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Narendra Modi’s Populist Facade Is Cracking 

India is now a testing ground for whether demagoguery or deteriorating living conditions exert a greater sway on voters.
By Robert F. Worth

In the Age of Digital Empires, India Must Chase Tech Sovereignty  https://www.outlookbusiness.com/magazine/in-an-age-of-digital-empires-india-must-chase-tech-sovereignty  Deepsekhar Choudhury 1 January 20   

When the Kargil war broke out in 1999, India asked the US for access to the military version of its global positioning system (GPS). The US government, still angry with India for conducting nuclear tests the previous year, refused. The refusal spawned the creation of NavIC—a navigation system created by the Indian Space Research Organisation. “It was a blessing in disguise,” says AK Bhatt, a retired general of the Indian Army and current director general of the Indian Space Association.

The moment of necessity for India to create its own critical technologies has arrived. Wars at present no longer depend only on navigation systems, aircraft and missiles. They have already spilled into telecommunications and will soon spill into automotives, energy and health care. And in the multipolar world order we are fast approaching, every sovereign nation will need its own technology.

The Indian government recognises this. And has thus unleashed a $50bn push to build domestic technological capacities in sectors such as chips, quantum computing, electric vehicles and AI. Tech policymakers are increasingly crafting policies that support the creation of IPs. The government is also planning a $4bn subsidy programme to promote design and electronics component manufacturing in a bid to move up the value chain.

Narendra Modi’s Populist Facade Is Cracking https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/modi-nationalism-demagoguery-limitations/681094/ Robert F. Worth India is now a testing ground for whether demagoguery or deteriorating living conditions exert a greater sway on voters.  India’s growth has been heavily weighted toward the wealthy, who have become exponentially richer on Modi’s watch. Those who have benefited most are a small cadre of billionaire friends to whom Modi has granted special access for years. That practice was cast in a new light in November, when American prosecutors indicted the industrialist Gautam Adani—India’s second-richest man and a close Modi ally—for his role in a multibillion-dollar bribery-and-fraud scheme. (His company has denied the charges, calling them baseless.) The accusation revived fears about opacity and cronyism—the specter of “India Inc.”—that Modi had promised to address a decade ago.

At the same time, eight in 10 Indians live in poverty. Extraordinary numbers are out of work; one estimate puts unemployment among those ages 15 to 24 at more than 45 percent (though other estimates run lower). Instead of moving from farms to seek employment in cities, as people in other developing countries have done, many Indians—unable to find factory or service jobs—are making the trek in reverse, even as farm income stagnates and drought turns fields into deserts. .. What, in the long run, exerts greater sway on the electorate—the lure of demagoguery, or the reality of deteriorating living conditions?