In this week’s podcast, Milan Vaishnav (Director of the South Asia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) speaks with Prashant Jha, opinion editor at the Hindustan Times and author of the book, How the BJP Wins: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine.
So many election analysts, journalists, and political scientists failed to predict the massive mandate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed in the 2019 general election. This has prompted a good deal of soul-searching as to why. In this conversation, Prashant—who was one of the few who picked up on the pro-Modi wave during the campaign—explains why so many election observers missed the writing on the wall.
Milan also speaks with Prashant about the current state of the BJP, the induction of BJP president Amit Shah into the government, what ails the Congress Party, and what could upset the BJP’s current electoral dominance.