From April to June, 640 million Indians took to the polls in seven phases to vote in the 2024 Indian general election, making it the largest election in the country’s history. All 543 seats of the lower parliamentary house, the Lok Sabha, were up for election, with two major political parties—The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC)—and their coalitions vying for a majority.

This consequential election was not without heavy criticism from citizens and observers alike, primarily due to the actions of the BJP and incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While the election came under fire for various reasons, the results were a surprise to many who expected a BJP landslide victory similar to 2014 and 2019. While the BJP and Modi did secure a third term, they did not reach a majority of 272 seats and were forced to form a coalition government for the first time. SIS professor Sumitra Badrinathan was in India observing the elections, and to better understand the criticism around the election and the results themselves, we asked her and fellow SIS professor Samantha Agarwal to answer some questions.

India is the world’s most populous country, and one in eight global citizens were eligible to vote in the election. Going into the election, how would you characterize the condition of democracy in India?

Sumitra Badrinathan: Indian democracy has shown some signs of weakening in the past few years. Indices like V-Dem now describe India as an electoral autocracy: a state with free elections but weakened guarantees of civil rights and liberties. I want to highlight three key issues that observers have noted about the state of Indian democracy leading up to this election. First, there are journalistic reports of voter suppression, including physical intimidation, harassment, and violence before and on Election Day. These incidents seem to have disproportionately targeted the Muslim population. More worryingly, reports suggest that the perpetrators were sometimes state representatives, such as police officers. Second, candidates from several parties dropped out of races ahead of the election, leaving BJP candidates to run uncontested in several seats. Reports indicate that police and other state agents have been intimidating these candidates into withdrawing. Third, the Election Commission of India, which is supposed to act as a watchdog, has shown troubling behavior. Recent reports reveal that the ECI deliberately chose not to act against Modi for hate speech, especially after his infamous speech in Banswara, Rajasthan, in which he called Muslim citizens "infiltrators." The ECI did nothing about this and other instances of hate speech, raising serious doubts about its reputation as a neutral arbiter (the BJP went on to lose that seat by a significant margin).

Samantha Agarwal: During the past ten years of BJP rule, India has witnessed an alarming erosion of rights and democratic freedoms. In 2018, the Swedish Varieties of Democracy Institute downgraded India’s political system from the status of an electoral democracy to an electoral autocracy. This effectively means that while multiparty elections exist, there are low levels of basic requisites such as freedom of expression and free and fair elections. There has also been an upward concentration of power in the hands of the executive. Alongside these threats to democratic institutions, there has been a mainstreaming of ethno-majoritarianism of a Hindu supremacist variety—a worldview that was once considered fringe in India. One manifestation of rising Hindu supremacy has been a sharp rise in anti-minority violent crime, especially targeting India’s 200 million Muslims, whom Hindu nationalists see as "infiltrators." All of these trends are antithetical to a pluralistic society and liberal democracy.

Narendra Modi and his BJP party won another term with the most seats in the Lok Sabha. How did the BJP come to dominate Indian politics?

Agarwal: Yes, they have certainly won another term, but with much less of a popular mandate than in the previous two federal elections. This time the BJP won 240 seats, as compared to 303 in 2019, falling short of the 272 required to have an absolute majority. Practically speaking, this means that rather than the BJP unilaterally determining the national agenda, it will have to work in a coalition with junior partners such as the TDP [Telugu Desam Party] and the JD (U) [Janata Dal United]. It will also face much more formidable opposition from the Indian National Congress and its coalition partners (the “India” block) than initially anticipated. So, the BJP’s dominance—at least electorally—will be less “complete” than it has been in a while. The BJP’s rise is a complex story and has to do with the history of the decades-long decline of the Congress Party, which led India to independence and ruled Indian politics for 54 years. This was catalyzed in part by various failures on the part of the Congress on the economic and social fronts and also by historically oppressed communities—including "lower" castes—becoming more politically organized and finding political voice outside of the elite-dominated Congress, a process that began in the 1960s but accelerated in the following decades. Simultaneously, upper-caste and upper-class people reacted negatively to this assertion by marginalized castes; after the BJP was formed in 1980, it grew in part by capitalizing on this backlash.

Badrinathan: We had unexpected results in this election. The BJP failed to win a majority, and there's no clear victory for the Prime Minister. Now, the BJP needs many small allies to form a government, many of whom may not support several of their core majoritarian policies. Contrary to exit polls, the incumbent government fell short of a landslide victory. The BJP-led NDA alliance bloc received 293 seats, while the opposition India bloc got 232 seats. So, while Modi won a third term, he will have to navigate coalition politics, which is new for this version of his party (the number for a simple majority is 272, which the BJP alone did not get). Modi has become synonymous with the BJP and Indian leadership over the last decade, making this an electoral upset of a very large magnitude. While it's undeniable that the BJP dominated Indian politics over the past decade, it relied heavily on one man and his image. These results call that reliance into question and make us wonder whether he is now a liability or just past his prime. While the Prime Minister won his constituency (Varanasi), he did so by a significantly smaller margin than in previous years, as well as by a much smaller margin than other incumbent prime ministers who ran as members of parliament while holding office.

Multiple issues, including misinformation, discrimination, nationalism, and relations with Pakistan, have been central topics in the conversations surrounding the election. In your opinion, what is at stake for India in these elections?

Agarwal: The first thing to understand is that the BJP is part of a nearly 100-year-old Hindu supremacist movement, probably the largest neo-fascist movement on earth. Under Modi’s rule since 2014, that movement has taken a huge leap forward. One of its most significant “victories” has been the passage of a series of discriminatory citizenship laws, which would for the first-time tie India’s notion of citizenship to religion. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) provides for fast-track naturalization for non-Muslim religious minorities, under the guise of their being persecuted minorities from neighboring countries. It very explicitly excludes Muslims. Combined with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which aims to weed out “doubtful citizens,” Muslims—but also other poor communities that disproportionately lack “official” documents—could be subject to imprisonment or deportation en masse. Initially, these reforms were stalled in the face of civil society pushback, but the BJP has vowed to resume their implementation now. So, there is a lot at stake there for India’s minority populations—and really for anyone who believes in democracy—and the CAA/NRC is just one example of that. But I will also say that the unexpected outcomes of the election—specifically the setbacks the BJP faced in key states like Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state in India, and among lower caste people—also suggest that voters are becoming fed up with the status quo of high inflation and chronic unemployment, and, for them, the ethnonationalism plank may not be “enough” to keep them engaged. Hopefully, this will act as a check on some of the more extremist politics of the ruling party.

Heading into the election, many believed that if Modi secured another term, India’s democracy would be further eroded. What does another Modi term look like, and how might it impact India?

Agarwal: In the way of democratic erosion, we will likely see more targeted arrests of political opponents of the regime and the further shrinking of spaces of dissent. In terms of the ethnonationalist agenda, the BJP will double down on the CAA/NRC. The already historically high levels of lynching, harassment, and intimidation of Muslims and lower-caste people will continue apace. The BJP will also try to take care of unfinished business on the economic front, including pushing through a massively unpopular forest law reform that would make it easier to dispossess forest lands from indigenous people and to transfer them to corporations. It is possible that it will try again to advance the farm laws, which were defeated by a 16-month, farmer-led protest. The unexpected results of the election do introduce a degree of uncertainty into the mix of all of this, as junior ally parties will make demands on the BJP in ways they were unable to in the past. But it is yet to be seen whether these smaller parties—or the INDIA Block opposition parties—will actually be able to advance qualitatively different politics from that of the BJP, including alternatives to the politics of supremacy or solutions to the nation’s soaring inequality.

Badrinathan: It might mean a transformed and less powerful BJP and Modi. He will now face an energized and invigorated parliament, which should check some of the majoritarian ideas that have dominated the BJP’s strategy in recent years. It seems voters had real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under the BJP. A striking example is liberal voters in Mumbai choosing to support the Shiv Sena, a historically right-leaning party whose faction joined the India Alliance, to vote against the BJP. I see this as a sign that they want to save democracy. It remains to be seen whether this apparent opposition to parts of the BJP’s politics will hold over the next five years.

Misinformation and social media played a large role in this election, from deepfake AI videos to hate speech. In your opinion, how have misinformation and social media shaped this election, and what might future elections look like if this kind of misinformation continues?

Badrinathan: There was definitely a lot of misinformation and hate speech, but it is difficult to determine the role it played in the elections for several reasons. First, while many have discussed the BJP’s social media advantage, the reality is that a significant chunk of campaigning happens at physical rallies, face-to-face, and with boots on the ground. Second, studying the causal consequences of misinformation remains challenging. It is hard to say that misinformation causes people to change their votes, rather than people consuming misinformation based on pre-existing partisanship and other values. On the contrary, descriptively speaking, it appears that in at least two constituencies where political rhetoric and action included disinformation and politics of marginalization—Faizabad and Banswara—the BJP failed to retain their majority and lost power. It seems this election was fought over economic hardship and issues that affect voters' daily lives rather than issues of ideology and identity. On a side note, it consistently shows a lack of AI and deepfake content on Indian social media. Despite the hypothetical doomsday scenarios touted by those caught up in the AI craze, the numbers show that this is not a primary concern.

What can you tell us about your election study?

Badrinathan: We just finished conducting a large-scale media literacy study in Bihar, India, in the form of a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Collaborating with Jeevika, an autonomous body in the Bihar government, we rolled out a semester-long media literacy curriculum for schoolchildren. This curriculum included regular instruction on misinformation, its consequences, solutions to the problem, and homework assignments between classes. Our study enrolled over 13,000 adolescents across 583 villages in Bihar, making it the most expansive media literacy anti-misinformation RCT conducted to date. Our findings show that students who received this training, compared to a placebo control group, were significantly better at identifying false information. They also demonstrated improved scientific thinking, less propensity to share misinformation, and greater awareness about the harms of misinformation. These effects lasted up to six weeks after the training. You can learn more about our project at this link.