Narendra Modi, a man with a massacre on his hands, is not the reasonable choice for India - The Guardian

It looks likely that Modi will be India's next prime minister. But his apologists can't dismiss the facts about his rule as chief minister of Gujarat.

The world's biggest election began yesterday: one in which more than half a billion Indians are set to turn out to vote over the next six weeks. Polls suggest that the Congress party will take an unprecedented pummelling – which makesNarendra Modi, leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, frontrunner to be India's next prime minister.

Modi bears a responsibility for some of the worst religious violence ever seen in independent India – but there's nothing like looking like a winner to attract apologists. And the standard apology for Modi comes in two parts. First, there is normally an acknowledgement that the chief minister of Gujarat bears some vague responsibility for the orgy of killing and rape that engulfed his state in 2002 – but, um, wasn't that all a long time ago? And hasn't he behaved himself since – or, as the FT put it yesterday, done his best to "downplay tensions"between Hindus and Muslims? This is followed by pointing to Gujarat's rapid economic development and an appeal: shouldn't the rest of India enjoy some Modinomics? Or, as Gurcharan Das, the former head of Procter & Gamble India, put it in a piece for the Times of India last weekend: "There will always be a trade-off in values at the ballot box and those who place secularism above demographic dividend are wrong and elitist."

Given the enormity of the allegations against Modi, this is frankly pathetic. First, the Gujarat massacres have not safely been consigned to the past; whatever the claims of his supporters either in India or over here (such as the Labour MP Barry Gardiner who invited him to Britain last year), there has been no"clean chit" for Modi. Courts in India are still hearing allegations against him. And second, the much-talked about Gujarati model may have brought lots of money to the state, but it has ended up in relatively few hands, without yielding improvements in health, infant mortality, or even workers' wages.

Let's look at the carnage of 2002 first. On 27 February that year, a train coach carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire in Godhra station in Gujarat. Fifty-eight people died. Within hours and without a shred of evidence, Modi declared that the Pakistani secret services had been to blame; he then had the charred bodies paraded in the main city of Ahmedabad; and let his own party support a state-wide strike for three days. What followed was mass bloodshed: 1,000 dead on official estimates, more than 2,000 by independent tallies. The vast majority of those who died were Muslim. Mobs of men dragged women and young girls out of their homes and raped them. In 2007, the investigative magazine Tehelka recorded boasts from some of the ringleaders. One, Babu Bajrangi, boasted of how he slit open the womb of a pregnant woman.

When BJP supporters try to dismiss the pogrom of 2002 as ancient and contested history, what they are trying to erase is that epic, shameful violence. Other allegations have been made about Modi's direct involvement in the carnage, but the ones I have listed above aren't contested by any serious observer.

Now try this thought experiment. Imagine if, in the wake of 7/7, which killed 52 civilians, Ken Livingstone had not behaved with his commendable dignity, but had immediately blamed the tube attacks on jihadis; paraded the bodies up and down Pall Mall; and then declared a capital-wide strike. As Suresh Grover, the human-rights campaigner working for the families of three British citizens who were killed in Gujarat in 2002, puts it, he would have probably been arrested for wilful neglect of duty, hate speech and for inciting violence. Modi, by contrast, said a couple of years ago that he felt the same pain over the bloodshed as a passenger in a car that has just run over a puppy. He referred to the refugee camps set up to shelter some of the 200,000 Muslims who lost their homes as "baby-making factories". And his minister for women is now serving 28 years in prison for murder and conspiracy to murder.

All of this is routinely summed up in journalistic shorthand that refers to the chief minister as being a "polarising" or "controversial" figure.

As for the so-called Gujarati development model, there isn't one. The state has enjoyed growth but very little development. Under Modi, it has lagged behind the other major states in India in tackling infant mortality, in reducing poverty, and in increasing literacy. In 2006, there were even more undernourished children in Gujarat than in 1993, which Modi has claimed is because middle-class girls are "beauty-conscious".

Big businesses back Modi, but that is because he gives them so much. As a string of reports from the independent Comptroller and Auditor General, among other bodies, points out, his administration has sold off public land dirt cheap to industrialists, provided companies with energy at below-market prices and given them loans at an interest rate of 0.1%. They in return have provided him with sponsorship and rides in their private jets. As Atul Sood, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, has written: "The governance model of Gujarat is all about aggressive implementation of development on behalf of the big private investor. It is a model that works for the rich and against the poor."

And this somehow represents an improvement for India.

By Aditya Chakrabortty :http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/07/narendra-modi-massacre-next-prime-minister-india

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Money men can't make Modi a sure betBy Daniele Grassi

Between April 7 and May 12, nearly 815 million Indians, about one sixth of the world population, will elect new members of the Lok Sabha (lower house) from over 15,000 candidates. For that occasion, approximately 930,000 polling stations will be opened in order to allow everyone to exercise their right to vote, even in the remotest corners of the country.

These elections will be the most expensive in the history of India. According to estimates by the Center for Media Studies, the campaign will absorb nearly US$% billion, three times more than 2009 elections and only $2 billion less than the US presidential

election.

This fact, in itself, sheds some light on the ongoing electoral competition. The soaring costs are a reflection of the lavish election campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief, Narendra Modi, frontrunner to lead India's next government. His candidacy is strongly supported by the Indian economic establishment, which has already allocated hundreds of millions of rupees to the project, and tried to influence the attitude of the media toward the BJP leader.

Since the announcement of his candidacy, in fact, a number of media outlets (many of which are controlled by the economic lobbies) have launched a campaign aimed at highlighting the successes achieved by Modi during his years at the helm of the state of Gujarat, and to enhance his credentials as a national leader.

The data on the economic development of Gujarat do indeed appear to be hard facts. The Economist called it the "Indian Guangdong", in reference to one of the richest provinces of China. Under Modi's government, Gujarat 's gross domestic product has grown at an average rate of about 10%, consistently above the national level. Representing only 5% of India's population, the State accounts for about 16% of its manufacturing output and a quarter of its total exports.

These results have been achieved through a significant simplification of the red tape, and the quite obsessive attention given by Modi to each single investor, an attitude that has also earned him the support of the international economic community. In November, Goldman Sachs raised India's rating from "underweight" to "market weight" in view of Modi's possible success in the next election.

At the moment, however, the leader of the BJP has not yet clearly defined its economic agenda. This could be a deliberate choice intended to keep his hands free, allowing him to oppose the populism of the other political forces. Or the lack of a detailed strategy could be an attempt to hold together competing currents within the party, a liberal one and another one which is more markedly nationalist even in the economic field.

Therefore, the support of the Indian elite could be related to its fears of a possible victory by the Congress or the so-called Third Front - a coalition of regional parties and various leftist groups - rather than to blind trust in Modi.

The last years of the government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the Congress party have been marked by numerous corruption scandals and a long series of failed opportunities, with the GDP growth rate more than halved, from 10% for 2010 to the current 4.9%. Similarly, the brief period in power of the Aam Aadmi Party in New Delhi was marked by a highly populist economic policy and an unwillingness to undertake government responsibilities. Finally, the heterogeneity of the Third Front gives little hope of it articulating a clear and coherent economic agenda.

But Modi has his problems, too. He is distrusted by many due to a style of government considered excessively authoritarian and centralist, and little inclined to the art of compromise and mediation. And his political career will always be tainted by the violence that occurred in 2002 in "his" state, Gujarat, when a terrorist attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya triggered a strong reaction by the local population against the Muslim community, with more than 1,000 victims.

In 2012, a special committee appointed by the Supreme Court of India cleared Modi (but not some of his closest collaborators) from the accusation that he had somehow endorsed the violence perpetrated by Hindu nationalists. Recently, the international community has put aside any concerns of a ethical nature - in 2005 the US had denied him an entry visa - establishing direct links with the possible future leader of India.

There is little doubt that the BJP will come out of the polls as the first national party - according to the surveys, it might even surpass the 182 seats it won in 1998. But it remains to be seen whether it will be able to put together a coalition government with the 273 seats needed to control the Lok Sabha. Even in this case, a prime minister Modi would find his ability to govern diminished by blackmail from other coalition parties. And it is still possible that a Third Front leader can form a coalition with the Congress party.

It's now up to voters to decide whether to accommodate Modi at the height of his power, or express an unclear mandate. The latter choice would disappoint markets, which want to see an executive with the strength to adopt the structural reforms that India needs, and provide foreign investors with a guarantee of stability. Such an outcome could compromise, at least in the short term, India's chances to get back on track.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.

Daniele Grassi is a writer based in Rome.
Asia time

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