the hostel as punishment? </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> As punishment. Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> And what would her parents have done when they arrived? </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishan:</strong> So (her) parents were really upset. I don’t think they knew about the internship. They were concerned that the internship was really dangerous because she’d been on the outskirts of the city, she’d been risking breaking curfew. They were also really upset that she’d taken this ride from a male co-worker. And all of this is, you know – I want to emphasise – it’s all with the best of intentions, right? Quite often. Because horrible things do happen to young women – all over the world – but they do … they do happen. </p>
<p>Eventually, her parents took her home for a few days and then she came back to the hostel. So that story didn’t end particularly badly in the end, but it was a dramatic moment and all she was was half an hour late.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> The more serious side of this can be seen in trying to “protect” women from who they fall in love with.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: As we heard from Charu Gupta earlier, there is an idea that permeates certain sections of Indian society – the idea of “love jihad” – a fear that some Hindu communities have of Muslim men trying to trick Hindu women into converting to Islam by making them fall in love with them.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Similarly, fears over the safety and chastity of women have led to the rise of what are called “anti-Romeo squads”. These squads were established in the wake of the high-profile Delhi rape case, under the aegis of protecting women from sexual harassment.</p>
<p><strong>Charu Gupta:</strong> So anti-Romeo squads were established by one of the state governments in north India, in Uttar Pradesh, to say that plain clothes policemen you know will be now keeping a watch on cases of “Eve teasing”.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: So you had squads of plain clothes policeman who were trained to look out for, and stop, sexual harassment.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: But, Charu says, these anti-Romeo squads turned out to be quite controversial</p>
<p><strong>Charu Gupta</strong>: Love itself is seen as something which is a way by which women are expressing themselves. And it was a way actually to control women, that was the logic behind it. But it had to be couched in this language of trying to protect women, which itself is a problematic word. I mean women have not asked for this kind of a protection. But actually they landed up harassing women, and men, much more, because these policemen or the government itself was unable to differentiate between consensual and forceful expressions of love. So couples holding hands on Valentine’s Day, giving roses to each other, were harassed, you know – or anybody who was seen as just walking together. It was basically a way to morally police public spaces. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: And, it’s not just Hindus and Muslims whose love gets policed – though these cross-religious relationships are the focus of “love jihad” rumours – it’s also an issue for people of different castes.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Yep, so Sneha Krishnan at Oxford told us two contrasting stories that reflect how caste, privilege and concerns of what it means to be respectable affected different people’s approaches to relationships.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> There was an upper-middle class young woman who did not live in a hostel, because her family had a home in the city, so she came from an upper caste Malayali family. She had met a Muslim boy who also lived in the same neighbourhood as her, so quite an elite Muslim, right? They had fallen in love in her final year of school and were still dating when I knew them, and she fully had plans to marry him in the end and so on, and so forth. </p>
<p>And in her case she knew that the fact that he was Muslim would be kind of a problem for her extended family. Right. And she worried also that his family might ask her to convert to Islam. But it wasn’t something that kept her up at night worrying, because by and large they came from the same kind of social milieu.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So for this couple, the fact that they were from different religions wasn’t such a big deal. But then Sneha told us about another couple she knew, who were from less wealthy, less “respectable” families. </p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan</strong>: There was another young woman that I met who had fallen in love with someone that she didn’t realise was Dalit until after they talked about it. And once she knew he was Dalit, she was completely apprehensive about continuing the affair, mainly because she knew that this would be a serious problem for her family, who were themselves members of a large bracket that’s called the other backward classes. </p>
<p>And she knew that her family would see this as a major step down for her. And she worried about, you know, her father acting violently and so on, and so forth. And additionally she really didn’t want to sort of marry down. Plain and simple, right? Because there was a lot of anxiety that she would simply lose social status and – as she explained to me – for families like hers, social status doesn’t come easily. So she actually eventually broke it off, explicitly for reasons of this sort. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: When it comes to the world of politics, the way that caste intersects with gender also has big implications for women politicians.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Yes, we can see this in someone like Mayawati, who is the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, or BSP.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/carole-spary-119511">Carole Spary</a>:</strong> Mayawati’s very significant in different ways. She’s significant symbolically as a representative of the Dalit community. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s Carole Spary, an assistant professor at Nottingham University who’s just co-authored a book with Shirin Rai, a professor at the University of Warwick, called <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/performing-representation-9780199489053?cc=gb&lang=en&">Performing Representation: Women members in the Indian Parliament</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> As Carole says, Mayawati is significant as a Dalit leader. Remember, Dalits are a group that have historically been oppressed as untouchables. From her very humble beginnings, Mayawati became chief minister of India’s biggest state, Uttar Pradesh, four times over the last 20 years. Her party, the BSP, is significant because it explicitly fights for Dalit rights and low-caste emancipation. The BSP has worked hard to ensure that Dalits, and members of other so-called low castes were not merely foot-soldiers of the Congress or the BJP, but could advance their own political voice.</p>
<p>So, the BSP may not be great at winning elections, especially outside Uttar Pradesh, but they do provide a means for Dalits to assert their public presence.</p>
<p><strong>Carole Spary</strong>: The other thing when we talk about Dalit women and women in general – there’s such a wide variety. Women are … they might be Dalit, but they might be very different, they might have very different experiences. So, for example, when you compare Mayawati to Meira Kumar, for example, who was the first female speaker of the Lok Sabha, we see very different kind of backgrounds, very different careers in politics. So, on the one hand they might be Dalit women, but of course even among Dalit women, Dalit women are diverse as well. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Meira Kumar, who Carole mentioned there, is also Dalit. She’s a Congress party politician. Her father was a former deputy prime minister – so she’s had a very different upbringing and background to perhaps the “average” Dalit woman.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So there are some very high-profile women politicians in India’s parliament, the Lok Sabha. And there are women from a range of castes and parties. Sneha Krishnan explained how there are also lots of women who fit into the BJP’s Hindu nationalist mould.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> And I think it would be a mistake to think of women as a singular category because Hindu nationalism has among its supporters certainly a lot of upper-caste, middle-class, urban women, upper-caste non-middle class, you know, non-urban women and so on.</p>
<p>So on the one hand there’s the sort of <em>sadhvi</em> image, which is the image of the sort of renunciate woman. Right. So women who typically wear saffron robes and aren’t married and, you know, claim to live austere lives, and so on.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: A good example of someone referred to as a sadhvi is, Uma Bharati, the firebrand Hindutva leader, born into a impoverished rural family and from among the so-called “low castes”, who rises up the party ranks in the BJP to become chief minister of Madhya Pradesh State and is today a minister in Modi’s cabinet.</p>
<p><strong>Sneha Krishnan:</strong> There’s also the sort of, you know, good married woman image, you know, Sushma Swaraj, for instance, was a substantially important politician within the BJP who embodied that. And, I mean, there have been female politicians who have sort of capitalised on these, you know, quite right-wing imaginaries of womanhood really to gain power.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So women feature across the political spectrum. But the actual number of women politicians is still very low. Here’s Carole Spary again.</p>
<p><strong>Carole Spary</strong>: The national parliament has never really got above 12% of MPs as women. And state level average is often less than this, about sort of 8%. So while there’s some very senior sort of individual women leaders in Indian politics, such as party leaders, chief ministers of some states, a former prime minister and parliamentary leaders like two female speakers of the lower house of parliament, when you look at the average MP or state level MLA, this is overwhelmingly male. And there’s a fairly depressing statistic that if you take all of the women MPs ever elected to the lower house of parliament, you would not fill a single Lok Sabha, you would not fill a single lower house of parliament, which is usually about 543 elected seats. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> It’s not that women aren’t engaging with politics. Carole says the number of women turning out to vote in elections has grown a significant amount in recent decades.</p>
<p><strong>Carole Spary:</strong> And if you look at the general election by general election, slowly that gap between men and women’s voter turnout has narrowed over time. And my colleague Rajeshwari Deshpande in Pune University suggests that this indicates the arrival of a women’s constituency or a women’s vote. So this kind of essentially encourages politicians to learn and to understand and to appeal to women’s votes more and more because of their increasing turnout.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: In the 2014 national elections, voter turnout for men was 67% and for women it was 66% – so pretty high for both. Now, of course, both men and women politicians must – and do – represent both their male and female constituents. Nonetheless, this gender inequality at the highest level of politics is reflective of the gender inequality that exists in India.</p>
<p><strong>Indraji Roy</strong>: If India wants to see more women represented at the highest level of politics, there needs to be a wider cultural shift. Right now, Carole says there’s a reason politics is a male-dominated space and it ties into the kind of morality policing we were hearing about earlier, as well as the physical violence women face.</p>
<p><strong>Carole Spary</strong>: There is a sense that women are often turned off going into politics because, there is a sense about what, you know, whether they would get aspersions cast on their character. Whether they’re … they call it character assassination – and there are examples, you know, where women candidates and MPs have faced those kinds of those kinds of problems. </p>
<p>So whether it’s character assassination, whether it is actually physical violence as well. I mean the online space as well as … I mean, as you know this is a problem around the world, the online space can also be very violent particularly for women in politics as well. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Unless efforts are made to make politics more inclusive for women, Carole says, India is unlikely to see a big improvement in the number of women politicians working at the national level.</p>
<p><strong>Carole Spary:</strong> At the same time, if that space is intimidating or if it’s violent – or if there are, you know, very real personal as well as professional costs to them in terms of, you know, family, integrity and reputation and all of those things, then actually it shouldn’t necessarily be the burden for women to accept those things in order to be able to participate. It should be the responsibility of those seeking to create a more democratic politics to actually address those kinds of issues, those kinds of problems. So, whether it’s the corruption or violence or the use of money in politics, intimidation, particularly gendered forms of violence, and gendered forms of intimidation, it shouldn’t necessarily be the cost for women to be in politics, it should be about trying to make democratic politics more inclusive for everybody. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s it for this episode. We’ll be exploring the Indian economy in part five of India Tomorrow.</p>
<p><strong>Kunal Sen:</strong> Many people felt that Modi did a very brave thing, a very bold thing. And many people felt that “OK we suffered”, and this is my own interviews with lots of poor villagers in different parts of eastern India. Their argument to me was, “Okay, we lost some income, some ways to ways to maintain our livelihoods, but we think that the rich person in our village suffered more and we feel that’s actually good, that that person suffered more than I did and I therefore I feel that this policy, as much as I think I got hurt from this particular policy, I think I support it.”</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s in part five of our India Tomorrow series. Do subscribe to The Anthill podcast so you don’t miss out. A big thanks to my co-host Indrajit Roy.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Thank you Annabel.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: You can read more of The Conversation’s coverage of India by academics from around the world on theconversation.com or follow us on social media. If you’ve got any questions relating to what we’ve been discussing in this series, please do get in touch via email on <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">podcast@theconversation.com</a>. We’ll put these to a panel of academics we’ve got lined up to discuss the election results at the end of May. And if you’re looking for a transcript of this episode, and other episodes in this series, it will also be available soon on theconversation.com.</p>
<p>A massive thanks to all the academics who spoke to us for this episode and to the journalism department at City University for letting us use their studios. The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and me, Annabel Bligh. Sound by Alex Portfelix. Thanks to you for listening. Goodbye. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Goodbye.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This is transcript of part four of the India Tomorrow series from The Anthill podcast, on women and gender politics in India.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1161152019-04-30T11:25:54Z2019-04-30T11:25:54ZIndia Tomorrow part 4: women, gender and love<p>This episode of India Tomorrow, a series from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill podcast</a>, digs into what life is like for women in India. We look at how much they are represented among the country’s lawmakers and whether they might even be considered an electoral group in Indian politics.</p>
<p>Like lots of countries around the world, India suffers from gender inequality. But in terms of global rankings, it scores pretty low – India comes in at number 130 out of 188 countries on the <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data">UN Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index</a>. </p>
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<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321534/original/file-20200319-22606-q84y3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321535/original/file-20200319-22606-1l4copl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
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<p>India is also pretty low down when it come to global rankings of violence against women. The gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in 2012 <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-revolution-for-indias-urban-women-must-start-at-home-22427">sparked international outrage</a> and led to huge campaigns in India to deal with its rape culture. Nonetheless, you’ll regularly see cases of rape and sexual violence against women of all ages in the local news. India’s National Crime Records Bureau reported <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-has-a-sexual-assault-problem-that-only-women-can-fix-101366">more than 300,000 crimes against women</a> – including nearly 40,000 rapes – in 2016, the most recent government data available.</p>
<p>We find out how women in India deal with the day-to-day threat of sexual violence. Sneha Krishnan from the University of Oxford shares stories from her time spent researching the experiences of young women in the city of Chennai. She tells us how women deal with societal expectations to appear “respectable” and limitations like 4pm curfews that are put in place for their own safety. We hear tales of daytime clubbing and how people’s love lives get policed when they strike up relationships across caste and religious lines.</p>
<p>We learn about the phenomenon of “love jihad” from Delhi University historian Charu Gupta. This is the idea that Muslim men are seducing Hindu women to convert them to Islam. But, as Gupta explains, the idea has been proliferated by Hindu nationalists to politically mobilise people and is part of a conservative backlash against women asserting their freedom to love who they want. </p>
<p>We also find out the extent that gender inequality extends to the political sphere. Carole Spary from the University of Nottingham, who’s <a href="https://india.oup.com/product/performing-representation-9780199489053?searchbox_input=spary">written a book on women in the Indian parliament</a>, tells us how increasing numbers of women are engaging with politics but many are put off from running for office. </p>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-india-tomorrow-part-4-podcast-transcript-116197">transcript of this episode here</a>, and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">Subscribe to our Anthill podcast newsletter to hear about new episodes as soon as they drop.</a></em></p>
<p><strong>Credits</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: Piyal Adhikary/EPA</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_05_Intervention">Intervention by Lee Rosevere</a>, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, and <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Super_1222/07_Endeavour">Endeavour by Jahzzar</a> all via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Kerala Love Jihad Case, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovd0iQhtMHA&feature=youtu.be&t=4">WION news clip</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://pca.st/5Hul"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321533/original/file-20200319-22598-afljnr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Pocket Casts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Anthill-id2625863?country=gb"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321531/original/file-20200319-22632-t8ds9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p>🎧 Part 4 of India Tomorrow digs into what life is like for women in India.Indrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkAnnabel Bligh, Host of The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1157332019-04-23T15:45:55Z2019-04-23T15:45:55ZIndia Tomorrow part 3: Kashmir<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269984/original/file-20190418-28084-nqn8uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>As campaigning was gearing up for the 2019 Indian elections, there was a dangerous escalation in the long-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/indian-security-forces-killed-kashmir-blast-reports-190214110644498.html">An attack</a> on an Indian military convoy in Pulwama in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in February 2019 killed more than 40 security personnel. </p>
<p>After a Pakistani-based militant group <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47249982">claimed responsibility</a>, India responded by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47366718">launching air strikes</a> against suspected militant targets across the border in Pakistan and the world worried about the risk of war between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. The tension eventually diffused, but it was a stark reminder of the ongoing conflict and what it means for India. </p>
<p>In the third episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a>, a series from The Conversation’s podcast The Anthill, we focus on Kashmir: its history, the lives of its people, and the conflict over its future.</p>
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<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321534/original/file-20200319-22606-q84y3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321535/original/file-20200319-22606-1l4copl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
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<p>Kashmir has been the cause of tension between Pakistan and India since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">Partition of India</a> in 1947. Sarah Ansari, a historian at Royal Holloway, University of London, explains what happened during Partition and why Jammu and Kashmir became a source of conflict. We also explore the significance of Article 370, the part of the Indian constitution which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir – and why some Indians <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/lok-sabha-2019/story/bjp-manifesto-2019-no-article-370-article-35a-1496655-2019-04-08">want to scrap it</a>. </p>
<p>Ather Zia, an anthropologist at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, explains what Kashmir means to her, and what life is like for Kashmiris today. “It’s my homeland and it’s also a place which is an open prison currently because of the situation that is prevailing,” she says. “People are living, but it’s under heavy repression.” She explains how her research is showing many Kashmiris have a long-held desire for independence. </p>
<p>We also find out what has happened in Kashmir since 2014 when Narendra Modi became prime minister of India, and his BJP party entered into a ruling coalition in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Sita Bali, a lecturer in international relations at Staffordshire University, says she thinks that the escalation – and subsequent de-escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan – could <a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-india-and-pakistans-escalating-conflict-will-benefit-narendra-modi-ahead-of-elections-112570">benefit Modi</a> in the 2019 elections. And she explains what the nuclear element of the ongoing conflict means for the region: “This Pakistan problem, or the Kashmir problem, whichever way you choose to look at it, has always stood in the way of India’s relations in the whole region.”</p>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-india-tomorrow-part-3-podcast-transcript-115732">transcript of this episode</a> here, and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em><a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">Subscribe to our Anthill podcast newsletter to hear about new episodes as soon as they drop.</a></em></p>
<p><strong>Credits</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-mountain-view-sonamarg-jammu-kashmir-657391570?src=iKqyP7mSQFggecLhR1fF8A-1-0">khlongwangchao via Shutterstock</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_05_Intervention">Intervention by Lee Rosevere</a>, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, and <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Super_1222/07_Endeavour">Endeavour by Jahzzar</a> all via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Archive news clips:</strong></p>
<p><em>Hum kya chahty Azadi (Kahmir), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGcBZVCBSDQ">Mohtsim Billah</a></em></p>
<p><em>Narendra Modi’s first visit to Jammu and Kashmir as PM, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBp9QVBdPFc">Times Now</a></em></p>
<p><em>Kashmir witnesses worst violence in six years, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQXa6VS3Dts">Al Jazeera English</a></em></p>
<p><em>India Cheers Return Of Air Force Pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxnMK3Xb73U">NDTV</a></em> </p>
<p><a href="https://pca.st/5Hul"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321533/original/file-20200319-22598-afljnr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Pocket Casts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Anthill-id2625863?country=gb"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321531/original/file-20200319-22632-t8ds9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p>We focus on Kashmir in the third part of our India Tomorrow podcast series: its history, the lives of its people, and the conflict over its future.Indrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkAnnabel Bligh, Host of The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1157322019-04-23T15:45:51Z2019-04-23T15:45:51ZKashmir: India Tomorrow part 3 podcast transcript<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270434/original/file-20190423-175524-3k25ny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-mountain-view-sonamarg-jammu-kashmir-657391570?src=iKqyP7mSQFggecLhR1fF8A-1-0">khlongwangchao via Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is a transcript of part three of The Anthill’s podcast series, India Tomorrow. <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-3-kashmir-115733">Listen to the full episode here </a> and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321534/original/file-20200319-22606-q84y3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321535/original/file-20200319-22606-1l4copl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
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<p><strong>Gemma Ware</strong>: So what is Kashmir, what’s it like and what does it mean to you?</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ather-zia-725152">Ather Zia</a></strong>: Kashmir to me means home, which is where I was brought up. It’s my homeland. And it’s also a place which is an open prison currently because of the situation that is prevailing. And the situation is that of an occupation that Indian military has imposed on the region since 1947. And since 1989 what’s happened is that there is direct military violence that is exacerbated each year. People are living, but it’s under heavy repression.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: This is Ather Zia, an assistant professor of anthropology and gender studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. She spoke to our producer Gemma Ware.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong> When you walk the expanse of Kashmir, there is no road, there is no alley, there is no street where you cannot be stopped.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Since 1990, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which Ather calls Indian-administered Kashmir, has been under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. This is a law which was introduced after an insurgency began in 1989. Ather says the act gives the Indian military sweeping powers over property and life. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: So anyone is a suspect at any point in time and can be killed, can be disappeared, can be arrested, can be tortured without any accountability and that is what has been happening.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Ather is a founding member of a group of scholars called the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, which looks at Kashmir from the viewpoint of Kashmiris themselves. She studies daily life there.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: So living in Kashmir is very very difficult because it’s not a regular, normal life. When you live under militarisation, you’re under constant surveillance. I might give you a small example that if guests come into your home, you have to declare who is coming and you have to go to the local police station. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Everyone is required to carry an ID card with them, and can be asked to produce it at any moment. There is no privacy, even in your home, Ather says. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: The government forces can barge into your home at any given point in time, say that you are under suspicion, or we suspect something, or there’s actually something happening. So there is no privacy. There is surveillance. And someone is watching you 24/7. And then also the limits and constraints to movement but also to life and to expression.</p>
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<p><em>India Tomorrow intro music</em></p>
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<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: You’re listening to India tomorrow, a series from The Anthill podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. I’m Annabel Bligh from The Conversation.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/indrajit-roy-312163">Indrajit Roy</a></strong>: And I’m Indrajit Roy, lecturer in politics at the University of York.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: In this episode, part 3 of our series on India, we’re going to be focusing on Kashmir. Its history, its people, and the conflict over its future. To follow this episode, you don’t need to have heard the first two parts of our India tomorrow series. But we do hope you’ll check them out – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-fake-news-and-the-battle-for-information-113579">first is on fake news and the battle over information in India</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">second is on the politics of hindu nationalism</a>, which has been central to the BJP government’s platform.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: We weren’t initially planning to do an episode on Kashmir. But as we were putting this series together, Kashmir hit international headlines after a suicide bomb attack there killed 40 Indian security forces, and the Indian military responded by bombing militant targets in Pakistan. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Yes, we’ll be hearing more about that later. But first, we thought it was important to find out how we got here and where the conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir came from.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Kashmir is a region on the border with India and Pakistan, divided between the two countries, but claimed in full by both. To understand the roots of the Kashmir conflict, we need to go back to the 1940s and the violence, bloodshed and heartache of what’s known as the partition – the sudden and cataclysmic division of Britain’s Indian empire into the two separate independent states of India and Pakistan. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sarah-ansari-393469">Sarah Ansari</a></strong>: The speed with which independence took place had a lot to do with the changed position of Britain after the Second World War. But partition took place because of the inability of the main parties involved – the British, the Congress and the Muslim League – to reach a compromise solution that would keep India united at independence. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: This is Sarah Ansari, professor of history at Royal Holloway University of London, who researches the history and the legacy of partition. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: The decision to grant independence to British India was finally agreed in February 1947, with the proposed date by which this should have happened being June 1948. However, in June 1947 plans were speeded up considerably and the date for independence was brought forward to August 15 1947. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Decisions had to be made very quickly, Sarah says. Including where the dividing line between the two countries would be. A British judge called Cyril Radcliffe was brought out to India to draw it up, but he only had a few weeks to identify and secure agreement from all sides. And he later admitted he’d relied on out-of-date maps and census materials. The result was that two key provinces, Punjab and Bengal were each split in two. Sarah says that religious concerns were central to partition and what happened after it. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: Large numbers of Indian Muslims felt sufficiently concerned about what the future political arrangements in India would mean for them as a perpetual minority, let’s say, within this new political unit. And it was that concern that the Muslim League was able to tap into and win support from in its negotiations with the British and the Congress over what would happen at independence. However we must be careful that we don’t assume that firstly all Muslims in India before August 1947 supported partition. That was definitely not the case. And it was only very late in the day that the Muslim League was able to win support from majority Muslim provinces for this, I suppose, kind of negotiated outcome.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So, Indrajit, it wasn’t simply a case of a Muslim-Hindu divide? </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: No. As Sarah says, it was definitely not the case that all Muslims in India supported partition. It’s very hard of course to know the exact numbers that supported it. Many Muslims, chose to stay in India and not to migrate at all to Pakistan which is why today they make up such a substantial minority of about 14% of India’s population, according to the 2011 census. What we do know is that partition brought with it a huge amount of uncertainty and violence in a summer of intense confusion and human suffering. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: We don’t know how many people precisely migrated, but maybe as many as 14m people uprooted themselves and crossed what they thought were going to be the new borders in order to reach a place of greater safety. So that’s probably still the largest migration that the world has yet seen. And as part of that, large numbers of people died – maybe as many as a million. I mean the figures are not precise because of the, I suppose, confusion of the of the time itself.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: But what about Jammu and Kashmir? At the time of partition the area was a princely state. Under the plans drawn up by the British, princely states would initially have the right to remain independent, or to join India or Pakistan. It was up to each ruler to decide the future of their territory and its people. Sarah explains. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: In the main, this proved relatively unproblematic, especially where there was a clear, as people describe it, geographic compulsion. Or where the wishes of the ruler and his subjects were straightforwardly aligned in terms of religious identity. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Sarah says that, in the end, those princely states that had perhaps considered remaining independent, found it impossible in practice to do so. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: So the vast majority of princely states acceded to either India or to Pakistan by the agreed deadline. But problems arose where or when the ruler and his subjects disagreed. And so Jammu and Kashmir was one of a small number of princely states where this proved to be the case.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: The ruler at the time, Maharajah Hari Singh, was a Hindu, but the population of Jammu and Kahsmir had an overall Muslim majority. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: The Maharajah initially chose to remain independent, signed what was known as a standstill agreement, at least with Pakistan. It hadn’t managed to do that with India, which kind of paused the process until a decision had been made. But protest uprisings, combined with tribal military-backed incursions from Pakistan, or the Pakistani side of the new border, led him, the Maharajah that is, to request intervention from the authorities in Delhi. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: What happened next is controversial, says Sarah, because there is disagreement over whether the Maharajah signed what was called the instrument of accession to join with India before or after India sent in troops. In any case, Pakistan contested Kashmir’s accession to India and a war ensued. India’s prime minister at the time, Jawaharlal Nehru referred the Kashmir issue to the UN, which got involved to try and find a way through the conflict. A ceasefire was agreed in early 1949, which created the ceasefire line, later known as the “line of control”. That’s the dividing line between Pakistan and India in Kashmir that still exists today. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: The outcome was, in due course, that the western portions of his territory, Jammu Kashmir, came under Pakistani control – so today known as Azad Kashmir and also Gilgit-Baltistan – while the remainder constituted the Jammu and Kashmir state as it later came to be known that remained within the Indian framework.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Sarah says that the fact India and Pakistan found themselves fighting a war over Kashmir so soon after independence had significant long-term consequences for both countries. From the get go, they were on a war footing. </p>
<p><strong>Sarah Ansari</strong>: It meant on the one hand that right from the outset Pakistan spent a huge proportion of its of its revenue, its GDP, on military-related development which I think hindered all sorts of other kind of state building programmes. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: The border tensions with Pakistan have also contributed to India’s rationale for keeping such a large army of around 1.4m active service personnel. In 2017, according to the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/india-worlds-biggest-defence-military-spender/">Stockholm International Peace Research Institute</a>, India spent US$63.9 billion on defence, making it the fifth-highest spending military budget in the world, behind the US, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: But what about Kashmiris? This is the question around which Ather Zia has focused her research. For Kashmiris, she says, history is ever present, and dominates the way they think about the future. A central issue, the bone of contention as it were, is India’s promise of a plebiscite, to the people of Jammu and Kashmir – a referendum on their future.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: And the fact is that the plebiscite has not been conducted so far and people in every decade, in my field at least, Indian-administered Kashmir, have been seeking that plebiscite one way or the other. But what has happened since 1947 is that the dialogue or the narrative around plebiscite got has gotten really, really diluted.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: India’s offer of a plebiscite was subject to Pakistan withdrawing troops from the western portion of Jammu and Kashmir. The ceasefire terms mandated that both sides withdraw their troops from the state. Neither side agreed, effectively killing the idea of a plebiscite. Elections were held in 1951 to convene a constituent assembly for the state, something like its own local parliament.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: And at that time you have evidence and you have the UN telling India that you cannot do this you can’t hold these elections because the case is sub judice. India responds saying that we are doing this for temporary governance and plebiscite is on the table still.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: As a matter of fact, journalists and academics covering that period suggest that those elections were completely rigged in favour of the Congress Party’s ally in Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference, that was keen for the state to join India.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Contrary to a wider Indian narrative, which argues that Kashmiris only began wanting independence in 1989 when the armed insurgency began, Ather stresses that Kashmiris had actually been resisting for decades – even before partition in 1947. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: So we have to understand, while India was fighting for its independence, Kashmir was fighting for its own independence from local tyrannical monarchy. And Kashmiris were fighting what they at that time called “quit Kashmir”. So they were asking the monarch to quit Kashmir and to establish a sovereign democracy. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: But despite this much longer history of resistance, and despite Kashmiris’ desire for a referendum on their future, it has never happened. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: So India kind of has sidelined and it has pushed the idea of plebiscite and referendum on the backburner, saying you know we have been doing elections since 1951. So the plebiscite is gone now. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Ather is about to publish an edited volume of research on how Kashmiris in every decade since partition have kept on talking about the promise of a referendum. Today, that desire for independence has not abated, she says. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: And what other colleagues of mine who work in the same area have found, and what also some surveys and different researchers who have worked for some media groups have found, is that more than 70% of the people of the region support independence and there is a section which supports a merger with Pakistan. And of course there are people who are collaborating with India currently and who are running the pro-India politics and who are also pushing for integration with India to the resistance of the masses. So what we find is that there is a lot of sentiment for independence or what Kashmiris call Azadi which is the Urdu and Kashmiri word for freedom. And freedom for Kashmiris means freedom from India on this side of the line of control, where I work, the Indian administered Kashmir. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Ather says history is very present in the everyday lives of Kashmiris. Even the children. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: If you ask any child across the world like, “What do you want?” They might want toys. But one of the major slogans in Kashmir is Hum Kya Chahte, which means, “What do you want?” And people say, “Azadi.” So that’s kind of a rhetorical thing. And even the little kids say like, “What do we want? We want Azadi.” So it’s become a cultural motif. The resistance in Kashmir is very, very cultural. It’s woven into the daily life.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: The tragedy is that no one really pays attention to the historic political struggle of Kashmiris and everything goes to this post-colonial idiom where you look at big countries and you think about their territorial dispute not thinking about whose territory are we talking about. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: In <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">our last episode</a> we heard about the ideology of Hindutva, and how central the idea of a Hindu nation is to the BJP, the party of Narendra Modi and the family of organisations of which it is a part. Such Hindu nationalist ideology impacts the BJP’s position regarding Kashmir – and Pakistan. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sita-bali-155071">Sita Bali</a></strong>: The BJP has its roots in a rightwing movement called the Jahn Sang which was present during just after partition and it also traces its roots back to some of the more right wing and the more stridently Hindu voices at the time of partition, like the Hindu Mahasabha.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: This is Sita Bali, a lecturer in international relations at Staffordshire University. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: So for the BJP and for that whole group of organisations, in a sense, partition is a kind of incomplete process because while most of the Muslims of India have not left to go live in Pakistan, most of the Hindus of Pakistan have come to live in India.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: A particular issue is around what’s called Article 370, part of the Indian constitution which gives a special status to Kashmir. Indrajit, why is it so controversial to some Indians?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: That’s a tricky one actually. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution allows the state of Jammu and Kashmir a greater degree of autonomy compared to other Indian states. The article says that the Indian government has control over defence, external affairs, currency and communication, but on all other matters the state of Jammu and Kashmir can take its own decisions. Indian laws can only be applied to the state with the agreement of the state’s legislative assembly. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: For example, the Indian government cannot alter the boundaries of the state or make new provinces, as it can with other Indian states. Of course, in all this, we shouldn’t forget that people are constantly moving about. There’s a steady circulation of “ordinary” people, if you will, between Kashmir and the rest of India. Kashmiri students study in various Indian cities. Labour migrants work in Kashmir. As it happens, my own research on labour migration in India suggests that labourers from Bihar state in eastern India have never felt particularly discriminated against when they go to work in Jammu and Kashmir.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So in terms of this, Article 370, gives Kashmir special status, do some people and politicians in India want to get rid of it altogether?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Kind of. Now, to be honest, the Indian government has been quietly eroding the special status provided under Article 370 for a long time, not just under the BJP but also under the Congress. But the BJP would like to see the article completely scrapped as it considers it to be a barrier to the complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir into India. And as you can imagine, political parties in the state are vehemently opposed to it. They say, and from a legal point of view they may have a point, that Article 370 is the link between India and Jammu and Kashmir. If you get rid of Article 370, then the legal basis of Jammu and Kashmir joining India is scrapped. That’s one reason most political parties in India tend to keep quiet about Article 370. Even one of the BJP’s own allies recently warned against removing the special status for the state. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: OK, so that’s the legal position. But what about feelings of security? How serious a security threat is Kashmir to India? </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Look, Kashmir is not the only insurgency that the Indian government confronts. You know, there have been insurgencies in the north east, in central and eastern India where the Maoists have been operating for decades. But the situation in Kashmir presents a special threat because of the ways it has been linked to Islamic terrorism.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And why’s that? Where’s this link to Islamic terrorism come from? </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Here we have to zoom out of Kashmir a bit and look at the region more broadly since the 1980s. Now you remember the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? And remember that Islamic freedom fighters were drafted by the United States to wage a jihad against the Soviets. Pakistan of course gladly hosted these guys because it meant aid and weapons. The Soviet defeat emboldened the jihadists, and Pakistan happily directed them towards its old friend India. The infiltration of the jihadi element was new and unprecedented. The Kashmiri struggle against Indian high-handedness had so far been peaceful. But it took a violent turn in 1988, after armed groups began to exploit local resentment – and make no mistake, there was enough grounds for local resentment – against what now came to be called Indian occupation. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Ok. So actually the last time the BJP was in power in India, under the prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, there was a considerable escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan. Sita Bali told us that when Vajpayee initially came to power, there had been some hope he may have been able to make peace. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: And there was a time when people really believed – both in India and Pakistan – that because the BJP were the more extreme element in India, in terms of their hard line on Pakistan and on Kashmir, that actually if peace was to be made between India and Pakistan on this matter that it was more likely to come from the BJP because they were the more extreme. I mean, if the Congress made some sort of peace, the BJP would come in and say it wasn’t good enough for them. Whereas a peace made by the more extreme right will likely satisfy everybody. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: When a bus service was opened between India and Pakistan, Vajpayee was on the first service. There was a lot of optimism. But Sita says all that soon dissipated after it emerged that Pakistan had been preparing for what’s been called the Kargil invasion, a border dispute high up in the mountains in an area called the Siachin Glacier. The Kargil conflict was made all the more dangerous because both countries had tested nuclear weapons in 1998, the year before. For India, it was a hard fight to win. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: This was in a sense India’s first TV war. And so you saw people being killed up there of course and then you saw the body bags come down and be put into boxes and boxes covered with the Indian flag then being dispatched to all corners of India. You know all over the place. And so there is a real kind of build up of nationalism in India.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: The Kargil conflict started in May and ended in June 1999 when India’s military forced a withdrawal of Pakistani militants back across the line of control. But it left an uneasy sense of peace, and since then there have been continuous skirmishes across the line of control. </p>
<p>So let’s fast forward to 2014, and the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister of India. Sita says that Modi came to power saying he’d be much stronger on the Kashmir issue.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: So of course removing Article 370 was a key BJP manifesto promise because of, you know, the idea in the BJP that this article was a barrier to the state’s integration into India. But Modi also promised that he would defend the interests of Kashmiri Pandits, the valley’s Hindu minority that had been forced to flee to other parts of the country when militancy took over the state in 1989. Modi said that at the very least he would ensure the rehabilitation of the Pandits within the state. The BJP was of course exploiting the emotive issue of Kashmiri Pandits for its own electoral advantage because five years down the line, it has not had much to show for itself.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: After Modi was elected, he went to Kashmir, to see how people there would react to him. Kashmir went into shutdown. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: Because what he was suggesting essentially was that any problems in Kashmir were largely to do with Pakistan, that Kashmir was an integral part of India. There was no recognition for the fact that Kashmir has a special status in the Indian constitution; that it was India’s Muslim majority region. There was no other in India like this and that therefore the special status meant something to the, particularly, the Muslims of Kashmir.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: To be fair, Modi did seem to strike a chord with the electorate in Kashmir. The BJP made some noise about reviewing the act which gives the Indian military sweeping powers over people’s lives that Ather spoke of earlier. Elections to the state assembly were held in December 2014, soon after the BJP stormed to power in Delhi. Turnout was a record 65%, among the highest in India and certainly the highest in the state since militancy erupted in 1989. </p>
<p>As it happened, the BJP did rather well in these elections, especially in the Jammu region, which has a Hindu majority. Another state party called the People’s Democratic Party, or PDP, won the majority of seats in the Kashmir valley, which has a Muslim majority. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And so then what happened?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: The negotiations that followed were fun to watch. On the one side, you had the PDP, you see, which was committed to keeping Article 370; party leaders had sometimes been called “soft separatists”. On the other hand, you had the BJP, which you know, has always been in favour of scrapping Article 370. So, thanks to some skilful negotiations, and you know out-of-the-box thinking, you had these two parties with opposing ideologies tied together in a coalition. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: So people were quite optimistic, because you know with the BJP that if they’re in power at the centre and they’re in power at the state assembly level then you’ve got a better chance of getting things through from the state assembly to the centre and back. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: But Sita says it turned out the BJP didn’t really have a plan for Kashmir. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: The BJP’s plan was non-existent in that they decided that they would treat Kashmir purely as a law and order problem – as a security problem.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: In July 2016, mass demonstrations erupted in the Kashmir valley after the leader of an armed group was killed by Indian security forces. The protesters were met with force. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Today, Ather Zia says that daily human rights violations in Kashmir are at an all time high. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: In June 2018, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IN/DevelopmentsInKashmirJune2016ToApril2018.pdf">published a report</a> on Indian-administered Kashmir as well as Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Gilgut and Balistan talking about the human rights violations in the region. What the report established was that since 2016 the human rights record of the Indian Army has really touched an all time low.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: The UN report was the first ever on human rights violations in Kashmir. It was carried out remotely as investigators weren’t given full access by either India or Pakistan. The authors cited civil society reports that 145 civilians were killed by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir between mid-July 2016 and the end of March 2018. Ather says that while cases of Kashmiris “disappearing” may have lessened in recent years, other human rights violations have increased. In particular, she points to large numbers of people being blinded by government forces.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: Basically the world’s first mass blindness happened in Kashmir because the government forces are using shotgun pellets, which is also erroneously called pellet guns and it kind of makes the Western audience think that it’s very small something like a BB gun of some sort, but this is actually a shotgun and it fires pellets very fast.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: The UN cited official figures reporting that 17 people were killed by these shotgun pellets between July 2016 and August 2017. And more than 6,000 people were injured by the pellets between 2016 and March 2017. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: In late 2017, the BJP coalition with Kashmir’s PDP collapsed, and the state was governed directly from Delhi. Ather says the BJP is now openly attacking those parts of the Indian constitution that protected Kashmir’s autonomy and special status. For instance, there’s currently a case before the Indian Supreme Court aimed at getting rid of Article 35a.</p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: That’s an article that kind of ensures Kashmir’s territorial autonomy which means that people who are not Kashmiri residents do not have the right to franchise, and they don’t have right to property inside Kashmir. So it looks like a very discriminatory act and it has also been portrayed as a gender discrimination act. But the fact is that this is a protection of a territorial sovereignty of a region to which you have a certain access. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Ather says Kashmiris are still anxiously waiting for news from the supreme court. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: And they are really really worried that it might be taken away from them. And there are political analysts inside Kashmir who have called this demographic terrorism. That if this is taken away and there is an influx of Indian businesses and Indian, you know, just citizens inside Kashmir and taking the property and you know all sorts of demographic changes it is going to change the situation inside Kashmir. And it is going to kind of tip the scales in favour of India. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: In early 2019, the situation in Kashmir suddenly made news around the world again. A suicide bomb attack in mid-February killed 40 Indian paramilitaries travelling in a convoy in Jammu and Kashmir at a place called Pulwama. A Pakistan-based military group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, claimed responsibility. A few days later, Indian planes launched strikes on what it said were Pakistani militant bases on the Pakistani side of the border in Balakot. An Indian pilot whose plane was shot down, was returned by the Pakistanis a few days later. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: Not only did it de-escalate the situation but it also, I think handed a bit of a publicity coup or made Pakistan look very much the more magnanimous, the more peace seeking, whereas it made India look like India was more gung-ho and warlike. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: We asked Sita Bali what this escalation – and subsequent de-escalation – of the conflict with Pakistan means for Modi politically, in the run up to the elections. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: I think that, there being a tense situation with Pakistan where Modi can stand up to them and can look tough and look hard and so on, is very helpful to his election prospects, because it plays into that sense that the BJP and Modi are the tough guys, the Congress is kind of weak and wimpy. And you know they’ve been in power for so many years and they’ve never sorted it out. So I think it’s going to help Modi if the situation in Kashmir is not peaceful or is not settled for the moment. And it isn’t.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: It’s worth remembering also that the nuclear issue is always there in the backdrop of the tension between India and Pakistan. Both countries have nuclear weapons, but while India has declared that it won’t use them in the first instance, Pakistan hasn’t. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: Well, logically it should actually rule out things like an Indian armed response to an act of terrorism within Kashmir. Because on one argument you could say that because Pakistan has not committed itself to no first use, it has increased its ability to do things that might annoy India, and to have some cover, because India will think very hard before responding militarily simply because Pakistan can escalate the problem at any time that it wants, without breaking any commitment that it has made in the past. So arguably this works to Pakistan’s advantage. </p>
<p>However, I also think that in the end if it came to it, a commitment that India has given to the international community, if we ever came to a point where India genuinely believed that it was in their interest to use that nuclear weapon first, never mind that it meant breaking a commitment, I think that they would probably do it, particularly under a BJP government. </p>
<p>So I think at the moment in a way what we’ve got is a situation where both sides’ nuclear weapons are cancelling each other out and we are going ahead with a conflict, or behaving in a conflict, very much like the nuclear weapons don’t exist. Except that both countries are quite careful not to escalate too much.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Sita says that while both sides are constrained by their nuclear capabilities, India is more constrained because it sees itself as a more responsible player on the international stage. But there is a wider regional dynamic at play too.</p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: This Pakistan problem, or the Kashmir problem, whichever way you choose to look at it, has always stood in the way of India’s relations in the whole region. Because in the whole region you have to think of, first, all the countries of South Asia. And India is surrounded by these countries. It has a common border with so many of the countries of south Asia, none of whom have a common border with each other, and all of whom are far far smaller than India. So India is already susceptible to the perception that because she is the biggest, which she is by a long shot, that she is a bully in the region. And that Pakistan, in the regional balance of power, Pakistan refusing to accept Indian hegemony is one of the things that, quietly, all of the other countries of South Asia would support. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And then there is China. </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: China is an established, longstanding and close ally of Pakistan. And they have supported Pakistan. Even right now, for example, over the issue of declaring the Jaish-e-Mohammed a terrorist group and banning them and freezing their assets and all the usual things that happen in the UN when somebody is declared a terrorist group, China is resisting. And it’s taking Pakistan’s side in this argument.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Our producer Gemma Ware put one last question to Sita, about how concerned she is now, after the Pulwama attack and Indian air strikes. </p>
<p><strong>Gemma Ware</strong>: So in terms of where we are now, are you worried? Is this a very concerning moment for you? You’ve been studying this region for a long time. Is this just part of the ebb and flow of, unfortunately what the Kashmir and the India-Pakistan conflict are? Or is this a particularly worrying moment for you? </p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: No, I think Kargil was more serious than this. Because it was the first time we had been skirmishing after the establishing of nuclear weapons on both sides. What is worrying about this is not so much to do with Pakistan and nuclear weapons and so on, what is worrying about this at the moment is the future of Indian Kashmir. Because ultimately if the people of Indian Kashmir decide that they do not want to be a part of India then all bets are off in terms of what Pakistan will do as well. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: For Ather, the international attention on Kashmir once again takes the focus away from the suffering of the Kashmiris. Her collective of Kashmiri scholars have been trying to fight the notion that the Kashmir conflict is merely a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: That is an aspect. But it is also an issue of democratic sovereignty of a certain people and political consciousness, which has not only strengthened, but it has evolved and emerged in different ways over the last 70 years. </p>
<p>I kind of like to see it as that the Kashmiris are doing all the dying. This has been noted by many people before. And all we are talking about is India and Pakistan. So we have to see the human cost. Who is paying the human cost when the strikes were happening from India and Pakistan? And all of that is going on very recently. We kind of forgot in the middle that it was a Kashmiri who became the human bomb. And the question was not asked like, what happened there? Why is Kashmir becoming a lab for making militants? Because there are no policies for a just peace.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: It’s their future, says Ather. </p>
<p><strong>Ather Zia</strong>: Kashmiris are the most canny and most political of peoples. And if you go to any street corner you will see the most evolved narrative and political narrative on Kashmir from everyone. Because that’s what they live every day. And after what happened very recently there was some interest in, “hey, let’s think about what’s happening to Kashmiris”. But then after a while everything went back to thinking about how can we bring the two countries to the table. And the Kashmiris again got snowed under that narrative because it’s a post-colonial reality that we are thinking about big nation states and we’re not thinking about peoples, we’re not thinking about cultures. So that’s something that we need to keep in mind. We need to have the Kashmiri vantage. Without that everything is incomplete.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s it for this episode of India Tomorrow from The Anthill. In our next episode, we’ll be looking at the changing role of women in Indian society. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/charu-gupta-725231">Charu Gupta</a></strong>: Love Jihad was actually a jihad against love. It was a war against love you know it was this kind of mythical and violent campaign. It was emotive. It was a political fantasy.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s in part 4 of this series from The Anthill, India Tomorrow. Do subscribe to The Anthill podcast so you don’t miss out. You can also sign up to our Anthill newsletter, by clicking the link in the show notes. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: You can read more of The Conversation’s coverage of India by academics around the world on <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk">theconversation.com</a> or follow us on social media. If you’ve got any questions about issues we’ve been discussing in this series, please do get in touch via email on podcast@theconversation.com or on twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/anthillpod">@anthillpod</a>. We’ll be putting your questions to a panel of academics we’re lining up to discuss the election results at the end of May. And you can find a transcript of this episode, and other episodes in this series, on <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk">theconversation.com</a>. </p>
<p>A big thanks to all the academics who spoke to us for this episode and to the journalism department at City University for letting us use their studios. The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and me, Annabel Bligh. Sound by Alex Portfelix.
Lastly, an extra big thanks to my co-host, Indrajit Roy. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Thanks Annabel. See you next week. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Thanks for listening. Goodbye.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This is a transcript of episode three of The Anthill podcast series India Tomorrow on Kashmir.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1154032019-04-17T12:36:39Z2019-04-17T12:36:39ZIndia: widespread food insecurity may be damaging children’s ability to learn – and the future economy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269644/original/file-20190416-147522-ctx9es.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU1NTQ3MTMyMywiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfMTYzNjczNDI2IiwiayI6InBob3RvLzE2MzY3MzQyNi9tZWRpdW0uanBnIiwibSI6MSwiZCI6InNodXR0ZXJzdG9jay1tZWRpYSJ9LCIxcVdpSjBYMVcrY3dlZENFMmhzS3l4S1RxT1UiXQ%2Fshutterstock_163673426.jpg&pi=33421636&m=163673426&src=M5PPv5C4m81cOK7jZvoZeg-1-19">Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There has been an impressive expansion in school enrolment in India since the early 2000s. Despite this, India is in the midst of a “<a href="https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/book/10.1596/978-1-4648-1096-1">learning crisis</a>”, with improvements in learning lagging behind increases in enrolment. </p>
<p>Worldwide, India also has one of the highest rates of child <a href="http://in.one.un.org/un-priority-areas-in-india/nutrition-and-food-security/">undernutrition and household food insecurity</a> – that is, inadequate or inconsistent access to enough safe and nutritious food to sustain a healthy life. </p>
<p>Both of these issues have negative implications for the long-term health, well-being and productivity of young people, as well as for the economy more broadly. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775718302073?dgcid=coauthor">our recent study</a>, we used survey data from the <a href="https://www.younglives.org.uk/">Young Lives study</a> of childhood poverty to examine whether there is a link between food insecurity and learning for Indian adolescents. </p>
<p>There are good theoretical reasons why learning and food insecurity may be linked. When households experience food insecurity, they may have to make difficult decisions in order to meet the family’s nutritional needs. </p>
<p>For instance, households that need money for food might reduce spending on school fees and materials. Children might miss school, have less time available to study, or even drop out altogether so that they can contribute to the household economy.</p>
<p>Food insecurity can also cause children to experience hunger, undernutrition, and micronutrient deficiencies. This can lead children to have <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/67/4/779S/4666104">problems with concentration and memory</a>. It can even <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/103/27/10155">impair their cognitive development</a>. </p>
<p>Children who experience food insecurity might also feel irritability and shame. This could impact negatively on their interactions with their parents, teachers and peers. </p>
<p>In the Young Lives data, 47% of 12-year-olds had experienced household food insecurity at some stage during the observation period. And even 18% of the wealthiest families had experienced food insecurity; food insecurity is not exclusively a matter of poverty.</p>
<h2>Associations with learning</h2>
<p>The study followed the same children over time, beginning in 2002. It tracked both food insecurity and children’s learning outcomes in four domains: reading, English, maths, and local language vocabulary. </p>
<p>In order to test for a link between food insecurity and learning, we applied statistical modelling. We used information on whether households had experienced food insecurity when the children were aged five and eight, and when they entered adolescence at age 12. </p>
<p>We found that food insecurity was negatively linked to learning outcomes in all four domains. This was true even after we accounted for other important factors. </p>
<p>For example, it could be that poverty affects both food insecurity and learning – and so any link between these outcomes is actually the result of poverty. We accounted for this and other possible explanations in our robust models, and still consistently found a negative association between food insecurity and learning across domains. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269645/original/file-20190416-147511-1anbcdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Without access to regular, nutritious food, children will likely suffer at school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU1NTQ3MTQ2NywiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfNzk2NTY0OTMzIiwiayI6InBob3RvLzc5NjU2NDkzMy9tZWRpdW0uanBnIiwibSI6MSwiZCI6InNodXR0ZXJzdG9jay1tZWRpYSJ9LCJycTdsdi82Zm0rU3ppeGNQOUd1bStxZ2VwTjAiXQ%2Fshutterstock_796564933.jpg&pi=33421636&m=796564933&src=N7rkTn6a33yOZpFepUUpdw-1-9">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We also considered the timing and persistence of food insecurity. Do early life experiences affect later learning? Or can adolescents recover from earlier food insecurity? Are there differences if adolescents experience shorter versus longer periods of food insecurity?</p>
<p>We found that both timing and persistence do matter, but they have different effects in different learning domains. For vocabulary and reading, early and persistent food insecurity were very detrimental for learning. English and maths were more complex.</p>
<p>For English, early food insecurity didn’t matter as much, but later and persistent food insecurity were linked to poorer learning outcomes. This may reflect that, at the time of the study, English language learning happened later in the curriculum. </p>
<p>For maths, food insecurity at any time was strongly and negatively associated with learning. This may reflect the fact that maths learning at one level is built directly on learning at a previous level. In other words, a child who does not learn basic addition due to food insecurity will struggle with more complex maths. In contrast, for subjects such as reading, once foundational skills are established, some catch-up for missed material may be possible in the short term.</p>
<h2>Feeding the future</h2>
<p>Our work demonstrates the lasting effects of early life experiences. Addressing food insecurity may be an important part of resolving India’s learning crisis. </p>
<p>It may also contribute to achieving some of the UN <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2015/12/sustainable-development-goals-kick-off-with-start-of-new-year/">Sustainable Development Goals</a>. Goal #2 aims to end hunger and achieve food security. Our findings suggest that meeting this goal may have ripple effects by reducing inequalities (goal #10) and ensuring inclusive, quality education for all (goal #4). </p>
<p>As we have <a href="https://site4society.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/too-hungry-to-learn/">argued elsewhere</a>, early intervention to prevent food insecurity is important to ensure that children are not disadvantaged while learning foundational skills. Scaling up early childhood feeding programs may be useful for targeting early food insecurity. </p>
<p>Offering free remedial learning classes for children who experience food insecurity may also enable them to catch up with peers. Finally, where social protection is inadequate to prevent children from working, providing safe, well-paid employment opportunities over school breaks may help children to work without missing learning opportunities. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New study finds food insecurity is negatively linked to learning outcomes in reading, English, maths, and local language vocabulary.Jasmine Fledderjohann, Lecturer in Sociology and Social Work, Lancaster UniversityElisabetta Aurino, Lecturer, Imperial College LondonSukumar Vellakkal, Assistant professor, Birla Institute of Technology and ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1155052019-04-16T12:22:42Z2019-04-16T12:22:42ZPolitics of Hindu nationalism: India Tomorrow part 2 podcast transcript<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269367/original/file-20190415-147518-1b6vswy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A flag with the Hindu 'Om' symbol held by supporters of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kolkata-december-20-om-signed-flags-277358366?src=6vEj6Yq_Et7oIfpQSrenFg-1-10">arindambanerjee via Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is a transcript of part two of The Anthill’s podcast series, India Tomorrow. <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">Click here</a> to listen to the full episode and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>.</em></p>
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<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/shalini-sharma-708497">Shalini Sharma</a></strong>: So the roots of Hindu nationalism are actually I guess the same as the roots of nationalism in India per say and we really need to go to the 19th century when a lot of people were asking questions like why you know why are we subjugated? Why are we under colonial rule? What does that mean?</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Shalini Sharma is a lecturer in colonial and post-colonial history at the University of Keele. In the decades after the unsuccessful Indian rebellion against British colonial rule in 1857, a number of new movements sprung up – some thinking hard about religion.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: Now someone like Vinayak Savarkar was very much influenced by these by these movements. He was very much a nationalist. He was somebody who was imprisoned because he was very close to people who were conspiring to assassinate British administrators. And while he was in jail he was picking up on the latent anti-Islamic sentiments of a number of Hindu reformist groups in India of the 19th century and early 20th century and he decided to pen a sort of pamphlet called Hindutva in which he defined what a Hindu was. </p>
<p>Hindutva basically claimed that a Hindu is somebody whose religion was born in the territory that we now know as pre-partition India. So. So Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Hindus of all different sort of sects within Hinduism, they are Hindus. People whose religion was not born in India, so Christians and Muslims do not constitute Hindus and are thus outside of Hindutva. </p>
<p><em>India Tomorrow intro music</em></p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: You’re listening to India Tomorrow, a series from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill podcast</a>, brought to you by The Conversation. I’m Annabel Bligh from The Conversation UK. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/indrajit-roy-312163">Indrajit Roy</a></strong>: And I’m Indrajit Roy, lecturer in politics from the University of York.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: In part one of this series, we looked at how fake news fuels violence in India, and why the battle for information plays a crucial role in elections. In this episode, we’ll be finding out about Hindu nationalism, where it came from, its influence in India today, and its centrality to the politics of prime minister Narendra Modi and his BJP party. </p>
<p>When I say the word Hindutva, Indrajit, what does it mean to you?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Hindutva has been interpreted in a number of ways. For some, Hindutva has an inclusive dimension, which suggests that everyone, irrespective of their caste, creed, language or, indeed, even religious affiliation, is Hindu. On reading some of the core Hindutva texts, however, and this is a view to which I have come to subscribe, increasingly, it’s quite clear that Hindutva is premised on the exclusion of religious minorities and people with different political ideas. One of the key Hindutva ideologues, says that Muslims, Christians, and communists cannot in fact be Indian.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-the-origins-of-todays-hindu-nationalism-55092">Explainer: what are the origins of today's Hindu nationalism?</a>
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<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And how central has Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, been to the rise of Modi?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Modi’s rise can be attributed to the coming together of three quite distinct groups, so to speak. One group which was supportive of economic development more broadly and thought Modi would deliver. This is not a group that was terribly taken in by Hindutva, though it could tolerate Hindutva if it meant bringing together economic growth. A group, a second constituency if you will, were those who believed Modi’s rise would lead to some sort of low caste emancipation, because of Modi’s own supposedly low-caste origins. A third group, and this answers your question, a third group that was quite key to Modi’s rise, were the Hindu nationalists, who believed that Modi would deliver some version of the Hindu nation.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And it’s not just Modi’s political party, the BJP, which pursues this Hindu nationalist agenda. The BJP is part of a large collection of other organisations.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Yes, this “family” of organisations, if you will, is called the Sangh Parivar. One of the most powerful organisations within this family is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, which roughly means the national volunteer organisations. While the RSS is officially separate from the BJP, it wields considerable influence over the party’s politics. It was founded in 1925 by a man called Keshav Baliram Hedgewar.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: And Hedgewar was influenced by the idea of Hindutva and Hindu nationalism – and by the rise of fascism in Italy. Shalini Sharma explains more about its origins.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: His group of volunteers had to wear a uniform. They were very much identified as a Hindu group and influenced by Savarkar’s definition of what a Hindu was and what a Hindu needed to do, which was to become strong. It was a very sort of masculine movement. To take up arms. It identified against Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence, it was very much a military movement. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: After Hedgewar died in 1940, the RSS was taken up by a man called Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the gentleman to who I referred to earlier who made the comments about Muslims, Christians and Communists. Golwalkar stopped the RSS from becoming a political party. But the party was actually banned for a period in 1948, after the murder of the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, by a man called Nathuram Godse, who, it was claimed, was inspired by the RSS.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Radha d’Souza, a reader in law at the University of Westminster and an expert in the Indian constitution, explains what happened next.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/radha-dsouza-719876">Radha d'Souza</a></strong>: There was a dispute and then the ban was lifted on the condition that the RSS would accept the Indian constitution and work within a legal framework. Because RSS said we are only a cultural organisation and what kind of democracy is this that bans cultural organisations? So Sardar Patel, who was the then-home minister, his condition was OK, we will lift the ban if you agree to work within the legal framework and have some constitution for your own organisation.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: But Radha says that while the RSS agreed to these two conditions, it has implemented neither of them. And one of the central reasons why the RSS opposed India’s new constitution was because it didn’t create India as a Hindu nation state.</p>
<p><strong>Radha d'Souza</strong>: And the Constituent Assembly adopted a secular constitution and by secularism it was not just the state will refrain from supporting religions but state will be even handed with all religions. So will not privilege one religion over another, will be even handed, will allow equal freedoms to all religions. And that was in the Constitution and they never accepted that. They never accepted that. They have never accepted that even now. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> From the 1920s onwards, the politics of Hindutva were so effective, according to Shalini Sharma, because its affiliated organisations spread out, permeating different aspects of Indian society in different ways.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: So for example you know you could say that the RSS was simply a volunteering group. There are other strands to Hindutva, there’s something called the VHP which is a World Hindu Council. And also in 1951 there was there was born a political party of Hindutva which was the Bhartiya Jana Sangh, which in the 1980s became what we now know as the BJP. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: This is the party of prime minister Narendra Modi, which was elected to a landslide victory in 2014.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> At the centre of the ideas of Hindutva, that have influenced the politics of the BJP and its affiliates, is the idea that India is a country for the Hindus, at the exclusion of others. It’s an idea that has caused real violence against minority groups in India, particularly Muslims. But also against people, often Hindus, who have objected to this very, very exclusive understanding of Hindutva and of Indian nationalism.</p>
<p>Shalini Sharma explains that what has united various Hindu nationalist groups is the question “who are the enemies of Hindutva”?</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: And these enemies are identified as these different religious groups, Christians and more importantly Muslims. And what you’ve seen happen is that the political wing of Hindutva, the BJP, from the 1980s onwards, latched on to what it called historic wrongs. And the main historic wrong was this idea that the Muslim invader had historically committed a lot of acts of barbarism against Hindus. And the most poignant of these wrongs was this idea that the Emperor Barbur in the 16th century had destroyed a Hindu temple which was built to commemorate the birth place of a Hindu god, Lord Ram, the Ram that Hindus celebrate during the festival of light, Diwali. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: This temple was in a place called Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Also known as UP, it’s the largest state in India – it has a population the same size as Brazil. And it’s at the centre of what’s called the Hindi belt. In the early 1990s, UP was controlled by the BJP. Here’s Shalini again. </p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: And what the BJP did from, especially from the late 80s, was begin to call for the the destruction of this mosque that was built atop the Hindu temple. And even though the the BJP leaders Lal Krishna Advani and Atul Vihari Vajpayee at the time claimed that they weren’t calling for the destruction of the mosque, in their mass mobilisations, in the fact that they were leading whole sort of movements of people in a in what they called a <em>yatra</em>, or large processions towards Ayohdya and garnering hundreds of thousands of people to sort of meet at Ayodhya at a certain time, for them they were saying that it was to actually offer prayers to the Lord Rama at this place. But this led to the destruction brick by brick of the mosque, while the the police and ministers of Uttar Pradesh, just looked on. </p>
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<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque at Ayodhya happened on the 6th of December in 1992.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma:</strong> And after that there were a number of I suppose you can call pogroms of Muslims especially in Bombay. And again nothing much happened, this was simply accepted. The Indian parliament which was Congress controlled at the time did condemn this, but again it was sort of complicit in that action wasn’t immediately taken against those who had perpetuated both this destruction of a 16th-century mosque as well as the actions against Muslims in Bombay in early 1993.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So this violence, and the rise of groups like the cow protection squads that we heard <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-fake-news-and-the-battle-for-information-113579">about in part one</a>, have led to growing fears that Hindu nationalism is built around intolerance of and violence towards minorities, particularly Muslims.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Hindu nationalism has been premised, as we saw earlier, on the idea that Muslims and indeed people whose faiths did not or could not claim to be of Indian origin, weren’t really Indians. So the link between Hindu nationalism and violence against religious minorities isn’t difficult to seek.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Debates rage on today about the site at Ayodhya. Hindu nationalist groups continue to call for a temple to be built on the site. Yet Uttar Pradesh has a large Muslim population, vehemently opposed to the plan.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: In early March 2019, India’s Supreme Court ruled that a prolonged land dispute over the future of the site at Ayodhya should be settled by a secret mediation process.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s eight weeks from early March. So a decision is expected in early May, in the middle of the national elections. Indrajit, do you think Ayodhya land dispute will be an election campaign issue?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> I’m sure the BJP will try and make it one. We had thought it would play a much bigger role than it has at the moment. However, the issue seems to have run out of steam, but you never know.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: It’s a contentious topic, right? </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Absolutely. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Well, let’s take a closer look at the way Hindutva has become a political force in India. Modi’s election in 2014 wasn’t the first time the BJP, an openly Hindu nationalist party, came to power was it?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> No, you’re right the BJP has been a strong political force in India since the late 20th century. Its charismatic leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was prime minister from 1998 to 2004. He’d also briefly been prime minister for a few days in 1996. But Vajpayee’s BJP never had the majority in the Lok Sabha, India’s parliament, and ruled as a part of a coalition called the National Democratic Alliance, or NDA, which was made up of regional parties with varying political orientations.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> But when the BJP came to power in 2014 it was a different story?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Yes, in 2014, the BJP won a majority of seats for the first time. Modi still governs at the head of the NDA coalition, but the BJP itself won 282 out of 543 seats, giving them 10 seats more than they needed for an overall majority. This was a crushing victory.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> To understand the role that Hindutva politics played in Narendra Modi’s 2014 landslide, we called up somebody who has been studying the politics of the BJP and its rise.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ajay-gudavarthy-719874">Ajay Gudavarthy</a></strong>: I’m Ajay Gudavarthy, I’m associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies, at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in India. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Ajay says the last ten years in India have witnessed an unprecedented rise of far-right wing groups, led by the RSS and the BJP.</p>
<p><strong>Ajay Gudavarthy:</strong> And 2019 is extremely important because the last five years I think they have made some preparatory steps in terms of actualising their vision of realising what they refer to as the Hindu Rashtra. That is a religious theocratic majority and Hindu state. And RSS for long has had plans of amending the constitution and its various liberal progressive, secular, socialist provisions in terms of creating this theocratic state. If the BJP is to return to power in 2019 with a similar kind of a majority, my own understanding is that they will be moving very fast towards realising some of these majoritarian provisions, preparation for which I think has been made in the last four or five years in terms of creating a social consent and a social consensus for that kind of a theocratic vision.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Various electoral surveys have shown a core Hindutva vote of around 20% to 25%.</p>
<p><strong>Ajay Gudavarthy:</strong> That is a core committed Hindutva group which are convinced by the social vision of this Hindu Rashtra. Anything beyond that is something that the BJP builds depending on each election.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Ajay says that back in 2014 the BJP also managed to win support from voters who may not have traditionally been drawn to the politics of Hindu nationalism – members of what are traditionally seen as lower-caste groups. To understand this, first we need to take a little detour to understand the role caste plays in the narrative of Hindu nationalism – and in Indian society today.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Hindu nationalism emerged in India at a time when people stigmatised as lower caste were demanding more recognition. Historian Shalini Sharma explains.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: The constitution writers of India in the late 1940s were trying to tackle the historic wrong of the caste system. The caste system in Hinduism was such that there was a hierarchy and at right at the bottom were the so-called untouchables, or Dalits. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> An edict was written into the constitution that guarantees “reservations”, a form of positive discrimination, for Dalits, who have historically been oppressed as “untouchables”. This means a certain percentage of jobs, and places at universities, are reserved for Dalits.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma</strong>: Now in the late 80s and early 90s at the same time as when the BJP was on the rise, some people say it was on the rise because low-caste groups were beginning to demand from their local governments, reservations. So to be seen as backward castes so that they would be able to have a way in to getting government jobs and places for their own for their children in universities. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: People from higher castes were not happy with this extension of positive discrimination to include this a group known as the Other Backward Classes or OBCs, which is a large group of people that are neither high caste or “untouchables”. The BJP latched onto this unhappiness.</p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma:</strong> So in that sense it was the party of the higher castes, advocating their cause and trying to unite Hindus in other ways. So to say, let’s not be divided on the basis of caste. We need to be united against these other religions who are trying to break us up and that’s sort of you know feeds into and feeds from Hindutva ideology. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> To find out more about caste politics today, we called up Suryakant Waghmore, an associate professor at the Department of Humanity and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Suryakant says Hinduism and caste are closely linked.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/suryakant-waghmore-719872">Suryakant Waghmore</a></strong>: You cannot really purge caste from Hinduism. So caste is central to making one Hindu … Status and purity are intrinsically linked in caste hierarchies. And it is the untouchables who bear the brunt of being permanently impure, therefore untouchable.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: When people from other, so-called higher castes, such as Brahmins, touch something impure, they can perform a ritual to purify themselves. But Dalits, or the so-called untouchables, are seen as permanently impure.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore</strong>: There are several reasons but one of the important reasons is said to be that because they ate beef, they consumed cow meat. And cow is supposed to be the ultimate form of purity and holy being.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Suryakant has been doing some fascinating research on the ways in which caste is experienced differently in different parts of India, particularly different cities such as cosmopolitan Bombay (or Mumbai) compared to Ahmedabad, a smaller city in Gujarat.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Part of what he studies is violence against Dalits – something he says has traditionally been seen as a problem in rural communities. But he’s finding just how much it’s taking places in cities too.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore</strong>: So what we definitely see is there’s a general trend of increase in crimes against Dalits, across India. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Suryakant says it would be misplaced to attribute this increase in violence totally to the rise of the BJP, and that it’s part of a much longer power struggle within Indian society.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore</strong>: But what has definitely happened is that the confidence amongst the highest castes, you now, is definitely turning into, at times, into an arrogance. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> He points to a case in the city of Pune, involving a domestic worker who gave the impression to her employer that she was a high caste Brahmin, when actually she was a Maratha, who the Brahmins consider lower caste.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore</strong>: She told the Brahmin lady that I am also Brahmin. However when the Brahmin employer got to know the caste of this Maratha woman, she went and filed a complaint in the police station saying that this woman has been part of the religious rituals in my house, and has lied to me that she is a Brahmin whereas she is a Maratha, and she has therefore, you know, hurt my religious sentiments. And the police actually filed this complaint. You know they took this complaint. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Suryakant listed a couple of other examples of everyday violence against Dalits.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore</strong>: There was this one case where a rickshaw driver who is supposed to be from an untouchable caste …</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So the rickshaw driver was Dalit, he overtakes a guy driving a small car, who it turns out is from a so-called higher caste – in this case it was a caste known as the warrior caste.</p>
<p><strong>Suryakant Waghmore</strong>: … and asked him who are you? What is your caste? And when the rickshaw driver shared his caste, he immediately went to his car’s boot pulled out a knife, came back and kind of, you know, slashed his forehead. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So what Suryakant is implying here Indrajit is that some supposedly higher caste Hindus feel they’ve been given a licence to try and reimpose these caste hierarchies. And while this is nothing new, it’s become more prominent under the BJP. How do you think the Modi government has dealt with caste?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> That’s an interesting question. So, in January 2019, the government announced it would introduce a 10% reservation policy aimed at the economically weak from the high castes …</p>
<p>… So SCs are what’s called scheduled castes, and the OBCs are the “other backward classes” – so these are the castes about whom we heard earlier for who certain jobs and university places have been reserved. But basically, this new policy means there will be quotas specifically for poor people from among the so-called high caste groups, such as the Brahmins for example.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So this is something I found intriguing about caste differences. I think I always had a tendency to think of caste as similar to class that we have in the UK – so which is largely an economic thing. But, as Suryakant was saying, and as we’ve just heard, if you’re from a so-called high caste, you’re not necessarily well off and a lot of it’s to do with this idea of purity. So just how political is this move by the BJP to introduce a new reservations policy?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Hah – it’s all politics. Lets take a step back and look at the populations that we’re talking about. We know from census data that the Scheduled Castes or the Dalits, as they are more popularly called, make up 16% of the population. There are regional variations, but they’re about 16% of the population. The scheduled tribes, the other group for whom “reservations” were introduced, are at approximately 8%. Beyond these figures, we just have lots of speculation. </p>
<p>In 2011, a caste census was conducted, but the data was never actually made available to the public. Various population projections however, have suggested that the Other Backward Classes, this large chunk in between the so-called high caste and the so-called untouchables, may be between 40 and 60% of the Indian population. Now that’s huge – 40-60% of the Indian population. And so if you look at the figures, the high-caste component of the Indian people is unlikely to exceed about 20%. Now Modi’s new reservations for the poor, as he puts it, aims to woo a significant chunk of this 20%. So, the BJP’s policy stems from a deep-seated opposition to caste quotas, which the party believes would undermine Hindu unity.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: We’ve heard a lot about the history and appeal of Hindu nationalist politics in India. Indrajit, has this kind of politics permeated the whole of the political system, or is Hindutva ideology largely the domain of the BJP and Modi?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Ah, that is a really good question. So there’s a popular saying among Indians that what the BJP does by day, the Congress does by night.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: What does that mean?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: So the BJP of course has fashioned itself after a Hindutva ideology, suggesting that India is for the Hindus etc. etc, as we’ve heard. Now the Congress of course has always been secular, staunchly secular. But when it came to mobilising religion, for political ends, the Congress in some ways fashioned that art even better than the BJP has. So long before the BJP started mobilising and manipulating Hindu views, the Congress was an adept player at this game. The earliest Congress party symbols, would you believe it, what they were? Guess. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: I’m going to guess it’s something religious?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: It’s the cow. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> No?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Yes. When the Congress fought its first elections*, its electoral symbol was the the cow and the idea was that, you now, religiously minded voters would vote for the Congress because it was a party that was sort of supportive of Hindu views. So in a sense, while it’s correct to say Hindutva as an ideology is certainly within the domain of the BJP, the Congress doesn’t speak the language of Hindutva, but when it comes to mobilising Hindu sentiments, the Congress has done that long before the BJP has. And in some ways the Congress continues to do that even now.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So do all political parties subscribe to Hindutva?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Not really. I wouldn’t say that all political parties subscribe to Hindutva or fan its flames. India has large number of parties that are specific to certain states, and these often tend to deliberately avoid Hindu nationalism. Some of the BJP’s own allies even avoid it, such as the Akali Dal in Punjab which is a Sikh denominational party. Leftist parties and parties espousing Dalit and low-caste emancipation such as Uttar Pradesh’s Bahujan Samaj Party, whose supremo Mayawati is a popular candidate for prime minister among many Dalits, also tend to distance themselves from Hindutva as a matter of principle. And of course, the most spectacular example of a state-level political party that has consistently taken a principled stand against Hindutva is Bihar’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by the firebrand Lalu Prasad Yadav.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: So we asked Ajay Gudavarthy what the best way would be to find another political narrative as appealing to the Indian electorate as Hindu nationalism. He said it was a question that the left, liberal parties in India should be applying their mind to.</p>
<p><strong>Ajay Gudavarthy</strong>: What BJP and RSS have done is to bring in and understand social psychology of the electorate, very well. They have used cultural symbols local idioms, very strongly and much of the left liberal centrist parties, in that sense, do not have that kind of a connect with local idioms, cultural symbols, religious symbols. The big question for constitutional vision what should its link be with cultural and religious symbols? Can we have a more progressive, more secular, more inclusive kind of use of these religious symbols, local idioms, beyond merely using them for prejudice and polarisation. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: The BJP and RSS use local religious rituals as part of their politics. They use the cow, for example, which is a holy symbol for Hindus. Meanwhile, some Muslims and Dalit Hindus eat beef and others work in the leather industry. There are also those who collect the bodies of dead cows.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: And as we heard in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-fake-news-and-the-battle-for-information-113579">first episode of this series</a>, fake news stories about cows have led to vigilante violence across India from groups of “cow protection” squads. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: Ajay says a robust debate is needed to pull polarising religious symbols such as the cow out of politics. Instead, he says what’s needed is to create an alternative political narrative, built around social welfare, and protections for both the middle and lower classes.</p>
<p><strong>Ajay Gudavarthy</strong>: Hindutva’s cultural agenda has a political economy. There is an economic reasoning also behind it. This kind of an aggressive shift that we’re witnessing towards hate and rage, like the United States what happened with the rust belt, there’s something very similar in the Indian context on a much larger, massive scale. Where you know your public ethics takes a beating in terms of sharing values, collapse of common neighbourhoods, idea of aggressive competition. This massive anxiety and insecurity, so that kind of a social psychology, I think aids Hindutva.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: He points to the southern state of Kerala, which has a robust welfare system.</p>
<p><strong>Ajay Gudavarthy:</strong> For instance Kerala, health system is free, education is subsidised, public transport is subsidised, food is subsidised. When you have schemes of that kind, I think the basic anxiety levels are moderated. Then you cannot very easily generate this kind of a very polarised narrative of hating the Muslims, hating the Christians, othering the Dalits so on and so forth. So I think welfare system, a strong welfare state will provide the first entry point for the liberal constitutional left political forces in India to actually check this kind of unabated rise of far right-wing aggression. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Central to the politics of this aggressive far right Hindu nationalism is a dislike of the Indian constitution – its secular nature and the protections it contains for India’s minorities.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Another major bone of contention is Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which the Hindu right believes offers preferential treatment to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: The history of Kashmir – and the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan – is something we’re going to explore in our next episode.</p>
<p><strong>Sita Bali</strong>: I think that there being a difficult situation with Pakistan or a tense situation with Pakistan where Modi can stand up to them and can look tough and look hard and so on, is very helpful to his election prospects. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: That’s part three of this series from The Anthill, India Tomorrow. Do subscribe so you don’t miss out. That’s it for this episode of The Anthill. A big thanks to my co-host Indrajit Roy.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Thanks Annabel.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh</strong>: You can hear and read more of The Conversation’s coverage of India by academics from around the world on <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk">theconversation.com</a> or follow us on social media. If you’ve got any questions relating to what we’ve been discussing in this series, please do get in touch via email on <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">podcast@theconversation.com</a> or find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnthillPod">@anthillpod</a>. We’ll be putting your questions about India to a panel of academics in an episode in the days after the election results in late May. And if you’re looking for a transcript of this episode, and other episodes in this series, it will also be available soon on theconversation.com.</p>
<p>A big thanks to all the academics who spoke to us for this episode and to the journalism department at City University for letting us use their studios. The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and me, Annabel Bligh. Sound editing by Alex Portfelix. And thanks to our intern Salome Pkhaladze for her editing help. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy</strong>: Goodbye</p>
<p><em>*Clarification: It’s asserted in the podcast that when the Congress Party fought its first elections, its electoral symbol was the the cow. In fact the party’s symbol from 1959 to 1972 was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Congress#/media/File:Election_symbol_two_oxen.svg">two bullocks</a>. After 1969, the faction led by Indira Ghandi used <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/research/congress-cow-politics-elections-manifesto-2018-5446682/">a symbol of a cow and suckling calf</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This is a transcript of part two of The Anthill’s podcast series, India Tomorrow, on the politics of Hindu natonalism.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1154942019-04-16T12:20:08Z2019-04-16T12:20:08ZIndia Tomorrow part 2: the politics of Hindu nationalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269295/original/file-20190415-147502-18q1mpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>When Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to victory in India’s 2014 elections, <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-05-16/its-landslide-hindu-nationalism-indias-election">much was made</a> of its Hindu nationalist agenda. After five years in office, some commentators now worry that the secular nature of Indian democracy is <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-indias-hindu-nationalists-worship-israels-nation-state-model-111450">being eroded</a>. </p>
<p>In this, the second episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a>, a series from The Conversation’s podcast The Anthill, we look at the history of Hindu nationalism, its role in India today, and its influence on the politics of the BJP.</p>
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<p>We speak to Shalini Sharma, a historian at Keele University, about the history of Hindu nationalism and the ideology of Hindutva. We find out about the family of Hindu nationalist organisations, including the powerful volunteer group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. Radha d’Souza, a reader in law at the University of Westminster, helps explain the RSS’s opposition to the secular nature of India’s constitution. </p>
<p>We call up Ajay Gudavarthy, associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in India, to discuss the appeal of Hindu nationalist politics to voters, the role it had in Modi’s election victory in 2014 and its importance in the 2019 polls. </p>
<p>We also take a look at the intersection of caste politics and Hindu nationalism – particularly around the thorny issue of caste reservations, a form of positive discrimination for certain groups. We hear about the dynamics of caste politics today from Suryakant Waghmore, an associate professor at the department of humanity and social sciences at the Indian Insitute of Technology-Bombay, who has done research on caste violence in different parts of India. He says it would be misplaced to attribute an increase in violence totally to the rise of the BJP, but that it’s part of a much longer power struggle within Indian society. </p>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-of-hindu-nationalism-india-tomorrow-part-1-podcast-transcript-115505">transcript of this episode</a> here, and also find out more about past and upcoming episodes in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">series episode guide</a>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">Subscribe to our Anthill podcast newsletter to hear about new episodes as soon as they drop.</a></em></p>
<p><em>Clarification: It’s asserted in the podcast that when the Congress Party fought its first elections, its electoral symbol was the the cow. In fact the party’s symbol from 1959 to 1972 was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Congress#/media/File:Election_symbol_two_oxen.svg">two bullocks</a>. After 1969, the faction led by Indira Ghandi used <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/research/congress-cow-politics-elections-manifesto-2018-5446682/">a symbol of a cow and suckling calf</a>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Credits</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kolkata-december-20-om-signed-flags-277358366?src=6vEj6Yq_Et7oIfpQSrenFg-1-10">arindambanerjee via Shutterstock</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_05_Intervention">Intervention by Lee Rosevere</a>, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, and <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Super_1222/07_Endeavour">Endeavour by Jahzzar</a> all via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>. Plus, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrdzK5l25dw">RSS Coimbatore Route March</a> via YouTube.</em></p>
<p><strong>Archive news clips:</strong></p>
<p><em>Election Results 2014: Modi wins India, NDA crosses 300 seats, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so7IvcXC7FQ&feature=youtu.be&t=119">NDTV</a></em></p>
<p><em>Dramatic shift in Indian politics with Modi set to win landslide election victory, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuzR6HUdCsc">euronews</a></em></p>
<p><em>Mediation For Ayodhya Dispute: Is This The Best Way Forward?, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cPgyPSpS3o">NDTV</a></em></p>
<p><em>Modi Govt Approves 10% Reservation For Economically Weak In Upper Castes | India Development Debate, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELjUqUFDYiQ&feature=youtu.be&t=16">ET Now</a></em></p>
<p><a href="https://pca.st/5Hul"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321533/original/file-20200319-22598-afljnr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1" alt="Listen on Pocket Casts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Anthill-id2625863?country=gb"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321531/original/file-20200319-22632-t8ds9t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="268" height="70"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> </p>
<p><a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p>The second part of this series from The Anthill podcast looks at the trajectories of Hindu nationalism in India.Indrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkAnnabel Bligh, Host of The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1146542019-04-09T11:13:36Z2019-04-09T11:13:36ZIndia Tomorrow: a podcast series from The Anthill – episode guide<p>India Tomorrow is a seven-part series by The Anthill, a podcast from The Conversation. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-whats-at-stake-in-the-2019-elections-114648">India heads to the polls</a> in April and May for the world’s biggest democratic exercise, we’ll explore, in weekly instalments, the ways in which nationalism and populism are playing out in the Indian context.</p>
<p>The topics we’ll investigate in this series are wide-ranging, and we’ll be hearing from academics around the world about their research into some of the key issues facing Indian society in the 21st century. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-trailer-114641?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=AnthillHeaderBanner2114648">Click here to listen to the India Tomorrow trailer from The Anthill</a></em></p>
<p><strong>Our first episode</strong>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-information-wars-113579">Fake news and the battle for information</a>, examines the role that fake news has played in fuelling violence against certain groups in India. We speak to academic experts about what motivates online trolls who spread misinformation. And we find out who is winning the battle to shape the public debate. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-information-wars-113579">Listen here</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-info-wars-transcript-115077">read the transcript</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>In part two</strong>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">The politics of Hindu nationalism</a>, we’ll work our way through the trajectories of Hindu nationalism in India and the ways in which it interacts with and responds to claims of caste emancipation. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-2-the-politics-of-hindu-nationalism-115494">Listen here</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-of-hindu-nationalism-india-tomorrow-part-2-podcast-transcript-115505">read the transcript</a>.</strong> </p>
<p><strong>Part three</strong> will take us to the valley of Kashmir, the site of confrontation between India and its neighbour Pakistan, both nuclear-armed. We’ll explore the history of the conflict, what it means for ordinary Kashmiris and what the <a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-india-and-pakistans-escalating-conflict-will-benefit-narendra-modi-ahead-of-elections-112570">recent escalation</a> of tensions means for the upcoming elections. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-3-kashmir-115733">Listen here</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-india-tomorrow-part-3-podcast-transcript-115732">read the transcript</a>.</strong> </p>
<p><strong>In part four</strong>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-4-women-gender-and-love-116115">Women, gender and love</a>, we dig into what life is like for women in India, including the social pressures facing young women. We’ll explore the extent to which they make up an electoral group in Indian politics, and find out how well they are represented among the country’s lawmakers. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-4-women-gender-and-love-116115">Listen here</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/women-gender-and-love-india-tomorrow-part-4-podcast-transcript-116197">read the transcript</a></strong>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268159/original/file-20190408-2921-5tuk6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An estimated 900m Indians will cast their votes in April and May.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/aljazeeraenglish/3528881444/sizes/l">Al Jazeera English via Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p><strong>Part five</strong> will focus on the ups and downs of the Indian economy during the first term of prime minister Narendra Modi, with special attention to the spectacular policy of banning high-denomination currency notes that shocked the country and that’s implications continue to be debated. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-5-economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-116678">Listen here</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/economic-growth-inequality-and-jobs-india-tomorrow-part-5-podcast-transcript-116688">read the transcript</a></strong>. </p>
<p><strong>In the sixth part</strong>, we’ll examine the role of young people in Indian politics and the concerns and aspirations of the estimated 135m first-time voters in the 2019 elections. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-6-what-young-indians-want-117024">Listen here</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-young-indians-want-india-tomorrow-part-6-podcast-transcript-117045">read the transcript</a></strong>.</p>
<p><strong>The final, seventh episode</strong>, our panel of academic experts guide us through the Indian election results and their implications – not just for India’s future but also the global future of democracy. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-7-what-narendra-modis-landslide-victory-means-for-india-117769">Listen here</a></strong>.</p>
<p><em>You can <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">sign up to The Anthill newsletter</a> to get an email about each new episode. Listen to The Anthill podcast via The Conversation’s website, or you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from, including <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill">Stitcher</a> and <a href="https://pca.st/5Hul">PocketCasts</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation. </span></em></p>Listen to academics from around the world in this seven-part podcast series on India ahead of the 2019 Indian elections.Indrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkAnnabel Bligh, Co-host, The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1150772019-04-09T11:08:47Z2019-04-09T11:08:47ZIndia Tomorrow part 1 podcast transcript: Fake news and the battle for information<p><em>This is a transcript of part one of The Anthill’s podcast series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a>. Click here to listen <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-part-1-information-wars-113579">to the full episode</a>.</em></p>
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<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/amogh-dhar-sharma-546097">Amogh Sharma</a>:</strong> In the last few days, after the Pulwama bomb attack, we have seen Kashmiri students in different parts of India who have actually been attacked for being Kashmiri. So this is really the nature of violence which fake news can engender in India.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Amogh Sharma is a PhD researcher at the University of Oxford. We spoke to him in the wake of the recent escalation of the long simmering conflict in Kashmir. He told us how India’s fake news problem has a tendency to stoke existing tensions. Amogh says that fake images, which went viral after the Pulwama bomb attack, were just the latest example in a long line of fake news stories that have led to violence in India in recent years.</p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> I think the impact that fake news can have in leading to violence and any sort of misinformation speaks to a number of things that really say something about the social and political landscape of what’s happening in India. I think the fact that a single WhatsApp message can often incite people into violence, into taking someone’s life, really says something about the kind of polarisation that is hiding right beneath the surface of of Indian social life.</p>
<p><em>India Tomorrow intro music</em></p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Hello. You’re listening to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill podcast</a> from The Conversation. This is the first episode in a new seven-part series we’re running called India Tomorrow. I’m Annabel Bligh, an editor at The Conversation. And joining me to guide us through this series is Indrajit Roy from the University of York. Indrajit, welcome.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/indrajit-roy-312163">Indrajit Roy</a>:</strong> Hi, it’s great to be here.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Indrajit, before we launch into our series, maybe you could tell us a bit about who you are and what you do. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> I teach at the Department of Politics at the University of York. My research focuses on the politics of development and democracy around the world. I was born and brought up in Delhi and worked several years with the development sector in different parts of India before coming to the UK to do my PhD at oxford.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So, 900m Indians are going to the polls throughout April and May, with charismatic and somewhat controversial prime minister Narendra Modi up for reelection. Instead of focusing on the minutiae of the election itself, we’ve decided to take a wider look at the big issues facing India today, with a view to seeing where it is headed – whether that’s with Modi at the helm or not. From your perspective, Indrajit, why do you think everyone should be intrigued to find out more about what’s going on in India at the moment?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Well, India is fascinating in and of itself. Not only is it the world’s largest democracy but also defies the conventional wisdom that development is a prerequisite for democracy. Impoverished by colonialism, Indians nevertheless introduced universal adult suffrage as far back as 1950, a full 15 years before economic superpowers such as the United States lifted literacy and tax qualifications for voting. India thus presents a very moving story of the ways in which some of the poorest people on the planet have sought to – against enormous odds – construct and sustain democracy. You know, for several decades after India’s independence from colonial rule, observers widely speculated that India would not survive, much less as a democracy. But we see that – warts and all – India not only survived but also emerged as one of the world’s most thriving democracies. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> And to what degree is this under threat today and for India going forward?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Oh, it’s absolutely under threat. And this is why the forthcoming elections next month are so crucial. India illustrates poignantly the global challenges faced by democracy underpinned by the emergence of right-wing populism and an exclusive form of nationalism. India today faces these challenges alongside people in Brazil, Turkey, the United States, Russia, China and several European countries. Prime minister Narendra Modi joins a galaxy of strongmen politicians such as Bolsonaro, Trump, Erdogan, Putin and Xi Jinping who are accused of presiding over the roll-backing the democratic achievements of the last few decades. Of course, these gentlemen (and they are all men!) are a symptom of the problem rather than the cause. Nevertheless, how Indians navigate the political challenges before them holds key lessons for the world as it confronts the global backsliding of democracy. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So, I have to admit I didn’t know a great deal about India before we started researching this series. But it’s been really fascinating to learn how issues like populism and nationalism are playing out there and the parallels we see in India with trends that are sweeping countries around the world. Then, of course, there’s this issue of fake news, which we’re digging into in this episode.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> That’s right. Fake news is a problem facing societies across the world, and has been a key contributor to the global backsliding of democracy. The rise of social media platforms allows people to disseminate information freely. Stories can go viral, even if they’re not true. And there have been a number of cases where they have stoked fears and fuelled violence in India. In this episode, we are going to explore how fake news and the battle for information shapes politics in India. </p>
<p>But first, here’s Amogh Sharma again, outlining the extent of India’s fake news problem.</p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> So here are some cold hard numbers: since 2012, there have been 125 incidents of mob-lynchings in India. These are just simply cow-related, bovine related mob lynchings which are taking place. There are far much more which have happened under the pretext of let’s say something called Love Jihad, or these concerns on child kidnappings which have also taken place.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> This phenomenon called Love Jihad is all to do with the controversy that surrounds relationships between Hindus and Muslims. It’s something we’re going to explore more in a future episode. But perhaps Indrajit, you could just explain the significance of cows in Indian culture to help us understand how fake news stories about cows can lead to mob lynchings.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> See, cows are considered sacred in Hinduism. While historians and social scientists debate the origins of the cow’s sacredness, the fact is that many Hindus don’t eat beef and in some Indian states cattle slaughter is illegal. But beef is eaten by others, such as Muslims and Dalits, a group of people who have historically been oppressed as “untouchables”. In recent years, there have been a rise of cow-protection squads called <em>gau rakshaks</em> in Hindi. Such squads have brought together hardline Hindus who see it as their duty to uphold the law and stop the transportation of cattle for slaughter and indeed even to physically ban people from eating beef. </p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> I think what really happens in a general scenario is that on WhatsApp or even maybe on Twitter or on general SMS, some rumour will start in some village where a community, usually Muslims or Dalits, will be accused of smuggling cattle or consuming beef. And once this information enters the public domain it gets shared and disseminated widely. And this whips up a frenzy and leads to attacks on these communities or a certain set of families who are often residing in some particular part of the city.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So just to clarify, in the cases that this happens, Indrajit, these Muslims and Dalits, are they not necessarily breaking the law when they are attacked by cow-protection squads?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> They may or may not be. The cow protection squads take matters into their own hands and administer vigilante justice with impunity. Much of the time, they act on rumours and speculation. And such messages are often shared via WhatsApp, which has end-to-end encryption, and so it’s impossible to track. </p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> So simply, those which have been on cow-related incidents, there’ve been two 297 victims with approximately 46 deaths. What is quite interesting with the statistics is that of all the people who were attacked in these cases of mob lynchings, 57% of them have been Muslims and 10% of them have been Dalits. And 90% of all these cases have taken place under the BJP rule ever since they took power in 2014. And more than half of them have taken place in those states where BJP is in power. So those are the kind of numbers we’re looking at. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Of course, here it is important to remember the deeper social roots of the violence. The rumours stoke existing fears and mutual suspicions among members of different groups. The BJP didn’t invent these antagonisms.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/gurpreet-mahajan-298255">Gurpreet Mahajan</a>:</strong> I think one should realise that we have had communal violence in the past, all through at the time of the partition of the country and the years after. So we’ve had many communal clashes. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> That’s Gurpreet Mahajan, a politics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.</p>
<p><strong>Gurpreet Mahajan:</strong> So this has been an old problem. The difference now really is that you have more incidents of what will be called isolated events, random events. The worry really is that once you allow individuals to be able to be vigilantes of various kinds, you are really creating a society in which nobody’s safe. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> We’re going to hear more from Gurpreet later about the wider context of populist politics at play in India. But first, we wanted to find out where the rumours that fuel a lot of this violence come from. Amogh Sharma has spoken to a number of India’s internet trolls, including those from a prominent group known as the “Internet Hindus”, to find out what it is that they want. </p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> Internet Hindus are self-confessed Hindu nationalists who belligerently defend their ideology on online social media and they also attack, what we call troll, people who are seen to be critics of Hindu nationalism.
Broadly speaking, they envision India as a Hindu Rashtra, that is a Hindu nation. And they believe in the ideology of Hindu nationalism as the basis of the cultural life of the nation. But, I think in terms of answering the question what they want, I think there is something far more immediate in their politics. And by that I mean that, what they’re looking for, is to, in the immediate, in the present, to capture the public sphere and for the ideology of Hindu nationalism to become the ideological commonsense of all Indians. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The Internet Hindus are often linked to the party that’s in power, the BJP, whose leader is the current prime minister, Narendra Modi and has a Hindu nationalist platform. But, when we asked Amogh what these internet trolls want, we found it’s not quite clear cut.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Yep, he said the majority of these supporters are not simple agents of the BJP. They have a more complex relationship with the party.</p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> In fact, I remember quite clearly one sentence which one of these self-confessed Internet Hindus told me. He said that: “When I’m on the internet my goal is not to make Modi or someone else as prime minister, my goal is to restore glory to the Hindu nation.” Now this sounds like a really hyperbolic sentence, but I think it really goes at the heart of what’s happening with these Internet Hindus and the role social media is playing. It is certainly true that BJP and other parties have these high tech social media cells which generate the propaganda that becomes so virulent during election season and these Internet Hindus are also helping them in the process. But I think ordinary social media users have taken on to social media to engage in a certain form of politics which political parties cannot fully control. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Nonetheless, the BJP is widely seen as being incredibly skilled at digital campaigning and way ahead of other parties on this front. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/subir-sinha-125936">Subir Sinha</a>:</strong> My name is Subir Sinha and I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Subir explained how the BJP’s landslide victory in the 2014 national elections was partly down to its effective marketing strategies and dominance of social media. </p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> So they basically got early advice about the use of social media and by sort of 2010, 2011, not only had they established a very large presence on Facebook, but also they had dedicated channels on YouTube. By the time the 2014 elections came round they also had full dominance over Twitter. And if you count the comments pages of newspapers, where people write comments anonymously under newspaper articles, they also had complete dominance over that as well. Even sort of question and answer platforms like Quora begin to see a lot more BJP-oriented content around that point in time. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> If 2014 was India’s first social media election, the 2019 elections are widely anticipated to be the “WhatsApp elections”, thanks to the messaging app’s popularity and track record of being used to influence voters and disseminate fake news.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> And once again you know the BJP has to be credited for the fact that they were able to recognise the political potential of WhatsApp both in terms of creating closed discussion groups and also in terms of mobilisation of people not only for electoral purposes, but because I think one of the hallmarks of Modi’s politics is the kind of continuous mobilisation of the population. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So in the same way that we were hearing earlier – about how fake news stories can spread like wildfire and whip up emotions – this can also be used for political purposes. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Absolutely, you get stories spread about political leaders such as Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition party, the Congress. For example, after the Kashmir attack, a story went viral of a photoshopped image of him standing next to the suicide bomber and questions over whether the Congress party was behind the attack. </p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> But also you know comments about the fact that the Gandhi family is probably not entirely Hindu. They have Italian blood. That makes them even more alien to the people of India and so on and so forth.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> As Amogh emphasised, these kinds of stories don’t necessarily come from the BJP headquarters. The party relies on a very wide network of supporters around the country. Perhaps at the other end of the spectrum to the Internet Hindus are a new group called Academics for NaMo – which is shorthand for Narendra Modi. I spoke to Swadesh Singh from Delhi University who’s one of the group’s organisers.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/swadesh-singh-715354">Swadesh Singh</a>:</strong> We are vouching for thought leaders, intellectuals, research scholars, academics, thinkers, columnists, panellists. These are the set of people who disseminate information, knowledge, in different forms. Whether they give lectures, they teach students, or they write columns, or they appear on TV or they participate in public debate. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> They recognise the importance of shaping public debates over how the prime minister has done over the last five years in office. And they set up recently ahead of the 2019 elections.</p>
<p><strong>Swadesh Singh:</strong> It is not just a battle of votes, it is also a battle of narratives. It is also a battle of ideas, that which ideas should prevail. Which narrative is for the betterment of the country? So we think the narrative propounded by prime minister Narendra Modi, the narrative of new India, is the best narrative available today. That’s why everyone should come forward and through their words, through their action, through their dissemination of knowledge, information, they should support prime minister Narendra Modi in this general election. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Swadesh is absolutely right. It’s a battle of narratives. And it’s not just the BJP that has online support. India’s other parties have woken up to the need to fight this war of information. And it often doesn’t make for a particularly high level of public debate. There are trolls working on behalf of the Congress, for example, engaging in a large amount of online abuse. We asked Amogh Sharma about some of their motivations.</p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> I think it’s about attacking people who are Internet Hindus for their politics and engaging in an endless stream of vicious abuse. So for every Internet Hindu that calls someone a “libtard” which is a portmanteau for “liberal” and, I’m sorry to use the word, “retard”, they will call someone a “sanghi”, they will call someone a “bhakt”, and a bhakt is a loyal devout follower of someone. So they’ll engage in these sort of you know word plays, these, spin new words. And that is really I think goes at the heart of the politics of presence on social media that these internet Hindus and other trolls really occupy.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> So it’s not a one-way fight and I expect we’ll see spin and fake news from all sides in India’s elections. The BJP certainly seems to be the most effective party, though, when it comes to online campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Amogh Sharma:</strong> I think one can state quite unequivocally that BJP is taking the lead in this sphere. I think the range of misinformation and fake news that all Hindu nationalist groups, including the BJP, indulge in, far outnumbers those of all other parties put together.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Subir Sinha is keen to emphasise not just the size of the BJP’s online presence, but the emotions the party effectively taps into.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> So the idea of you can’t just be nationalist you’ve got to be hyper nationalist. You can’t just be upset with Pakistan’s actions you’ve got to be enraged by Pakistan’s actions. And again we see that you know this is a fairly global phenomenon. And to that extent we have to acknowledge that you know while Modi and the BJP’s politics are hyper nationalist, it shares with the current hyper nationalist moment which is sweeping across the world. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Another hallmark of the BJP is the popularity of the party’s leader, Narendra Modi. He has successfully cultivated an image as a strong and charismatic leader. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Totally. Modi remains the BJP’s star campaigner and performer. He is absolutely popular among the masses and leads in most opinion polls about who should be India’s next prime minister. Modi’s humble origins as a chaiwallah – a tea-seller – has enormous appeal. His meteoric rise from small-town Gujarat to the highest office in the country resonates with lots of Indians. Here’s Subir again. </p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> So this is a very much a Modi-oriented thing. Unlike any other political party, there is very strong identification among supporters of the BJP with Modi personally. That he is someone whose word must be taken beyond any kind of demand for evidence or proof because he is the leader who is an unparalleled great man.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> And, Subir says, this support for Modi takes on religious proportions. </p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> I have written about this in a <a href="https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24533/1/sinha-fragile-hegemony-modi-social-media-competitive-electoral-populism-india-%20IJoC.pdf">paper</a> in which I have provided links to videos in which you can see that someone is in a temple and is praying to the God Shiva. And as the prayer becomes more and more frenetic, the face of Shiva gets replaced by that of Modi. But it is not just the people who think of him as God. There is a very strong element of “well-educated people” who just believe that you know nations need very strong leaders from time to time to take them on an upward trajectory. This is obviously something we’ve seen across the world in previous decades as well. And that he is the man. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Modi even has his own app, the NaMo app, through which he broadcasts his views and stays in touch with his adoring fans.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Yes, I asked Subir about this. He said even the way it’s branded NaMo has religious undertones.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> NaMo is not just an acronym for Narendra Modi. But also Namo, in many Hindi or many Hindu religious chants, they might end with “<em>namo nama</em>” which means you know I bow before the God kind of thing. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Indrajit, are you familiar with the NaMo app? Is it something you have on your phone or know people who subscribe to?</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> I don’t unfortunately have the app on my phone. But I know of people who’ve subscribed to this app. And Subir is right, they aren’t the religious sorts at all, they are successful businessmen, well-trained professionals, people who you wouldn’t usually associate with religion or religious ideas. So yes, there is a wider appeal than just the religious Hindu.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> And here’s Subir to explain what it is that they’re getting through this app.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> So you can basically get his statements and his speeches many of whom may or may not be shown on national television in the same degree of length or detail that you as a Modi fan might want to see them. You can also get the archive of his monologues, which are twice a month on national radio. You might be sent content to then use to disseminate across your different social media platforms that you might be using. You can also buy Modi merchandise on that. So if you wanted to get a Modi mask for your child or a Modi doll for your child or something of that sort, or a t-shirt, you could buy those things. But I think that the most important element of that is that he solicits advice for his monologues via the app.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> So this is the thing. It’s a two-way process. Through his app, Modi is able to stay in touch with his supporters and display how engaged he is with the people. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> The huge focus on Modi as a political personality and his method of interacting with people through his own social media app, is not dissimilar to how US president Donald Trump uses Twitter.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Modi’s direct appeal to the public and ability to tap into and stir up the mood of the nation has had him branded a populist in a similar vein to not just Trump, but Brazil’s new president Bolsonaro, and president Duterte of the Philippines. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> To talk us through how Modi fits into this global trend, here’s Professor Gurpreet Mahajan.</p>
<p><strong>Gurpreet Mahajan:</strong> There seem to be three kinds of conditions that invariably create conducive conditions for the emergence of such kind of politics. One of course is economic conditions that prevail. Then there is the context and anxieties generated by terrorism that affects large numbers of people, more than just the globalisation losers as it were. So you play on those anxieties to say who is the enemy within or whom should we be careful about? So you can have, you know, “us” and “them” kind of politics. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> These are areas we’re going to be exploring in future episodes. </p>
<p><strong>Gurpreet Mahajan:</strong> And then you have a force and technology triggered new social media. So you can bypass the old which seems to be the voice of the past or the elite and allow yourself to really connect with people who think and who can understand and share these anxieties and appeal to them directly.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> In many ways, as we’ve heard, the BJP and Narendra Modi are winning this battle to connect with people – through appealing to their emotions and through Modi’s personal appeal to many of his followers. But it seems that the Congress party recognises this and is opting for a different approach. Here’s what Subir Sinha has found.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> What is interesting is that if you speak with Congress social media people, they will tell you that they cannot and therefore will not try to replicate the BJP’s strategies on social media. In other words, yes there will be fake news from time to time, but they actually don’t own 25 or 30 fake news factories, that they say the BJP does. Secondly, they know that there is no identification with Rahul Gandhi in the same fanatical way that there is with Modi. So they are not going for a strong leader kind of a platform. So what they seem to be doing much more is to actually take it back to the policy side of populism.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Subir says populism takes two forms: one is all about style and the other relates to substance – or policies.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> Which is to make pro-poor statements. If they’ve written off loans for farmers in states that they have recently won, then to say, “hey listen, you know we make promises that we keep. Recently they have also returned land taken from tribal populations for handing over to corporations for megaprojects. So they basically want to steer away to some extent – because they can’t win by becoming another Modi – to try to think of populism in a slightly different way. By downplaying the populist style and the concept of the great leader and think much more of populism as a set of policies which provides benefits and support to those who need it. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Subir also talked about a certain level of public wariness that has set in when it comes to fake news stories because there have been so just many of them.</p>
<p><strong>Subir Sinha:</strong> I think there is also a kind of fatigue also on WhatsApp, on how much fake news the BJP has produced and also the close connections between certain television channels and those people who are so-called social media influencers. People who were once quoting those television channels on WhatsApp kind of conversations to make their point will no longer want to do so. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> When it comes to fake news, it’s certainly interesting times we live in. I think it’s the way it appeals to people’s emotions that makes it so hard to combat. And that we can be quite lazy when we see a news headline that we agree with – it’s so easy to retweet or forward it to friends on a WhatsApp group.</p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> It’s definitely a key issue to watch out for in the Indian elections, as with all elections these days. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> That’s it for this episode. We’ll be exploring the issue of Hindu nationalism in part two of India Tomorrow. </p>
<p><strong>Shalini Sharma:</strong> Hindutva basically claimed that a Hindu is somebody whose religion was born in the territory that we now know as pre-partition India. So Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Hindus of all different sort of sects within Hinduism, they are Hindus. People whose religion was not born in India, so Christians and Muslims do not constitute Hindus and are thus outside of Hindutva. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> That’s in part two of this series from The Anthill, India Tomorrow. Do subscribe to The Anthill so you don’t miss out. A big thanks to my co-host Indrajit Roy. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Thanks Annabel. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> You can read more of The Conversation’s coverage of India by academics around the world on <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/indian-elections-2019-68064">theconversation.com</a> or follow us on social media. If you’ve got any questions relating to what we’ve been discussing in this series, please do get in touch via email on podcast@theconversation.com or on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnthillPod">@anthillpod</a>. We’ll put these to a panel of academics we’ve got lined up to discuss the election results at the end of May. </p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> A big thanks to all the academics who spoke to us for this episode and to the journalism department at City University for letting us use their studios. The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and me, Annabel Bligh. Sound by Alex Portfelix. And thanks to our intern Salome Pkhaladze for her editing help. Thanks for listening. </p>
<p><strong>Indrajit Roy:</strong> Goodbye.</p>
<p><strong>Annabel Bligh:</strong> Goodbye!</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can listen to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-from-the-anthill-trailer-for-new-podcast-series-114641">trailer for India Tomorrow</a> here, and also <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">sign up to The Anthill newsletter</a> to get an email about each new episode. Do get in touch with any questions via podcast@theconversation.com or reach out on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnthillPod">@anthillpod</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This is a transcript of part one of The Anthill’s podcast series, India Tomorrow, on fake news and information wars.Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1135792019-04-09T11:08:45Z2019-04-09T11:08:45ZIndia Tomorrow part 1: fake news and the battle for information<p>Fake news is a problem facing society across the world. The rise of social media platforms allows people to disseminate information freely. Stories can go viral, even if they’re not true. And there have been a number of cases where they have stoked fears and fuelled violence in India. </p>
<p>In this, the first episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a>, a series from The Conversation’s Anthill podcast, we explore how fake news and the battle for information shapes politics in India. </p>
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<p>We speak to Amogh Sharma, a PhD researcher at the University of Oxford, about the way that fake news stokes existing tensions in Indian society. We also find out what motivates the internet trolls fighting for and against current prime minister, Narendra Modi.</p>
<p>Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, is extremely effective at digital campaigning. Subir Sinha, Indian politics expert at SOAS, University of London, outlines how the party won the battle for information in the 2014 elections and why it is well placed to do so again in 2019. He explains how Modi successfully taps into people’s emotions and has cultivated an image as a strong and charismatic leader.</p>
<p>Gurpreet Mahajan, a politics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, tells us how Modi’s politics plays into the global trend of populism. And how the violence that has been fuelled by fake news in recent years has deeper social roots.</p>
<p>We also speak to Swadesh Singh from the University of Delhi. He heads up Academics for Namo, which brings together academics and thought leaders who believe Modi is the best candidate for leading India into a better future. </p>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/battle-for-india-part-1-info-wars-transcript-115077">transcript of this episode here</a>.</p>
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<h2>Credits</h2>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: EPA-EFE/Harish Tyagi.</em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_05_Intervention">Intervention by Lee Rosevere</a>, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, and <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Super_1222/07_Endeavour">Endeavour by Jahzzar</a>. All via <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/">Free Music Archive</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>News clips from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrbctIt79pQ">CNN-News18</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p>India Tomorrow part 1 explores how fake news and the battle for information shapes Indian society.Annabel Bligh, Host of The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationIndrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1146482019-04-02T12:53:14Z2019-04-02T12:53:14ZIndia: what’s at stake in the 2019 elections<p>Indians are about to start voting in the world’s largest democratic exercise. The country’s 900m registered voters will vote in national elections between April 11 and May 19 across 1m polling stations in 543 constituencies. India has a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy with voters electing their representatives to India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha. Voting has been staggered <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/india/election-commission-live-updates-lok-sabha-elections-to-be-conducted-in-7-phases/articleshow/68343581.cms">over seven phases</a> to ensure that the electoral process is provided the necessary security. The results will be declared on May 23. </p>
<p>India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, is up for re-election as the head of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies the National Democratic Alliance. A polarising figure, opinions diverge sharply over Modi’s record in government and his legacy. </p>
<p>Supporters insist that Modi has ushered in economic development, military strength, national pride and a sense of confidence among the country’s Hindu majority. Critics challenge such claims, pointing to soaring unemployment (the worst in <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-s-unemployment-rate-hit-45-year-high-in-2017-18-report/story-1MYf1tFZ0thkz1UGfKp1BP.html">45 years</a>), agrarian distress, reassertion of caste privilege and social polarisation. </p>
<p>Modi faces a range of opposition forces. The principle opposition is provided by the Congress Party and its allies, the United Progressive Alliance. Other opponents include regional parties in different states, such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, as well as leftist parties in the state of Kerala. The BJP and its allies enjoy a <a href="http://164.100.47.194/Loksabha/Members/StatisticalAnalysis.aspx">crushing majority in the Lok Sabha</a>, controlling 336 of the 543 seats: the BJP alone has 268 seats. </p>
<p>Fears abound that Modi’s re-election will rent asunder India’s constitutional values and social fabric. Since the BJP’s ascension to power, lynchings of social minorities, especially Dalits and Muslims, have <a href="https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/1/12005/Cow-Lynching-Timeline-Steady-Increase-Under-BJP-With-A-Spike-in-2017">been on the rise</a>. Leaders of India’s historically oppressed Dalit communities <a href="https://www.news18.com/news/politics/rss-bjps-main-agenda-is-to-remove-reservation-for-sc-st-says-jignesh-mewani-2000939.html">remain anxious</a> that the BJP seeks to dismantle the affirmative actions for oppressed populations guaranteed by the Indian constitution. The very idea of India is at stake.</p>
<h2>A thriving democracy</h2>
<p>When India became independent in 1947, few people expected the country to survive. Nevertheless, Indians introduced universal adult suffrage soon after obtaining independence and adopted a republican constitution in 1950, a full 15 years before economic superpowers such as the US lifted literacy and tax qualifications for voting. </p>
<p>Throughout the 1950s and 1960s international observers <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9jbWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA338&lpg=PA338&dq=The+odds+are+wholly+against+the+survival+of+freedom&source=bl&ots=Mu7cg_K4Yr&sig=ACfU3U1IJ_KU5W-o_oNBkv6aoLU2a_0anQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib6Lvc2K7hAhXMRxUIHTfMB4cQ6AEwA3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=The%20odds%20are%20wholly%20against%20the%20survival%20of%20freedom&f=false">remained sceptical</a> of India surviving as <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2005/07/17/stories/2005071700140300.htm">a democracy</a>, given its huge levels of poverty and illiteracy. Yet, India not only survived but also emerged – warts and all – as one of the world’s most thriving democracies. The country presents a very moving story of the ways in which some of the poorest people on the planet have sought to construct and sustain democracy against enormous odds. Their achievements are under threat today.</p>
<p>India poignantly illustrates the global challenges posed to democracy by the rise of nationalism and populism. Identity politics, or a politics that focuses on people’s particular social identities, permeates political narratives in India as elsewhere in the world in 2019. Indians are faced with an idea of nationalism that seeks to exclude significant sections of their own population from its ambit. And they have borne the brunt of right-wing populism, as shown by the growth of <a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-cow-as-hindu-nationalism-surges-in-india-cows-are-protected-but-minorities-not-so-much-76632">cow-protection squads</a> administering vigilante justice over the last few years. </p>
<p>Social identity provides the basis of political mobilisation. India today faces these challenges alongside countries such as Brazil, Turkey, the US and various European countries. Modi joins a galaxy of strongmen politicians such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the US’s Donald Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, accused of rolling back democratic achievements of the last few decades.</p>
<p>How Indians respond to the challenges of exclusionary nationalism, right-wing populism and supremacist identity politics in the 2019 elections holds key lessons for the world as it confronts the global backsliding of democracy. After all, elections provide a window onto the hopes harboured by citizens, the anxieties they confront and the possibilities they imagine. The narratives that emerge prior to, during, and immediately after any elections offer unique insights into ongoing processes of social change. </p>
<h2>India Tomorrow</h2>
<p>It is into these imaginations, narratives and social processes, rather than the machinations of the different political parties, that The Conversation will delve over the next few weeks.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-trailer-114641?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=AnthillHeaderBanner2114648">Click here to listen to the India Tomorrow trailer from The Anthill</a></em></p>
<p>In a seven part series, India Tomorrow, from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill podcast</a>, The Conversation will explore the ways in which nationalism and populism are playing out in India as the country heads to polls. We will be speaking to academics from around the world to help illuminate the topics that are not only key to the forthcoming elections but offer an insight into the social upheaval Indians are experiencing in the 21st century.</p>
<p>You can listen to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-from-the-anthill-trailer-for-new-podcast-series-114641">trailer for India Tomorrow</a> here, and also <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">sign up to The Anthill newsletter</a> to get an email about each new episode. Do get in touch with any questions via podcast@theconversation.com or reach out on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnthillPod">@anthillpod</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>India heads to the polls in April and May for the world’s biggest democratic exercise. Why the world should be watching this election.Indrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1146412019-04-02T12:53:14Z2019-04-02T12:53:14ZIndia Tomorrow podcast series from The Anthill – trailer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266872/original/file-20190401-177171-obn6y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian Flag</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Populist politics, divisive nationalism, an under-performing economy and a strongman leader. Like many countries around the world, India is grappling with these issues at the moment. But the world’s largest democracy <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-here-is-whats-at-stake-in-the-2019-elections-114648">is at a crossroads</a>. </p>
<p>Around 900m Indians are heading to the polls over the next six weeks to decide if they want to reelect the current government of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some commentators have said the very idea of India is at stake.</p>
<p>India Tomorrow is a seven-part podcast series by The Anthill. Instead of focusing on the minutiae of the election campaign, we’ll be exploring some of the major issues facing India – whether that’s with Modi at the helm or not.</p>
<p>We’ll be looking at how identity politics, a global phenomenon, plays out in India. We’ll be speaking to academics from around the world about the rise of Hindu nationalism, Kashmir, the role of caste and gender in shaping Indian society, and how women and young people experience these.</p>
<p>Keep track of the episodes that have been published so far, and what’s still to come in <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">our series episode guide</a>.</p>
<p>You can <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/23816052A5FFA0842540EF23F30FEDED">sign up to The Anthill newsletter</a> to get an email about each new episode. We’ll also be publishing transcripts of each episode on The Conversation. And do get in touch with any questions via <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">podcast@theconversation.com</a> or via Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/AnthillPod">@AnthillPod</a>. We’ll be putting your questions to academics a bit later in the series.</p>
<p><strong>Credits:</strong></p>
<p><em>The Anthill is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Editing by Alex Portfelix. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em></p>
<p><em>Picture source: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_Flag_(18611924431).jpg">Ashwin Kumar via Wikimedia Commons</a></em></p>
<p><em>Music: <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tranko/VA_-_Clinical_Jazz_excerpt_3/Flying_Cat_amp_Sitar">Flying Cat & Sitar by Tranko</a>, via Free Music Archive</em> </p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
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<p><a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114641/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annabel Bligh works for The Conversation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Indrajit Roy receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>As the world's largest democracy heads to the polls, we explore the big issues facing India in a seven-part podcast series.Annabel Bligh, Co-host, The Anthill Podcast, The ConversationIndrajit Roy, Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.