Modi's Hindu-first approach makes him a god to some Indian voters — and a danger to others
Opinion polls favour prime minister over opposition alliance as election begins Friday
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As Narendra Modi travelled along a main street in India's southern Karnataka state, standing in a flower-laden pickup truck adorned with more than 10 photos of himself, the cheers grew louder and more ecstatic.
Hundreds of the prime minister's supporters spent hours waiting for a glimpse of the politician, who was in Mangaluru briefly on Sunday for an election event called a "roadshow," which lasted slightly more than an hour.
It was one of the many pit stops Modi made as he criss-crossed the vast country in the week before voting in India's marathon election begins Friday, dropping into more than a dozen Indian states as he aims to secure a third straight term.
Modi's party is well-placed to return to power, with opinion polls putting him and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the lead — ahead of the opposition alliance formed by more than two dozen parties, including the once-dominant Indian National Congress Party.
"We have come to see Modi, our god," said Satish, who travelled from a smaller village 100 kilometres away for the Mangaluru rally.
He credits Modi with much of India's growth, including new roads and infrastructure.
"He has done very good work, that's why we've come," Satish told CBC News, before his friend, Suresh Dowda, interrupted to add, "especially strong Hinduism."
Hindu nationalism has become the dominant political ideology in India in the past decade under Modi, whose party has been accused of aggravating religious fault lines and steadily eroding the secular principles enshrined in India's constitution.
Strong support in Hindu heartland
The adoration for the prime minister and his Hindu-majority ideology are even stronger in the Hindu heartland, in India's north.
Supporters at a recent rally near Jaipur in Rajasthan state repeatedly mentioned two moves that impressed them the most — Modi's inauguration earlier this year of the Ram Temple, which is built on the ruins of a demolished mosque, and his 2019 move to revoke the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.
Both were the fulfilment of long-standing promises the BJP had made to its Hindu nationalist base.
"I trust Modi, I vote Modi," said Mangaluru resident Sinchana Harish, 20.
"To develop our India, Modi is needed. He's the one person who can change our India."
The potential change that concerns Modi's critics, if he is re-elected, is the expectation that the BJP will further reshape India into a Hindu-first country, at the expense of India's minorities, particularly the country's 200 million Muslims.
"There is talk about changing the constitution in very fundamental ways," said Delhi-based political scientist Rajeev Bhargava, who also spoke of what he sees as a lack of independence of India's institutions such as the media and the judiciary.
"There is some fear that [the government] will become even more dictatorial than it is."
Modi has denied charges from the opposition that his party intends to tinker with the constitution, even while some BJP leaders have made remarks urging voters to give the party a strong majority so that changes could be made.
Opposition parties have also said they are being denied a level playing field. Some party members are currently in jail on corruption charges that they deny, including the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, who is a member of the Aam Aadmi Party.
Growing economic powerhouse
But for the crowds gathered to see Modi and hear him speak, this election, which extends over a six-week period, is more about the economic changes India has seen than the religious ones.
"Modi has done a lot for us," said Sumitra Sharma, who lives in Rajasthan's Dausa district, in the north, near Jaipur. "Inflation and prices have come down."
India's rapid economic growth is often one of the planks Modi and his supporters mention when speaking about his time in office.
India is now the world's fifth-largest economy, with analysts predicting it will climb to third in the next three years, and it's a growing economic powerhouse that foreign leaders are trying to woo. The value of India's stock market has tripled since Modi took office, but the growth has been vastly unequal.
India's rich have become richer, but the poorest 50 per cent of the country's population live on an average income of just $1,200 Cdn a year.
"The Indian economy has been on autopilot in some ways for quite some time," said Bhargava.
"It is doing extremely well for the top 10 per cent, and particularly well for the top one per cent," he said. "But young people are not getting jobs."
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The latest data from the end of 2023, compiled by independent think-tank the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, puts unemployment among Indians between the ages of 20 and 24 at a staggering 44 per cent.
That economic pain is palpable in some of the poorest areas of India's capital. Along a busy sidewalk on the outskirts of Delhi, a group of young people stood in a line with their paintbrushes and small tools while they waited to be hired casually for a day of labour. They do this every day and hope for the best.
"There is no work for all the people that are sitting here," said Baban Mathur.
Naresh Mahatu, in his mid-40s, is older but just as frustrated as he tries to secure enough work to send money back home to his family, several hundreds of kilometres away in Bihar state.
"We gather here at five or six in the morning and keep waiting," he told CBC News.
"The government has done nothing for the poor," Mahatu said, adding that he feels Modi's attention lies elsewhere.
Standing nearby, 28-year-old Naveen Ranga echoed that.
"Modi is not doing anything," he said. "He only works by talking about religion, and creating a divide between this and that religion."
Ranga said he's pleased with the work of his local BJP candidate, but he hopes that the Congress party wins the election.
Still, even if India's elections often pack surprises, most analysts agree that Modi is the clear front-runner and that it's not whether Modi and his BJP will win, but rather, by how large a majority.
The party's "main appeal" for many, according to Indian political analyst Arati Jerath, is its positioning as a champion of Hindu nationalist sentiment, "saying you know: 'We will take care of Hindus, we are your party.'"
She said that emotional plea to voters has the potential to "override all the other bread and butter issues."
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