Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

The elections to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly provide an opportunity to reassess the fault lines in the caste, religious and ethno-geographical identities in the state and their significance in electoral politics.

The rise of the BJP to political dominance is the result of multiple factors that are external and internal to the party. The decay and decline of the once-dominant Congress and regional parties and the failure of the non-Congress non-BJP parties to forge stable governments are the external ones. BJP’s innovative political strategy to adapt itself to the changing times and the popularity of Narendra Modi are the internal ones. Therefore, the durability of the BJP’s dominance depends on how these factors take further shape. Will the BJP accommodate the rising aspirations of backward social groups for social justice and to have their due place in the leadership echelons of the party and also not upset the delicate balance between the imperatives of social welfare and economic growth? Will the non-BJP parties cease to be family fiefdoms of autocratic leaders and a network of power-hungry and greedy political entrepreneurs and emerge as a credible alternative to the BJP?

India is witnessing a new wave of agrarian protest. Grounded in a deep crisis in the country's agricultural sector, these protests express a deep sense of disappointment in the economic policies of the Modi regime. This article discusses how the new agrarian struggle should be understood as a symptom of the disintegration of the Modi regime's project of authoritarian populism. However, the author proposes that addressing India's agrarian crisis will require far more than simply ousting the Modi government. He argues that today's crisis is grounded in the neo-liberal reforms that have shaped India's political economy since the early 1990s, and it is therefore necessary to counter the crisis with a definite break with neo-liberalisation.