Politics of 1.4bn people in democratic India
Ruchir Sharma talks to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu and interview both Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi offering intimate view inside the lives and minds of India’s people. Sharma also explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian leaders since Indira Gandhi.
Ruchir Sharma, a global strategist and emerging markets expert, at Morgan Stanley, accompanied a group of analysts and journalists to witness rambunctious campaigning for the state national election, has left the big cities and spend time in the villages and listened to voters in the Mofussil.
His descriptions are filled with rich anecdotes about horrors and pleasures of travelling to rural India pothole filled roads, filthy hotels but generous hospitality in people’s homes and sense of security in areas frequented by dacoits and thugs.
“The best laid plans rarely survive then Indian road” he writes.
Sharma and his companions began to understand the rise of Bharatiya Janata Party’s charismatic Narendra Modi, and the collapse and later revival of the Congress party. The publication of Democracy on the Road is timed to coincide with the latest general election to be held in April and May 2019. According to Sharma, BJP could lose its majority in the lower house of parliament -elected as in UK – the first past the post constituency basis if opposition party unite together to unseat Modi.
The group met with Modi and his right-hand man Amit Shah on various campaign trails are among the most unpleasant and confrontational in the book , as the BJP leaders distrust of the liberal media and resent any mention of the massacre of Muslims in 2002 when Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, a state in Western India.
In the run up to this year’s elections, BJP’s approach has been more divisive and more nationalistic rather than putting emphasis on attracting investment, creating jobs, improving sanitation and fighting corruption.
However, Sharma is really optimistic about democracy in India as a political system as the country’s energy and unpredictability has so far kept it free of enduring dictatorship.
India is a country with 1.4bn population – three times the population of Europe and more than four times that of the US- with multiple languages, cultures, religion and social strata and caste distinctions. Like England the class system, India has the caste system which creates several distinctions that give special significance to the notion that all politics is truly local.
Sharma focuses on the political process and reveals the anti-incumbency is better predictor of election results than economic performance, and community and local support is absolutely vital for the successful politician, many of whom are convicted criminals.
In India good politics has nothing to do with good economics but much to do with old loyalties and stimulating raw emotions.
Democracy on the Road: A 25-Year Journey Through India by Ruchir Sharma, Allen Lane, £25, 389 pages.