{"text":[[{"start":7.15,"text":"Outside the offices of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in Kolkata, the pavement is aglow in the party’s signature orange. Supporters had celebrated the storming of one of India’s last opposition strongholds by tossing handfuls of saffron-coloured powder."}],[{"start":25,"text":"“This is the colour of Bengal now,” declares Ali Hasan, 55, a Muslim BJP official who heads a unit dealing with religious minorities in the state of West Bengal. “The BJP was incomplete without Bengal. Now Modi will turn Bengal into ‘Golden Bengal’,” he adds, in a reference to the area’s past glories."}],[{"start":44.8,"text":"This week’s election adds one of India’s most populous states to a recent string of BJP victories at state level, marking an extraordinary recovery for the prime minister and his party just two years after losing a parliamentary majority. Now winning states well outside the BJP’s traditional heartlands in the north and west, Modi looks stronger than ever."}],[{"start":66,"text":"“It was premature to write off Modi and the BJP following their performance in 2024,” says Chietigj Bajpaee, an India expert at Chatham House in London. “Now we are all set to see Modi stand for a fourth term in 2029.”"}],[{"start":81.3,"text":"Modi’s comeback is testament to his particular brand of populism that defies easy categorisation. A strong nationalist who has spoken of making India open for business, he has also expanded welfare programmes and built out India’s infrastructure. He is a savvy diplomat for the global south, able to court Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Russia’s Vladimir Putin while securing a mammoth trade deal with the EU."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":107.94999999999999,"text":"But the BJP’s steady march across the map alarms opponents who see a threat to India’s secular, multi-party democracy. Modi, they say, has aggressively promoted Hindu nationalism at the expense of India’s Muslim and Christian minorities. "}],[{"start":123.49999999999999,"text":"Critics say the government is capturing key institutions such as the Supreme Court and the Election Commission, tilting the playing field against the opposition. A growing intolerance for dissent, they charge, is having a chilling effect on India’s formerly vibrant media and civil society. "}],[{"start":140.14999999999998,"text":"In the wake of the West Bengal election, the defeated chief minister Mamata Banerjee has cried foul, accusing the BJP of dirty tricks, and refused to leave her post. “I won’t resign. Let them dismiss me,” she told reporters this week in Kolkata. “The mandate has been looted.”"}],[{"start":155.64999999999998,"text":"But analysts say Modi’s opponents must also accept blame for their failures. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an India expert at Princeton University, criticises “the inability of the opposition to get together around a common platform”, and adds: “In 2024 the opposition had an opening and they frittered it away.” "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

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"}],[{"start":175.79999999999998,"text":"India’s 2024 election result came as a big shock. Modi had expected to win a third consecutive parliamentary majority but in the event the BJP lost 63 of its 303 seats and had to rely on a coalition to stay in power."}],[{"start":193.14999999999998,"text":"Opposition leaders crowed. “A tectonic shift has taken place in India’s politics,” Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told the FT in the aftermath of the result. Modi’s BJP, he said, was “fatally wounded”."}],[{"start":207.84999999999997,"text":"Two years and a string of thumping BJP regional election victories later, that verdict looks wide of the mark. Modi’s party now controls 22 of India’s 36 states and territories and enjoys a level of political dominance not seen in decades. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":224.29999999999995,"text":"Key to its success is the personality and political skill of Modi, 75. Single, childless, ascetic and famously hardworking, he travels the country relentlessly, hammering home twin messages of India as a rising global power and proud Hindu homeland."}],[{"start":242.34999999999997,"text":"Over the past two years, the premier has weathered several international crises — from a tariff war with his former ally US President Donald Trump to the energy shock from the Iran war — to re-emerge as India’s dominant leader."}],[{"start":255.24999999999997,"text":"“He’s an extraordinary politician,” says Mehta. “He has an amazing ability to read moods and adapt messages. He’s willing to learn from his mistakes and he’s there working 24/7.”"}],[{"start":266.79999999999995,"text":"After its 2024 setback, the BJP went back to the drawing board to turn itself into a formidable election-fighting machine."}],[{"start":274.84999999999997,"text":"It mobilised its army of grassroots workers and leaned on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a 6mn-strong nationwide brotherhood of Hindu nationalists, for help. It refined its door-to-door campaigning and expanded into states where it had little representation."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":291.95,"text":"Modi set a personal example, constantly touring the country to appear at rallies. In the north-eastern state of Assam, where the BJP increased its majority in last month’s elections, Modi “has visited a bit more than 80 times as prime minister”, says Baijayant Panda, a BJP MP and senior party official. “Whereas his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh, who happened to represent Assam in the upper house of parliament, went 10 times in 10 years.”  "}],[{"start":319.75,"text":"The opposition, by contrast, was beset by squabbles over leadership and policy. Analysts say it neglected grassroots organisation and failed to unite behind a clear message. “What are Congress and the other opposition parties able to offer other than an anti-BJP agenda?” asks Chatham House’s Bajpaee. "}],[{"start":339.4,"text":"As a result, it gave Modi a window to rebuild and take advantage of the growth that has made India one of the world’s fastest-expanding economies during his 12 years in power."}],[{"start":351.25,"text":"Modi can boast three big achievements, says Arvind Subramanian, an India expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. The first is a massive expansion of India’s highways, airports and rail links and the second a build-out of public digital networks, allowing tech start-ups and multinationals to flourish."}],[{"start":371.2,"text":"But perhaps his biggest achievement is a “new welfarism”, Subramanian says. The state has promoted a low-cost digital payment system and signed up hundreds of millions of people for bank accounts, allowing direct cash transfers."}],[{"start":386,"text":"“There has been a massive expansion of social protection,” Subramanian explains. “With the cash transfers, Modi has provided it and he has made sure you damn well remember he provided it.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":397.75,"text":"The overall economic record, economists say, has been mixed. While impressive compared to other leading economies, India’s recent growth rates are insufficient to achieve the prime minister’s goal of making the country a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of independence from Britain. "}],[{"start":415.05,"text":"“His track record on reform is a bit disappointing,” says Shumita Sharma Deveshwar, chief India economist at TS Lombard. “The reforms have been stop-start and hardly anything has happened on privatisation.” One of the biggest issues, she says, is job creation."}],[{"start":431.85,"text":"But with the growing middle class enjoying a consumption boom and the bottom quarter saved from absolute poverty by the welfare schemes, many voters seem not to care."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

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"}],[{"start":441.25,"text":"A crucial factor in the BJP’s resurgence is its unapologetic promotion of Hindu nationalism, which opponents say can stray into the persecution of minority groups. "}],[{"start":451.6,"text":"In West Bengal and Assam, where up to a third of the population is Muslim, the BJP campaigned relentlessly against what it termed “infiltrators” — illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh who it alleged were tilting the two states’ ethnic balance away from the Hindu majority."}],[{"start":469.40000000000003,"text":"After the BJP victory, Amit Shah, Modi’s powerful home affairs minister and the party’s chief election strategist, posted on X: “The people of Bengal have taught such a lesson to the infiltrators and their sympathisers that the parties indulging in the politics of appeasement will never be able to forget.”"}],[{"start":488.40000000000003,"text":"There are also concerns about what opposition politicians and independent analysts say is an increasing willingness to tilt the electoral field in the BJP’s favour."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":498.35,"text":"In these elections, many sounded the alarm about mass deletions of voters from the electoral roll prior to the vote. In West Bengal, the election commission’s “Special Intensive Revision” struck off 9mn names or around 12 per cent of the total. "}],[{"start":512.95,"text":"The authorities said this was necessary to remove deceased people and illegal immigrants, but critics said the deletions disadvantaged the opposition."}],[{"start":521.3000000000001,"text":"Extensive analysis by the Sabar Institute, a Kolkata-based public policy research centre, found that the voter list revision “shaped” the BJP’s success in West Bengal. “One of India’s most extensive voter exclusions . . . arguably played a decisive role in determining Mamata Banerjee’s electoral fate,” researchers said."}],[{"start":539.8000000000001,"text":"Praveen Chakravarty, a senior official with the main opposition Congress, insists that his party is the only bloc still true to the liberal secular principles of post-independence India. “The constitution of India is the very foundation of our politics,” he says. “The BJP does not believe in the constitution. The divide could not be starker.”"}],[{"start":558.5500000000001,"text":"Modi’s party dismisses such talk. “Congress has gradually moved away from its centre-left positioning to become a Muslim appeasement party, for instance 18 of its 19 legislators in Assam are Muslim,” the BJP’s Panda says. In his view, the opposition has only itself to blame for pursuing policies that disadvantage the Hindu majority."}],[{"start":581.2500000000001,"text":"Congress and other parties now have an ever-steeper mountain to climb. The West Bengal election showed there are few parts of India where Modi cannot reach. Even some Muslim voters who were loyal to the opposition are now deserting it for the BJP. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":595.7000000000002,"text":"Rukshana Bibi, a 42-year-old Muslim living in the district of Hooghly near Kolkata with her two children, husband and mother-in-law, is one of the party’s new supporters in the east. “What Modi has done is for the whole of India,” she says. “India was looked down upon but now they look at India with great admiration. That’s because of Modi.” "}],[{"start":615.3000000000002,"text":"As Modi weighs a fourth term in 2029, the electoral map — like the streets outside his party’s headquarters in Kolkata — is turning saffron."}],[{"start":626.1000000000001,"text":"“The BJP is no longer a party of the Hindi-speaking heartland,” says Chatham House’s Bajpaee. “Aside from the deep south, it is now a pan-India party.”"}],[{"start":641.9500000000002,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1778320729_3043.mp3"}