Indian commentators are running out of adjectives to describe the election results in the world's largest democracy: astonishing, shocking, astounding, etc. The results are far removed from most predictions, including those from exit polls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself confidently declared that his Bharatiya Janata Party would win 370 seats and his coalition would expand to 400 seats. In the end, the Bharatiya Janata Party won 240 seats and the coalition won 292 seats.
As the results slowly became clear, India's stock market crashed. But markets can be wrong. This could well be good news for India, both politically and economically.
Why did Prime Minister Modi lose so much support? One important reason is that many opposition parties united and put up one common candidate as the face of the coalition, so the anti-BJP votes were not split. The BJP won 37% of the votes in this election, almost the same as the last time. However, it lost 63 seats this time.
Voters seemed eager to give the prime minister a personal rebuke. At least 20 ministers lost the election. Mr. Modi's own victory in his own constituency was surprisingly narrow; his election was the BJP's 116th of 240 victories, the lowest ever for a sitting prime minister. The party also lost in Ayodhya, where Mr. Modi built a massive new temple (on the site of a demolished mosque) and inaugurated it with great pomp just months before the election.
The result is most remarkable given the advantages Mr. Modi held: he is the incumbent prime minister; his party vastly outspended the opposition and used a campaign finance plan so one-sided that even India's compliant courts eventually halted it; the agencies responsible for promoting government policy spent millions on ads featuring Mr. Modi's face, reminding Indians of his “Modi guarantee” that the economy would boom and people's lives would improve. Many of India's government handouts, from vaccination cards to bags of grain, are delivered with Mr. Modi's beaming smile, as if they were personal gifts from a generous benefactor.
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Additionally, opposition politicians were investigated by tax authorities, the opposition leader was removed from parliament, two prime ministers (the equivalent of US governors) were imprisoned, opposition funds were frozen, and opposition travel and operations were effectively impossible.
But Indian voters, many of whom remain poor, uneducated and marginalized – one in four are illiterate – voted against checks and balances, limits on power and an excessive cult of personality.
Modi campaigned with the pomp and ceremony of a monarch, even claiming that his birth was a spiritual rather than biological event, seemingly reminding Indian voters that he is human.
Under Modi, India's economy has boomed, but its democratic institutions have taken a major hit. Three independent and widely respected nongovernmental organizations that rate countries' levels of democracy have sharply downgraded India's ratings, documenting abuses of power, the decline of an independent media, and the politicization of the judiciary and independent institutions. (The fact that many Indians appear to have lied to pollsters suggests they feared retribution.) But now Modi faces an emboldened opposition, state governments more willing to stand up to him, and a media and civil society that may be ready to resist his government's abuses of power.
Investors and business executives are most worried about the election results. They see the prime minister as a pro-business guy with a strong economic record. And they like the idea that he believes developing countries need strong leaders to thrive. But they're wrong. The first country to join the ranks of developing countries and get rich was postwar Japan. It did it under a series of colorless prime ministers. The other two economies that have seen breakneck growth over the past 60 years, even surpassing China over that long period, are South Korea and Taiwan. For much of that time, those countries also managed to get by under mediocre leaders.
India's own dramatic economic reforms took place under a coalition government led by an internationally unknown prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao. Rao became prime minister after Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Former BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who presided over strong growth, also led a coalition government. Indeed, coalition governments have been the norm in India since 1989, and that trend appears to be continuing. Average income growth under the previous coalition government led by Manmohan Singh was slightly higher than during Modi's tenure.
While many sophisticated observers of the world often admire autocrats who can govern a poor country, build roads, and get things done quickly, the average Indian voter seems to instinctively understand that in the long run, pluralism, cooperation, and diversity are India's distinguishing features and its enduring advantages.
