, is often lumped together with right-wing populists such as Donald Trump or Viktor Orban. On the surface, the comparison is plausible. In 2019 Mr Modi told the, a newspaper, that his electoral success was not due to “the Khan Market gang or Lutyens Delhi”, monikers for India’s old establishment. Rather, said Mr Modi, he pulled himself up through “45 years of toil”.
It is not surprising that Mr Modi has retained the support of those who have become richer. The Congress party enjoyed strong support among the upper-middle class during the fast-growing late 2000s. It took a slowdown and a series of corruption scandals in the 2010s to change things. Many university-educated Indians say they dislike Mr Modi’s weaponisation of law enforcement against opposition parties and his government’s treatment of Muslims as second-class citizens. The arrest on March 21st of, the chief minister of Delhi, amplified these concerns. Still, as a banker in Mumbai notes, there is a widespread sense that the good parts of Mr Modi outweigh the bad. Indeed, some think a dose of strongman rule is exactly what India needs.
India’s elites see Mr Modi’s foreign policy as nationalist yet pragmatic. They like the way he thumbs his nose at liberal Western institutions and the media, in a similar fashion to other anti-globalist strongmen, while promoting Indian interests. Mr Modi has negotiated four new trade deals since 2021, most recently with a grouping of four non-European countries on March 10th.
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