New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is no “ordinary strongman” and is likely to win a third term, according to an article in the Economist. Titled ‘Why Indian elites support Narendra Modi’, the magazine article says that Prime Minister Modi is going against several global political trends.

“…The prime minister, who is expected to win a third term after India’s elections in April, is no ordinary strongman,” reads the article’s introduction.
“A 2020 study by Cristóbal Kaltwasser and Steven van Hauwaert, two political scientists from Britain, Turkey, eight European Union countries and five Latin America, confirmed the inverse relationship between higher education and support for populist leaders…Mr Modi bucks this trend,” the article observes.
“In 2017, 66% of Indians with less than primary school told Pew Research that they had a “very favorable” opinion of Mr. Modi. This figure rose to 80% among Indians with at least a certain level of higher education. After the previous general election, in 2019, Lokniti-CSDS, a pollster, found that around 42% of educated Indians supported Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), against about 35% of those with only primary education, he added.
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The magazine said PM Modi also enjoys support from other groups.
“In 2020, Sanjay Kumar of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies found that between 2014 and 2019, support for the BJP increased among rural, lower caste, young and poor voters. It rose particularly quickly among the “other backward classes”, who make up almost half the population. Among them, support for the BJP rose from 34% to 44%, compared with an increase from 31% to 37.5 % among all voters,” he said.
The article attributes Modi’s success to class politics, economics and the admiration of elites.
The American magazine said the BJP is known to be pro-business and the Bania business community supports it.
“Tycoons such as Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, India’s richest men, fall into this group. Upper-caste Hindus, including Kshatriyas and Brahmins, are also part of the support base,” it says. the press release.
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He said Prime Minister Modi had called the BJP a caste-independent “pan-Hindu” party, which allows it to retain high-caste groups. This also helps it reach other groups.
The article states that India has experienced meteoric growth under Prime Minister Modi’s rule, which has increased the size and wealth of the upper middle class.
“It is not surprising that Mr. Modi has retained the support of those who have become wealthier. The Congress Party enjoyed strong support among the upper middle class during the late 2000s, rapid growth. It took a slowdown and a series of corruption scandals in the 2010s to change things,” he says.
The magazine claims that India’s economic and geopolitical position in the world has increased during Prime Minister Modi’s tenure.
The third reason for Modi’s rise is his popularity among the elites.
“They cite China and the East Asian tigers, whose experiences they say show that strong governance can break down barriers to economic growth. An industrialist from southern India says that the country is “probably too democratic given its income level,” the magazine reports.
The article said that the country’s elites view Prime Minister Modi’s foreign policy as pragmatic. The magazine article states that Prime Minister Modi will likely enjoy the support of these groups “until a credible alternative emerges.”
He also claimed that the Congress and Rahul Gandhi had lost the trust of the elites.