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Jit Chattopadhyay is a passionate freelance photojournalist, born and raised in Kolkata, India, known for his compelling storytelling through the lens. He specializes in documenting socio-political, socio-economic, and environmental crises with honesty and depth.
He is currently focusing on the aftermath of frequent cyclones ravaging coastal India, a consequence of climate change intertwining with the harrowing reality of human trafficking. Jit’s work resonates internationally, and his collaborations with Vice World News, NBC, Barron’s Magazine, The New Humanitarian, and others have earned him recognition. His works are also published by various platforms like BBC, The Guardian, CNN, Daily Mirror UK, Forbes, among others.
Narendra Modi and the Future of Democracy in India
By: Kapil Komireddi
Narendra Modi did not stage a coup. He was lofted into power a decade ago in a free election. Once in office, he exhibited a disciplined outward commitment to the norms of democracy while vandalizing its vital organs. From the armed forces, which had always remained insulated from politics, to the central bank, whose independence was deemed sacrosanct by successive governments; from the Election Commission, which oversaw largely free and fair elections for six decades, to the network of public universities where young Indians from differing backgrounds mobilized against Hindu nationalism; and from the judiciary, which acted as the guardian of the Constitution and once likened Modi to Nero, to the free press that numbered among the world’s most vibrant – Modi succeeded in eroding the autonomy of virtually every institution that could act as a check on his authority or amplify his abuse of it. Modi’s success is a reminder that institutions are not self-animating instruments. How they function is contingent upon those who people them.
In the past decade, during which Modi won two successive national elections with an absolute majority in parliament, India has become a warning to other established democracies of the perils of succumbing to strongmen. Having promised to deliver 20 million jobs a year, Modi presided over a crisis of joblessness that has devoured the prospects of a generation of young Indians. Having pledged to lead an inclusive government, he stamped on India’s secular ethos and sanctified malevolent Hindu supremacism. Having vowed to be a champion of ordinary Indians, he oversaw the creation of an oligarchy in which a handful of plutocrats favored by the prime minister control most of the economy. Calling himself a democrat, he erected a cult of personality unrivaled in the democratic world and set loose state agencies on his opponents and critics. India’s opposition, operating on an uneven playing field, appeared incapable of putting up resistance. But just as India seemed to be racing to a point of no return, the Indian electorate delivered a near-fatal political blow to the prime minister in the national elections that concluded on June 1, 2024. Modi had launched the election campaign by asserting that he was going to return with a supermajority, portrayed his critics as stooges of an international conspiracy, and deployed rhetoric steeped in anti-Muslim hysteria. He mythologised himself as India’s savior, only to become a captive of his own conceit. By the end of the contest, staggered over six scalding weeks, Modi showed signs of having lost touch with reality. He claimed to be a divine agent. “When my mother was alive, I used to believe that I was born biologically,” he told a worshipful journalist. “After she passed away, upon reflecting on all my experiences, I was convinced that God has sent me.”
Indian voters felt otherwise, and the judgment they delivered left his party nearly two dozen seats short of a majority. Modi, suddenly dependent on coalition partners who do not share his ideological worldview, must moderate his most extreme impulses to remain in power. The result, cast as an unexpected shock in the international press, was the culmination of a citizenly backlash that had begun soon after Modi’s re-election in 2019, when the prime minister introduced, in the form of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, legislation which for the first time made religion a determinant of Indian citizenship. Protests against the CAA spread through India. Initially led by Muslims, they quickly drew people of other faiths. The coronavirus pandemic offered only a temporary reprieve to the government. The agitation against the citizenship law gave way to an even larger uprising against Modi’s attempt to overhaul India’s agricultural sector without consulting the country’s farming communities. Hundreds of millions of Indians protested in solidarity with the farmers, forcing Modi to repeal legislation. Traveling through half a dozen Indian states in the months before the elections, I met voters who, having once backed Modi, were now determined to punish him. “He thinks he is God,” a middle-aged woman in Uttar Pradesh, the bastion of Hindu nationalism, said of Modi. “We have a weapon that will bring him back to the earth: the vote.”
On 4 June, Narendra Modi awoke as the father of what his followers call “New India” – a crony-capitalist Hindu-first state built on the remains of the secular ideals that had been the basis of India’s national identity for more than six decades. By the time he retired to bed, New India was dead and Modi’s aura of invincibility was in shreds.
Kapil Komireddi is an essayist, author, and journalist. His first book, Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India was published in 2020. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, the Indian Express, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Mail, TIME, and Foreign Policy, among many others. Komireddi is the international editor of Modern Review, a forthcoming global monthly magazine, and he appears on international media, including ABC, CBC, BBC and CNN, to discuss international affairs.
Samson Otieno | Jit Chattopadhyay | Hannah Reyes Morales | Fred Ramos | Agata Szymanska-Medina