{"id":3468,"date":"2019-04-11T15:20:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T15:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=3468"},"modified":"2019-04-11T15:20:56","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T15:20:56","slug":"india-election-2019-marathon-vote-begins-to-decide-modis-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2019\/04\/11\/india-election-2019-marathon-vote-begins-to-decide-modis-fate\/","title":{"rendered":"India election 2019: marathon vote begins to decide Modi’s fate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The world\u2019s largest ever election has started in India<\/a>, with voters in 20 states casting their ballots in the first phase of a marathon six-week poll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contest in the vast country of 1.3 billion people is dominated by local issues but also viewed as a referendum on the prime minister, Narendra Modi<\/a>, a staunch Hindu nationalist who rode a wave of popularity five years ago to become the first leader of a majority government in decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polls are now open in 91 seats, about a sixth of the total in the Indian parliament\u2019s lower house, with six more voting days to be held before the results are announced on 23 May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modi encouraged Indians in a tweet on Thursday to \u201cturn out in record numbers and exercise their franchise\u201d, singling out the 45 million young people who have been added to the voter rolls since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The districts voting on Thursday include parts of north India\u2019s \u201ccow belt\u201d, the agrarian states that Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) swept in 2014 but where it is expected to shed seats this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will seek to make up those numbers in states such as West Bengal, parts of which are also voting today, and where the BJP\u2019s message of Hindu unity, muscular foreign policy and pro-business reform has met with greater resistance from powerful regional parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India\u2019s phased election process allows federal security personnel to be shuttled around the country to secure the integrity of a contest involving up to 900 million eligible voters, more than the next five largest democracies combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voters will make their choice using machines that display a paper record of their selection that is then stored in an attached locked box. Their fingers are marked with indelible ink to prevent anyone voting twice. Symbols and pictures are displayed next to candidates\u2019 names to aid the country\u2019s estimated 266 million illiterate citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a public school-turned-voting station in Noida, a city that borders Delhi, voters arrived throughout the morning by car, motorcycle and rickshaw. Their IDs were checked at a booth decked in an elaborate pink lace curtain, marking the polling station out as one staffed entirely by women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis country is better off in all fields [under Modi],\u201d said a surgeon who gave his name as Bhoj. \u201cEarlier we used to live under a scary environment, with politicians in nexus with criminals and terrorists. The feel-good factor is back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cselfie point\u201d had been erected in front of the station, encouraging voters to take pictures showing their ink-marked fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBasically, I\u2019m seriously concerned about the country descending into fascism,\u201d said another man after emerging from the school. \u201cAll the institutions are being centralised under one man\u2019s control.\u201d He declined to give his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kashmir plays at the polls<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first weeks of campaigning were overshadowed by a\u00a0car bombing in February that killed 40 paramilitaries<\/a>\u00a0in disputed Kashmir and triggered the first aerial dog-fights and airstrikes between India and Pakistan in half a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polls in the aftermath of those clashes suggest they played to Modi\u2019s advantage and temporarily took the focus off issues where he is thought to be more vulnerable, such as the inability of the Indian economy to create formal jobs and plummeting incomes in the country\u2019s debt-ridden farming sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At BJP rallies across the country, campaigners including Modi have emphasised the government\u2019s response to the car bombing in Pulwama, a southern Kashmir district, and condemned opposition figures who questioned the official narrative that India destroyed a terrorist training camp in the Pakistani town of Balakot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to ask first-time voters: can your first vote be dedicated to the courageous jawans<\/em> [soldiers] who did the Balakot airstrike?\u201d Modi told a rally in Maharashtra on Tuesday, in remarks that his critics said politicised the military. \u201cCan your first vote be in the name of the courageous martyrs who lost their lives in Pulwama?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main opposition Congress party has made social policies the centrepiece of its campaign, especially its minimum income guarantee, a plan to top up the bank accounts of the poorest fifth of the country with 6,000 rupees (\u00a367) per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucial to the result will be the performance of India\u2019s powerful regional parties, some of which have set aside ideological and personal differences to form unlikely alliances aimed at limiting the growth of the BJP in their states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An alliance of the two main regional parties in Uttar Pradesh, for example, is expecting to dent the BJP\u2019s returns in the crucial state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The anti-Modi factor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Congress party\u2019s path back to power will lie in forming an anti-Modi alliance with several of these regional parties, but that could be difficult to stitch and hold together, said Rahul Verma, an analyst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor many of these regional parties, their principal opposition is Congress, and their existence depends on the decline of Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A BJP campaign official in West Bengal told the Guardian he believed his party had the edge in terms of party workers on the ground but that no side was dominating the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe wind is not blowing any way so far,\u201d he said, on condition of anonymity. He said Modi had enjoyed a honeymoon after the airstrikes against Pakistan but that other issues were now becoming more prominent in voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPulwama is an old story and people won\u2019t buy it for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has a shelf life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kamal Gupta, a businessman from Almora, an Uttarakhand state district that votes on Thursday, said the election campaign had been muted compared with the last one, in 2014. \u201cThis time there is no noise, it is very dull,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will vote for Modi,\u201d he said. \u201cHe has shown his boldness and seriousness in handling India\u2019s crisis during the Pulwama attack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In West Bengal, posters for the regional ruling party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), duelled for space with those of the BJP. \u201cWe are fed up with the TMC,\u201d said Raju Sarkar, a driver from Alipurduar district who voted on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt does nothing for the people: no plans or schemes. But look at BJP, it has so many schemes like Save and Educate Girl Child,\u201d he said, referring to a Modi government policy aimed at curbing the mortality rates of girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two party workers were killed on Thursday in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, the site of a bitter electoral contest between the regional Telugu Desam party and the YSR Congress, an affiliate of national Congress party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were also complaints that electronic voting machines were breaking down in the state as well as in Maharashtra on India\u2019s west coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of police and paramilitary officers were deployed in constituencies in Kashmir that also voted on Thursday after weeks of low-key campaigning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had to cast my vote, for our security and dignity,\u201d said Ghulam Mohammad Wani, a voter outside a polling station in Sumbal, a town in Baramulla district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is so much oppression on Muslims outside. Narendra Modi said democracy, humanity, but everything turned out to be lie. Cow was given a better position than humans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kakoli Bhattacharya contributed to this report from Bangalore and Azhar Farooq from Srinagar<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s largest ever election has started in India, with voters in 20 states casting their ballots in the first phase of a marathon six-week poll. The contest in the vast country of 1.3 billion people is dominated by local issues but also viewed as a referendum on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist who rode a wave of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3469,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions\/3469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}