Most people know that India is a rising economic power. It is already the world’s fifth-largest economy and is growing faster than any big rival, with a turbocharged stockmarket that is the fourth-largest of any country’s. It is also common knowledge that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is its most powerful in decades and that, as well as economic development, his agenda includes a Hindu-first populism that can veer into chauvinism and authoritarianism. Less well known is that these competing trends of development and identity politics are together fuelling a striking third trend: a growing north-south split.
The wealthy south is where you will find the slick new India, with its startups, it campuses and gleaming iPhone-assembly plants. Yet Mr Modi’s party gets a low share of its votes from there and relies on the poorer, more populous, rural, Hindi-speaking north. This north-south divide will be a defining issue in the election in April and May, in which Mr Modi is expected to win a third term. How the split is managed in the long run is of critical importance to India’s prospects. In one alarming scenario, it could create a constitutional crisis and fracture India’s single market. In a more benign future, resolving this divide could moderate India’s harsh identity politics.
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