Former vice-chancellor of the private Ashoka University and ex-president of the Centre for Policy Research, a Delhi-based think tank, Pratap Bhanu Mehta joined Princeton University in 2022. The expert on Indian politics analyzes the reasons behind the longevity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is hoping to win a third consecutive term in the general elections that began on April 19 and are due to end on June 1.

The arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is ominous.  Much of what this government has been doing over the last few years – the selective use of the government's agencies to target the opposition and protect its own, the clampdown on civil society, the suppression of protest, censorship, and the use of tax and administrative law to create a pervasive climate of fear – were designed to consolidate a pervasive culture of fear. But even by those standards the arrest of Kejriwal, in the middle of an election, is unprecedented. It prevents the opposition from mobilizing before an election and vitiates its fairness

That's a difficult question. We are in an electoral democracy, with political competition, and this is important in the eyes of the regime, which wants to project the image of a popular government. The problem is that it interprets the outcome of the elections as a mandate to consolidate its Hindu nationalist ideological project, thereby justifying the curtailment of civil liberties and the targeted repression of think tanks, academics and journalists who might oppose this project. The vast majority of Indians do not perceive this repression because it is targeted and the opposition parties are unable to unite to mobilize around this issue.

Sometimes, in politics, you have to admit that the opposition is simply incapable, incompetent and completely out of date. Modi has been very successful in convincing people that the Congress represents the old regime, characterized by a kind of elite that is self-righteous, self-interested and out of touch with the people. The best example of this is the Congress, which still cannot muster two or three leaders who can deliver a good speech in Hindi and hold a crowd spellbound for an hour. There is a real cultural distance between them and the people. Rahul Gandhi has made efforts, he has crisscrossed the country and walked 1,000 km to meet the people, but in the end, he is unable to make difficult political decisions, he is indecisive. At 53 years old, he has no experience of government. All he has to show for it is goodwill.

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