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Democracy or electoral autocracy: when religious fervour trumps rising unemployment as an election issue 

Praveen Kolluguri previews India’s upcoming general election.

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India, the world’s most populous country is going through its general election in seven phases starting from 19th April to 1st June 2024. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition, is tipped to win for the third time in a row in all opinion polls. The main opposition led by the Indian National Congress (INC) is trying to fight as a coalition called INDIA. Unfortunately, this coalition has been plagued by disunity since its early days, with some key partners now out of it, like Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who will be fighting the election on their own.

This article highlights the issues that most concern us from the labour perspective and the conditions that are likely to make this the most one-sided election in India’s electoral history. 

Of major concern to us is the issue of electoral bonds, an opaque way of funding political parties in India that was introduced by the current BJP regime. By buying electoral bonds, any individuals or organisations could fund political parties without disclosing their interests to the public. This scheme, to no surprise, has favoured the BJP, with 75% of the funding going to its coffers. As we now know, between 2019 and 2024 the party encashed nearly £600 million, making it one of the richest political parties, if not the richest one in the world. The second on the list was the TMC, which is based out of the state of West Bengal with £160 million, and the main national opposition Congress (I) party at £135 million.

Since the Supreme Court ordered the State Bank of India to release all data pertaining to electoral bonds, it has emerged that these donations to the BJP were mainly from firms that were crony capitalists under the current regime or were under investigation by central agencies for various misdemeanours, revealing the quid pro quo nature of these donations. A large number of these firms have not declared profit and hence haven’t paid any taxes, but they still found money to donate to the political parties. The Adani Group, which has been the main beneficiary of the current ruling regime, and whose net revenue grew from £2.4 Billion in 2014 to £72 Billion in 2022, was surprisingly missing from the list. But they have supported the government through capturing media companies and eliminating any independent media coverage, and have been rewarded with perks such as mining contracts that are threatening the lives and livelihoods of indigenous communities, and the ecological balance across the forest ranges of India. The Adani Group is now among the world’s largest fossil fuel companies and its presence is international, including here in the UK, through their sponsorship of a ‘green energy’ exhibition at the Science Museum. This blatant greenwashing by a fossil fuel company is being opposed by several climate justice groups including us. 

The financially disadvantaged opposition is also under attack by various investigating agencies: the bank accounts of the INC have been frozen since February 2024 owing to a tax probe.

Federalism, which offers a tiny ray of hope against the excesses of the BJP-led union government is also under attack. Two sitting Chief Ministers, who represented prominent voices of opposition, have been arrested in the lead-up to the election. One of them is Hemant Soren, who was the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, and leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Party (JMM). Soren had been a strong voice for the rights of the Adivasis, the Indigenous peoples of central and eastern India. Himself a Santal Adivasi, he has taken a prominent stand against the assimilation of the Adivasis into the Hindu religion fold. In fact, Adivasis have been campaigning for a separate ‘Sarna’ code in the list of religions in India’s census. The other Chief Minister behind bars is Arvind Kejriwal, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a liberal centrist party which has been in power in Delhi for the last two terms.

Many public intellectuals like Dr Anand Teltumbde have commented that this will be last election for India as a secular state with the rule of law. The BJP’s ideological base, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was originally inspired by the 20th-century European fascist movements in Italy and Germany. This makes the BJP a Hindu nationalist party that is open about its ambitions to bring sweeping changes to India’s constitution and make India a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a majoritarian Hindu state. The Islamophobia that has been inoculated amongst all sections of Indian society, through the medium of WhatsApp forwards and social media memes, has potentially genocidal consequences. While most at risk are the over 200 million Indian Muslims, another 100 million people following other religions are also being targeted,  including Christians. The economic ghettoisation of Muslims over the last decades has meant that their labour and work prospects have also been shrinking. 

Hence from a labour perspective, it’s important to keep our eye on how the religious fervour gripping the country is masking the high rates of unemployment and the human rights situation, both of which have been steadily worsening since 2014 when the BJP first formed the NDA government at the centre. This includes sectarian state-sponsored religious, caste- and gender-based violence, atrocities on Muslims and caste-oppressed communities, and severe suppression of dissidents and activists.

Over 90% of workers in India are outside the formal economy and denied basic labour rights and protections such as minimum wage, pension, and maternity pay. The new labour codes have re-introduced regressive labour practices such as the removal of the eight-hour working day regulation, measures against unionising, and the removal of workplace health and safety regulations.

The PR story of the miracle growth of India that we often see and hear about in the West is the story of jobless growth, the story of the growth of crony capitalists. Neoliberal economic policies since 1991, under successive Congress and BJP-led governments, have deepened with the BJP’s absolute ascendancy since 2014, with job security, income security, health security, food security and social security all at an all-time low. The state has massively withdrawn from public services, and public employment opportunities are reducing, with little nationalised health and welfare services. One illness in the family can wipe out all the savings of the average worker.

As in other countries before, the rise of right-wing nationalism and youth unemployment (16% of those aged 15-29 are unemployed) go hand in hand and have resulted in a Billionaire Raj that is even more unequal than the British Raj. India’s top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil and the USA.

In this context, it is safe to say that India is rapidly hurtling towards autocracy. While it was already downgraded to the status of an “electoral autocracy” in 2018, India has declined even further on multiple metrics, to emerge as “one of the worst autocratizers” according to the Democracy Report 2024 released by the Gothenburg-based V-Dem Institute that tracks democratic freedoms worldwide.

The issue of unemployment and poor labour conditions are pushing Indian workers to seek work abroad. The government, instead of addressing the concerns, has also hitched itself to the bandwagon and actively facilitated the sending of Indian workers to Israel to replace Palestinian workers in the building industry there. As one of the workers looking to sign up on this scheme said, “I’d rather die in a warzone than starve to death.”

Indian trade unions have condemned this betrayal of India’s historical support of Palestine. We also salute the Indian dock workers who, despite their own harsh working and living conditions, still refused to handle weapons intended for Israel. While all such developments do not make it as election issues, it should be telling us something of the way in which India is heading.   

Should the UK labour movement be concerned about the developments related to the increased religious tensions in India? We only have to look towards Leicester and how it spilled onto the streets there recently. We therefore call on the Labour Party to robustly challenge the BJP-led NDA government if it comes back into power as projected. In addition, we urge readers to join our call for suspension of free trade with India, where the signing by the UK of such agreements has been at the expense of social justice and worker’s rights. 

Praveen Kolluguri is an activist with India Labour Solidarity.

Image: India map. Source: Transferred from ml.wikipedia to Commons. Author: Rajeshodayanchal at Malayalam Wikipedia.,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.