Modi on brink of power as India vote count begins

Aditya Kalra and Tommy Wilkes | Reuters

NEW DELHI: Counting of votes began on Friday after India’s mammoth election, which could usher in the most profound economic change in a generation if opposition leader Narendra Modi wins a clear mandate for his agenda to revive growth and create jobs.
At 8 a.m. (0230 GMT) the Election Commission began tallying the 537 million votes cast over five weeks from the shores of the Indian Ocean in the south to the Himalayan foothills in the north.
Initial figures from postal voting showed Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leading the count in 16 parliamentary seats, and the ruling Congress party was leading in six.
Returns from 989 counting centers are expected to flow in thick and fast during the morning as electronic votes are counted from 8:30 a.m. (0300 GMT). A clear picture is expected by around lunchtime.
If the results of the world’s largest exercise in democracy are in line with exit polls, the BJP and its allies will win an absolute majority of more than 272 seats in the lower house of parliament, where 543 seats are at stake.
That would open the way for Modi, 63, to act quickly to form the core of a new government by naming loyalists to the prized cabinet posts of finance, home, defense and external affairs.
Betting on that outcome, foreign investors have poured more than $16 billion into Indian stocks and bonds in the past six months and now hold over 22 percent of Mumbai-listed equities — a stake estimated by Morgan Stanley at almost $280 billion.
But with markets racing higher, anything short of a ringing endorsement for Modi and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could trigger volatile trading on Friday.
“The bar for the opposition team has risen significantly,” investment bank DBS wrote in a note on Thursday.
“Compared with pre-poll surveys where NDA’s tally averaged around 250, the average has moved up to 280 in the exit polls. This suggests that if the actual tally is closer to 250-260 seats, the markets might be disappointed.”

Modi wave
Since being named as his party’s candidate last September, Modi has flown 300,000 km and addressed 457 rallies in a slick, presidential-style campaign that has broken the mold of Indian politics.
In so doing, Modi has outclassed Rahul Gandhi — the fourth-generation scion of the Congress party’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — while burnishing his pro-business record as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who as finance minister launched reforms in 1991 that brought an end to decades of economic isolation, has already bid farewell to his staff after a decade in office marked by mounting policy paralysis.
Modi’s mantra of development has won over many voters skeptical about his Hindu-centric ideology and role in sectarian riots in his home state in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, died. He has denied any wrongdoing and a probe ordered by the Supreme Court has found he had no case to answer.
Exit polls estimate that the BJP’s vote share rose by 15 percentage points to 34 percent. Under India’s first-past-the-post system, that may be enough for the BJP to take battleground states like Uttar Pradesh — home to one in every six Indians.

“Modinomics“
Modi has promised that, if elected, he would take decisive action to unblock stalled investments in power, road and rail projects to revive economic growth that has fallen to a decade low of below 5 percent.
Tax and labor market reforms, backed by a gradual opening up to foreign investment, would seek to create the 10 million jobs that Asia’s third-largest economy must create every year to employ young people entering the workforce.
If Modi does fall short of a majority, he could face lengthy coalition talks with regional parties that might demand a high price for their loyalty and dilute his reform agenda.
Modi has retreated to his home base in Gujarat, where he will learn of the election results on Friday before flying to New Delhi for what could be a hero’s welcome from party loyalists clad in the BJP’s orange colors.

(Additional reporting by Shyamantha Asokan)

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What is with the Congress? India’s grand ol’ party appears to be consumed by a death wish as it hurtles and tumbles through its second term like a headless chicken. The Congress-led coalition is inviting upon itself disaster after incredible disaster as it bleeds itself to death through self inflicted wounds. That this government still has two more years to go is almost overwhelming and not just to the disenchanted voters.
Allies like Mamata Banerjee and Karunanidhi cannot wait to leave the sinking ship although no one has the appetite for another election anytime soon. An imminent showdown, nonetheless, is approaching fast. For which the Congress has no one to blame but itself. Who needs opposition when a government gifts the people steepest petrol price hike in history on its third anniversary? Whoever is running this coalition certainly has a sense of humor.
No one appears to be in charge in Delhi. Senior ministers are forever working at cross purposes and poor party spokespersons have a hard time explaining the absurd ways of this government. The UPA II is on a harakiri mission.
While India has never been a stranger to corruption, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, picked up for the top job for his pristine image, now enjoys the distinction of presiding over the largest number of scams in the shortest period of time. The latest scandal involving the allocation of coal blocs threatens to taint Mr. Clean’s own hands.
Even the economy, the chief achievement of the economist premier, is unraveling fast. Pundits are rushing to write off the great Indian success story. The total rout of the Congress in the recent UP polls points to the shape of things to come.
Sonia Gandhi’s dream of seeing her son replace Singh in 2014 may well remain just that. The Congress chief must be ruing the day she chose the distinctly unambitious Dr. Singh eight years ago to stand in for her and keep the seat warm for the Prince.
Blame it on the presence of a parallel power center or the natural obsequiousness of Congress wallahs but Singh has proved a spectacular disaster, squandering all the goodwill and undoing years of hard work to return Congress to power. Dr. Singh already seems to have given up as he stoically waits, like the old man in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, for the imminent end.
How did the Congress end up here? I wouldn’t care two hoots for the party or why it’s driven by a death wish. What worries me sick is the alternate scenario. For all its flaws and sins, including its repeated betrayal of Muslims, Congress still represents a wide spectrum of Indian society.
What’s most disturbing is the fact that even as the party marches off like a zombie into the sunset, there’s no credible, healthy alternative to replace it. The so-called secular parties are in total disarray and are largely confined to their respective regional base.
That leaves room wide open to dangerous possibilities — like the return of the BJP and ascent of a certain Mr. Narendra Modi. The BJP’s friends in the media have been dreaming and obsessing over Modi’s march to Delhi for years now.
However, his desperate attempts to break free from Gujarat have so far been frustrated by the taint of the 2002 genocide which he presided over for nearly three months, with all state power and machinery at his disposal. Numerous riot cases and monitoring by the Supreme Court have had him bogged down in the state, souring his Delhi dreams.
That problem appears to have been taken care of with the Special Investigation Team recently giving the chief minister exoneration, especially in the Gulbarg massacre of 58 people, including former MP Ehsan Jafri. SIT chief Raghavan’s conclusions however have been challenged by the court-appointed amicus curiae.
There have also been reports of the ex-CBI chief and his family undertaking several foreign trips on Gujarat government’s account. But such minor irritants are unlikely to create any serious trouble now. Besides, when you have the voters and numbers on your side, who gives a damn about a court case or two?
Modi already seems to have scented blood as he moves to take charge of the BJP for the battle 2014, stepping up attacks on the Congress leadership. If his proud pageant at the recent national executive in Mumbai is any indication, the Sangh Parivar has clearly anointed its old apparatchik for the top job in the land. Modi arrived in the film city to a superstar’s reception, having kept the entire BJP leadership waiting all day and sidelining everyone else.
The stage is set for the 2014 elections and Modi is clearly the best and last hope of the Hindutva brotherhood in the eyes of the RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP and associates. The timing couldn’t have been better too. Having milked the Ram temple cow bone dry and its poisonous anti-Muslim rhetoric reaching its saturation point, the Parivar has been in the political wilderness for nearly a decade. The BJP is mired in corruption, infighting and numerous scandals. It doesn’t have an avuncular, unifying figure like Vajpayee with a charismatic image — or mask, as some would suggest — either to rally the party and disenchanted allies.
Modi has stepped forward to fill that leadership vacuum. He’s already proved his saffron credentials within the Parivar with the 2002 pogrom. And he needed to win the larger Hindu middle class. Which the media, most of it owned or controlled by powerful business houses that have been pampered by Modi over the past one decade with unlimited sops, are working 24/7 to paint him as the bright future that the emerging India has been waiting for. It never tires of talking about the Hindutva haven of good governance that is Gujarat, witnessing unparalleled development and economic growth year after year.
So what if a couple of thousand of Muslims were killed and rest of them still live in terror in their refugee camps and ghettoes? That was 11 years ago. How long would you cry over the past? Isn’t it time to move on?
No matter what Muslims think, the Indian establishment seems to have not only accepted Modi, it’s breathlessly waiting for his arrival in New Delhi. This legend about Modi’s Gujarat is being spawned at global level as well with the top marketing gurus working the US media to wash the 2002 taint. It seems nothing stands in the way of Modi’s leap to Delhi now.
Indeed, given the total chaos in the Congress-UPA, it could be a cakewalk for the former RSS propagandist. Sonia Gandhi hasn’t been able to devote her time and attention to the party as in the past because of her health issues. And her 42-year-old son simply refuses to grow up. The PM-in-waiting-forever has so far demonstrated a singular lack of appetite for the big fight ahead. So the Delhi throne is now up for grabs for the man who has the blood of thousands of innocents on his hands.
In a way, if Modi finally beats Rahul to take Delhi in 2014, it would be a kind of poetic justice. The Congress has constantly shied away from confronting the Gujarat chief minister on his appalling crimes and continuing victimization of Muslims despite having a mountain of evidence against him.
Even as the UPA government has tried hard to ignore him for fear of hurting its Hindu vote bank, Modi has fortified himself wiping out all evidence of the 2002, targeting senior officials who testified against him and using the state machinery to perpetuate his power. And today he is out to snatch power from the Congress and he could very well succeed in his attempts. That would serve the Congress right. What would it mean for the country though? I shudder at the very thought.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Gulf-based writer.

Aijaz Zaka Syed