The BJP’s “victory” does not express any widespread enthusiasm for its pro-investor and Hindu supremacist policies. Rather it is the outcome of the right-wing policies that the opposition Congress Party and its allies in the Stalinist-led Left Front have pursued for decades.
The BJP and its Hindu supremacist allies are inciting communal strife across India to divert mass social anger and as part of its strategy for the 2024 national parliamentary election.
The government has been spending lavishly on the military, as part of its deepening strategic alliance with US imperialism against China, while refusing to make the necessary investments in a rail system that is a crucial means of transportation for the country’s more than a billion people.
While the Stalinists have rushed to hail the DMK-led government’s reversal, workers should anticipate that it will revive a version of its anti-worker Factories Act at the first available opportunity, most probably following next year’s general election.
The Modi government is trying to eviscerate the citizenry’s constitutionally protected democratic right to free expression on social media by creating a bureaucracy to suppress “fake, false or misleading” news, especially about its own actions.