Decoding the 2024 Indian General Elections

We’ve finally come to the end of the 46-day Indian general election. And we have a surprising result which many experts did not see coming. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to secure a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha in what is being interpreted as a major setback. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) did, however, win a majority and is set to form a new government on June 8th under Modi’s leadership. The opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) grouping, in turn, performed much better than expected, winning 233 seats—a massive increase from 2019. On today’s podcast, we bring you a conversation that Milan recorded with two of India’s leading political experts: Sunetra Choudhury, national political editor of the Hindustan Times, and Rahul Verma, Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. The trio spend an hour digging into the nitty gritty of these election results. They discuss the BJP’s stumbles, the INDIA alliance’s keys to success, and what the election tells us about national issues like the economy and Hindu nationalism. Plus, the three discuss what the we can expect from the new NDA government. If you’re interested in the video of the conversation, you can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/live/JfhZEAclHv4