Sciences Po’s South Asia Program: Understanding Global and Local Challenges

It can because the book studies the ways in which the political style and strategy Narendra Modi experimented in Gujarat have been replicated by him at the national level, for electoral purposes in particular.

The four pillars of Modi’s politics were (and still are) first, the polarisation of society along religious lines of cleavage (between Hindus and Muslims or Christians), in order to transform the religious (Hindu) majority into a political/electoral majority; secondly, the capture of institutions, primarily the police and the judiciary, but also more purely administrative bodies like, today, the Election Commission; thirdly, a specific political economy based on support to the urban middle class and crony capitalism, an arrangement allowing big businessmen to get privileges in exchange of their financial support – so important at the time of elections. Today, the entrepreneur who helped Modi the most in Gujarat, Gautam Adani, is still behind him – and has become one of India’s richest men in the process.

Last but not least, Modi has learnt in Gujarat the populist techniques he is still applying today when he relates directly to “his” people (via social media, the radio, holograms, dedicated TV channels etc.) on a very emotional mode. Some of the formulas that had been coined to describe him in Gujarat are still used today including “Emperor of the Hindu Heart” and “Protector of the Nation” etc. Yet, recently, he has done something he had never done in Gujarat: he has played the role of high priest of Hinduism by presiding over the inauguration of the Ayodhya temple, that had just been built on the site occupied by an old mosque – which had been destroyed by activists claiming that it had been built on the birth place of Lord Ram.

The South Asian countries have many geographical, historical, cultural and societal characters in common. They are part of Monsoon Asia and depend on the Himalayas glaciers (except the islands of the Indian Ocean of course).

Most of them are part of territories which had been conquered by the Moghols and the British – whose legacy is still very visible. They have – partly because of this past and then Partition – several languages (Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, etc.) that belong to more than one country. And we can say the same thing about the cuisine, the music, the architecture..

But politically, they are not on the same page and this is one of the reasons why they do not occupy the same place in the Global South. India tries to compete with China to lead this Global South, whereas Pakistan is one of the historical partners of China in the region – they call themselves “all weathers’ friends”. In fact, the Chinese expansionism in the region is dividing South Asia, maybe more than ever, and is inciting India to get closer to the West (in spite of its traditional non aligned policy). After Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, even Bangladesh and Nepal are increasingly part of the Chinese sphere of influence. By the way, India is more and more depending on China too, economically – hence a huge trade deficit…

The South Asian countries are not exposed to the same challenges, because of their different geographies, but they share many of them. First, the monsoon rains are not what they were when I used to go to India in the 1980s: because of climate change they are more concentrated and more erratic – peasants cannot anticipate what (and when) the rainy season will be as easily as before. They are also affected by devastating heat waves of a huge magnitude – sometimes even in March (we now speak of “winter heat waves”)…

Thirdly, water is an issue, whether people miss it (because of droughts or the alarming level of depleted water tables) or are victims of floods (because of rains and/or the melting away of the Himalayas glaciers which make landslides more frequent). Last but not least, the rise of the sea level is posing a threat to many islands – including the Maldives – and coastal territories. For all these reasons, climatic refugees are migrating to cities and food security is at stake in some parts of the region.

But in our conference, we do not want to focus only on these dramatic issues: we also want to valorise the initiatives of the region for coping with them. For instance, we’ll have one full session on South Asian innovations in the domain of agroecology and another one on the way cities are adapting to climate change. For conducting these analysis, we’ll benefit from the insights of experts coming from the best French institutions, as well as from Sciences Po’s partners in the region – and of course Ester Duflo, who will give the keynote!