The EconomistFebruary 24th 2018 19For daily analysis and debate on Asia, visit
Economist.com/asia1A
T A rally in the southern state of Karna-
taka the prime minister wagged his
raised finger, accusing the local govern-
ment, run by the rival Congress party, of
creaming a 10% cut from every state con-
tract. “Do you want a commission govern-
ment, or do you want a mission govern-
ment?” he boomed. After four years in
power Narendra Modi still relishes noth-
ing more than attacking his opponents as
no-good, lazy and corrupt.
In response Karnataka’s chiefminister,
Siddaramaiah, who faces a state election in
two months, posted a cartoon on his Twit-
ter account. It pictured glum citizens queu-
ing outside a bank, a reminder of Mr
Modi’s painful “demonetisation” in 2016,
which sent hundreds of millions of Indi-
ans rushing to exchange abruptly voided
banknotes. From the back of the bank,
meanwhile, emerged a pair of grinning
millionaires carrying big sacks of money.
Airily waving them off was a Modi-like fig-
ure labelled chowkidaror watchman.
The reference was not subtle. Before his
Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) landslide
win in the general election of 2014, Mr
Modi had promised to be the country’s vig-
ilantchowkidar. Yet on his watch there has
been no let-up in the kind of scams and
scandals that had made Congress such an
easy target. The latestinvolves a diamond
dealer who is said to have fled the country
after allegedly defrauding a state-owned
bank of some $1.8bn. As recently as Janu-dira Gandhi. A scheme started in 2012
called the Basic Savings Bank Deposit Ac-
count, aimed at providing banking for the
poor, was pepped up and relabelled the
Prime Minister’s People’s Money Project.
In some cases MrModi hasadopted
policies that he sharply criticised while in
opposition. He had dismissed Aadhaar, a
Congress-initiated project to issue all citi-
zens with a unique, biometrically certifi-
able identity number, as nothing but a gim-
mick. In practice his government has made
Aadhaar cards mandatory foreverything
from mobile-phone linesto food subsi-
dies. The BJPrepeatedly stymied Con-
gress’s attempts to replace a quaint hodge-
podge of local taxes with a national goods
and services tax, only to bring in the GSTit-
self, with great fanfare, last year. Mr Modi
also frequently disparaged Congress pro-
grammes to boost rural incomes aswaste-
ful vote-buying. But his government has
raised spending on these, while several
BJP-run state governments are offering
massive loan relief to indebted farmers.Pander flair
The Hindu-nationalistBJPhad excoriated
the secular Congress for pandering to reli-
gious and ethnic minorities. Yet in hard-
fought election campaigns this month in
the small states of the north-east the ruling
party has pandered as hard as anyone (see
page 21). In the majority-Christian state of
Meghalaya it promised free pilgrimages to
Jerusalem. In Tripura, a state that suffered a
separatist insurgency until 2004, the BJP
has set aside its nationalist credentials to
ally with a party that had backed the inde-
pendence movement.
In 2014 business leaders were among
Mr Modi’s most enthusiastic supporters.
Many still praise such achievements as the
introduction of the GST, a bankruptcy law
and streamlined government procedures.ary the jeweller in question appeared in a
photo of Indian tycoons hobnobbing with
Mr Modi at the Swiss mountain resort of
Davos. As the next general election, due
early next year, approaches, it grows ever
harder for Mr Modi to pose as the fresh,
clean alternative to bad old ways. The BJP
governmenthas, in fact, slowly evolved
into something surprisingly similar to its
Congress-led predecessor, from which Mr
Modi promised to “free” India.
The BJPlooks increasingly like the party
of state. MrModi’s image adorns bill-
boards and newspaper ads. His voice re-
sounds from state television and radio. His
loyalistsinfluence a growing arrayof pub-
lic institutions. In some instances, say crit-
ics, such influence might be described as
abuse. Police and courts, for instance, have
all too often proven slow to follow up po-
tentially embarrassing leads, or quick to
absolve BJPbigwigs of wrongdoing. Milan
Vaishnav, a scholar at the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace, a think-tank,
points to recent instances when two pow-
erful institutions, the central bank and the
election commission, have appeared to
bow to Mr Modi’s wishes.
The energetic prime minister has
launched dozens of heavily promoted so-
cial programmes. But his government has
also taken over numerous Congress-era
projects and simply rebranded them, strip-
ping away associations with such Con-
gress figures as Jawaharlal Nehru and In-Indian politicsAll hat and cattle
DELHI
The BJP government looks ever more like the one it replacedAsia
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