"Modi, implicated in a massacre in 2002 while chief minister of Gujarat, has been elected as India’s new prime minister. Is he a dangerous neo-fascist, as some say, or the strongman reformer that this country of 1.2 billion people craves?"
What would a Modi win mean for the functioning of government and for civil society? For the judiciary? For the bureaucracy? For the media? Will India's "watchdog institutions" be able to exercise any restraint on Modi?
"It's May 2. In the BJP war room in Varanasi's Surya Hotel, Amit Shah is huddled over an India map like a general plotting his next move. The phone rings. It's his boss, Narendra Modi. After a public rally in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh, the BJP prime ministerial candidate is rushing back to Gandhinagar for a 3D holographic speech that will be relayed to 100 locations, mostly in parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
"Prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party got more than a third of all prime-time television coverage during this Lok Sabha election, significantly higher than any other politician and party... Our numbers for the first week of May show that the amount of time given to coverage of Mr. Modi has risen even further and would be above 40 per cent of all the time given to politicians..."
"Varanasi was overtaken by nerve biting tension when belligerent RSS and BJP cadres took over the roads in power -led protests against the constitutional body, the Election Commission of India..."
"It was nothing short of a scandal. On 12 April, India TV, a Hindi channel, telecast 117-minute interview of the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi. Conducted by Rajat Sharma, it became, or was made, a mega hit. Two days later, news director of Indian TV, Qamar Waheed Naqvi, resigned from his position alleging that the interview was ‘fixed’. Though Naqvi’s resignation was silenced in media, the fixed interview represents the dark and mutually constitutive relationships between media and politics..."
"Mayawati’s ability to upturn the Bharatiya Janata Party’s bullock cart has started becoming visible on the ground... In the majority of the constituencies in eastern Uttar Pradesh, or Poorvanchal as they are collectively called, the elephant is moving steadily, making it difficult for the BJP to take major advantage of whatever wave its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has generated in the region..."
Submitted by narendramodifacts on Fri, 05/02/2014 - 04:30
First the YES vote. Still many ground-level reports of adoring crowds gathering for Modi. "Big names" still jumping on the bandwagon: MJ Akbar, Andre Beteille, Swami Agnivesh and so many more. Hugely positive coverage of Modi in the media - journalists listening to him awestruck, flattered to be getting the great one's attention, unable to ruin the moment with difficult questions. Censorship of critical voices.
According to the EC: "The Commission is of the view that by holding that meeting and also by addressing the same today when the polling is going on in the entire state of Gujarat and in different parts of the country, Narendra Modi has violated the provisions of Sections 126 (1)(a) and 126 (l)(b) of RP Act 1951... Therefore, the Commission directs...that complaint/ FIR as the case may be, should be filed against Narendra Modi and all others who were involved in the convening and holding of the said meeting..."
"A veritable carpet-bombing of India’s voters with the opposition BJP’s message is everywhere to be seen, from advertisements in newspapers, on TV, Youtube, Radio, Mobile Phones, CDs and the Internet, to billboards in all metropolitan cities and small towns and on transport vehicles, including inside the Delhi Metro trains... This vast campaign has been on a scale never seen in history, estimated by some to be costing Rs 5000-6000 crores or more (from 800 to over 900 million dollars).
