Apr 28

Apr 28 Will COVID-19 bury Prime Minister Modi’s reformist image in the West

Since Narendra Modi first became the Prime Minister of India in 2014, The New York Times, The Guardian of the U.K. and other liberal Western media have published several critical reports about conditions under his rule, especially the lynching of Muslims and low castes by Hindu extremist mobs and the suppression of civil liberties.

Yet, overall, the U.S., U.K. and Western European media viewed Modi very favorably as an ally who will help counter China’s growing geo-political influence and a reformer who will boost India’s economy, while expanding the access given to Western companies in the lucrative Indian market.

In 2014, for instance, The Wall Street Journal drew this conclusion from Modi’s electoral victory: “The world's largest democracy makes a statement at the polls: No to corruption, bureaucracy and dynastic politics, and yes to Narendra Modi's promise of a country ready to do business.” The Journal is owned by News Corp., which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. In 2014, Murdoch controlled 21st Century Fox which owned Star TV, a major Indian TV channel that reaches over 790 million viewers a month.

Since then, similar reports in most Western media gave the impression that Modi was bringing about a magical transformation in India, with little mention of rising unemployment and poverty, acute lack of basic health care services for most of its 1.4 billion people, and the worst pollution in the world.

During Modi’s first five-year term, only a few foreign companies made major investments in India. These were mainly American media, digital and other consumer-oriented businesses, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Walmart, Netflix and Fox.

Being shut off from China, these companies are extremely eager to maintain their rising revenues and profits by serving the 300 million plus Indian middle class, the world’s second largest potential market. But these businesses have at best created a few million jobs, while the number of unemployed in India exceed over 70 million.

Modi’s government did not have the funds nor could it attract even a small fraction of the $500 billion in investments required to build and modernize India’s infrastructure, to boost the economy and create millions of new jobs. Neither Indian nor Western businesses want to invest in infrastructure projects without a government guarantee of at least 12% annual profit margins – in U.S. dollars in the case of foreign companies.

In 2019, though Modi failed to deliver on his economic promises in his first five-year term, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was re-elected. The BJP won partly because it promised to build a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, in the key electoral state of Uttar Pradesh. In 1992, a mosque, which was on the site since the 15th Century, was demolished by a Hindu extremist mob. This led to Hindu-Muslim clashes across the country, resulting in thousands of deaths, mostly of Muslims.

The other major reason for Modi being re-elected was the inability of the opposition parties to unite against him. In 2014, a similarly fractured opposition was the key factor in Modi becoming Prime Minister since his BJP won a majority of seats in parliament with only 31% of the votes.

So far in its second term, the BJP’s focus appears to be to try to prove that it is the savior of Hindus, who make up 70% of the nation’s population. In 2019, Modi’s government passed laws which could effectively deprive many of India’s 170 million Muslims – 14% of the country’s population - of their citizenship and right to vote. Then last year, Modi presided over the ceremonial start of the construction of the Hindu temple in Ayodhya.

On the economic front, in 2020, Modi enacted a law which abolished government guaranteed minimum prices paid to farmers for their wheat, rice and other crops. This is contrary to the policies in the U.S., European Union, Japan and other Western countries. Their governments provide subsidies or price guarantees to their farmers for strategic and national economic reasons.

When Indian farmers lose money, as is likely under the new law, the supply of food grains could collapse. India could then be back to being dependent on food imports and foreign government hand-outs, as was the case up until the 1960’s.

In March last year, soon after the first wave of COVID-19 infections in India began, some BJP leaders and most major Indian news outlets blamed the spread on a Muslim gathering in New Delhi.

In January this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said in a World Economic Forum speech that, “Predictions were made that India would be the worst-affected by the coronavirus in the world…Today India is among those countries that have succeeded in saving the lives of its citizens.” Soon thereafter, the ruling BJP passed a resolution that India had “defeated Covid,” due to Modi’s “able, sensitive, committed and visionary leadership.”

While Modi and the BJP were celebrating victory over COVID-19, several experts said that India needs to be very vigilant and some warned that the nation will likely be the next major hotspot. A proper assessment of whether the virus is contained in India could only be made after the monsoon season is over, an epidemiologist told the BBC. .

Today, with over 200,000 deaths and over 18 million cases, according to official figures, India is now the second hardest hit nation after the U.S. However, experts say the true figures are at least twice as large, making India the nation worst hit by the virus.

Hence it is not surprising that the predominant international news stories in the U.S., U.K. and Western European media are about the sharply rising number of COVID-19 deaths and infections in India, absence of basic health care services for most of the population, acute shortage of oxygen, hospital beds and other medical supplies and the financial burden pushing millions of middle-class families into poverty.

This coverage is across print, TV, social and other media as well as from comedy channels to business news outlets. Today, for instance, a story with the headline “India reports record new cases” was one of the top five viewed on the U.S. business site CNBC.com.

The Western media reports trace the uncontrolled, rapid spread of the second virus wave in India to large political rallies, including several addressed by Modi, and major Hindu religious gatherings approved by his government – notably the Kumbh Mela earlier this month, which had over 3 million people congregating without masks and standing next to each other, on the banks of the Ganges river at Haridwar*.

From the liberal Guardian in the U.K. to the conservative Wall Street Journal in the U.S., Western media are blaming Modi’s government for the horrible situation in India, as many reporters describe it.

“Arrogance, hyper-nationalism and bureaucratic incompetence have combined to create a crisis of epic proportions in India, with its crowd-loving PM basking while citizens suffocate,” noted The Sunday Times of the U.K. in a story this week titled “Modi leads India out of lockdown and into a Covid apocalypse.” The Indian high commissioner in Australia asked The Australian to “refrain from publishing such baseless articles in future,” after the newspaper republished The Sunday Times article.

Both The Australian and The Sunday Times are owned by News Corp., which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. In 2019, Murdoch’s company sold Star TV, its major business in India, along with other parts of Fox, to Disney.

“We have got to stop the spread of these mean tweets about me,” the comedian Trevor Noah joked while doing an imitation of Modi. The South African born Noah hosts a daily show on Comedy Central, a U.S. cable channel.

Noah was reacting to reports that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter deleted about 100 posts, including from senior Indian opposition leaders, after the Modi government asked them to do so. The posts were reportedly critical of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

Facebook has over 300 million users in India, it’s largest market. India is also a huge, growing market for Twitter; Modi alone, according to his profile, has nearly 70 million followers on the platform. Twitter and Facebook, which also owns Instagram, say they uphold civil liberties. But, apparently, they did not challenge the orders to delete the posts. Modi’s government said it would arrest their key employees in India if they did follow its dictates. .

“You know things are getting bad,” Noah noted, “when a leader’s response to criticism…is to try and shut down the criticism.”

(*The photo is a WikiCommons file photo of a Kumbh Mela gathering.)