Indian voters, worried about jobs and angry about corruption, look set to turf out the ruling Congress party in the world’s biggest election starting on Monday in favour of the opposition Hindu nationalists under hardliner Narendra Modi.
After 10 years of leftist rule by Congress and the Gandhi family dynasty, surveys show the young and increasingly aspirational electorate yearning for change, frustrated about the country’s direction and irked by higher food prices.
Modi, a hawkish three-times chief minister from western Gujarat state, is the son of a tea seller who has risen through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to become the leading prime ministerial candidate.
Though tainted by religious riots and often viewed with hostility by Muslims, the right-winger has marketed himself as an economic reformer intent on rebooting the economy and creating jobs.
“For the past six months in every corner of India I have been talking of changing India’s future, development, youth employment and respect for women,” Modi told a rally last week.
Pre-election polls – fallible in the past and famously wrong when Congress won in 2004 – show the BJP likely to emerge as the biggest party in the next 543-member parliament.
But it is forecast to fall short of a majority, meaning another coalition will need to be stitched together comprising India’s numerous regional parties led by often populist and mercurial personalities.
The election itself will be the biggest in history as 814 million eligible voters – more than twice the population of the United States – travel to nearly a million polling stations in a staggered process over six weeks.
Such is India’s population growth that 100 million people have joined the electoral rolls since the last vote five years ago. More than half of the country is aged under 25.
Despite a decade of economic growth that has averaged 7.6 percent per year, a sharp slowdown since 2012 has badly hurt the Congress, leading to crashes in the rupee, the investment rate and jobs growth.
Modi has made industrialisation and infrastructure key priorities in a country with millions of new young people joining the workforce each year, mostly with little prospect of employment in the formal sector. He has also promised to tackle endemic corruption after a string of scandals in the second term of the Congress-led government.
“Overall, they (voters) certainly think things will improve under Modi,” Sanjay Kumar, director of Delhi-based think tank the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, told AFP.
The Indian stock market has raced to record highs in recent weeks.
Voting takes place from April 7 to May 12. Results will be announced on a single day on May 16.
India under Modi, an unabashed nationalist, would likely result in a more muscular foreign policy at a time when the country is emerging as a defender of the developing world on issues from climate change to global trade.
But many observers worry about his domestic impact on one of the world’s most diverse countries, home to large religious minorities who live under a secular constitution.
A bachelor, Modi is steeped in the ideology of Hindu nationalism, which is often antagonistic towards Muslims, and he remains tainted by religious riots in Gujarat in 2002.
More than 1 000 people, mostly Muslims, died in a spasm of violence shortly after he became chief minister, leading the United States and European powers to boycott him for more than a decade.
Those diplomatic positions were reversed only recently when it became clear he was poised for a possible victory. The US ambassador to New Delhi met him for the first time in February.
Modi has never been found guilty of wrongdoing, despite multiple investigations, but a woman he appointed as a minister was jailed for life in 2012 for orchestrating some of the worst of the killing.
His main opponent is Rahul Gandhi, the 43-year-old fourth-generation scion of the Gandhi political bloodline, who is leading the Congress into national polls for the first time.
With no record in cabinet and years of staying out of the spotlight, the former management consultant has much to prove. Some polls predict the worst-ever result for Congress, which is still run by his mother, Sonia.
“The UPA (Congress-led coalition) government has performed remarkably well... and don’t get misguided by tall promises,” he told supporters last week.
Among the populist regional chiefs set to play a role in any future coalition is a former film star, a communist-fighting spinster and a low-caste icon famed for building elephant statues.
The Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party, only 18 months old and led by a corruption-fighting former tax inspector, is an unpredictable element in this year’s polls with its ambitions to win 100 seats.
Sapa-AFP