THIS WEEK we put India on our cover. Voting is under way and in just six weeks Narendra Modi is expected to win a third term as prime minister, cementing his status as the country’s most important leader since Jawaharlal Nehru.
Our coverage focuses on India’s economy and at its heart is a special report by two of our correspondents, Arjun Ramani and Thomas Easton. Many Indians support Mr Modi because they sense that under him India has grown more prosperous and that it has become a force in the world. We agree that Mr Modi’s formula for growth is working—up to a point. But we also question whether India’s success can last and whether it depends on his remaining in power.
Today Mr Modi dominates India more than ever. As much as a vote can be a foregone conclusion in a democracy, his victory is assured. The success of this tea-seller’s son reflects his political skill and the potency of his Hindu-nationalist ideology (but also his erosion of democratic institutions). Naturally, therefore, our thoughts turned to him. In one early design we had Mr Modi pointing the way ahead, and in another posing as India’s muscle-bound strongman.
Yet precisely because we can foresee putting Mr Modi on the cover in his moment of triumph in June, we wanted something different this week.
An image showing his fist in an arrow combined a nod to Mr Modi’s strongman politics with a symbol of India’s growth. But it risked signalling that the intolerant and chauvinistic parts of Mr Modi’s style are what lie behind his success. That isn’t quite right. His most fruitful policies draw on the liberal agenda that emerged in India in the 1990s and 2000s. Where his authority has counted has been in his determination to force through stalled reforms, personally overseeing key decisions and browbeating laggards and opponents in the bureaucracy.
A tiger climbing a bar chart was better. India’s economy is expanding at an annual rate of 6-7%, which makes it the fastest-growing of any big country—though, in truth, that is a continuation of long-run trends rather than a dramatic acceleration. A massive programme of infrastructure knits together a vast single market: India has 149 airports, double the number a decade ago, and is adding 10,000km of roads and 15GW of solar-energy capacity a year. Rising wealth means more geopolitical heft. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have used their presidencies to court it without disputing that it should remain broadly non-aligned.
However, this illustration was too neutral. We wanted the cover both to be more lively and also to hint at our reservations.
One thought was to show India’s growing strength by having the eight-armed goddess often known as Durga supporting a great weight. But, understandably, people often resent their gods and goddesses being used to make a point. A monster-truck version of a tuk-tuk managed to be lively without breaking taboos—but it was still missing our reservations.
India is developing at a time of stagnating goods trade and factory automation. In a working-age population of 1bn, only 100m or so have formal jobs. Most of the rest are stuck in casual work or joblessness. India therefore needs to pioneer a new model for growth.
We lit upon two versions of the lotus, India’s national flower, as a symbol for this distinctive model. In one, growth was represented by a bar chart, poking stamen-like out of the flower. In the other a row of lotus stems showed India’s rising prosperity. Some of us worried that a stylised version of the lotus flower is also the logo of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which is Mr Modi’s party. But, given the likelihood of his victory, that was a strength of this idea, not a weakness.
We think that India could continue to grow, with an even bigger IT sector and a cluster of export industries. An efficient, single domestic market would raise productivity and well-targeted welfare could help those who fall behind. For this, India would have to transform education and agriculture, and enable migration from the populous north to big southern and western cities. However, we worry that Mr Modi and his party have not grappled with the magnitude of the challenge ahead.
That message came across better with the cover showing several flowers—especially if we were to make the stem on the tallest lotus look less steady. To create a new reform agenda and foster a thriving knowledge economy, Mr Modi will have to temper his autocratic impulses. To attract more local and foreign investment and to find a growth-minded successor, his party will need to curb its chauvinistic politics. If not, Mr Modi’s mission of national renewal will not live up to its promise.
Leader: How strong is India’s economy?
Special report: The Indian express
