Narendra Modi visits UK as BJP support is slipping in India
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Version 0 of 1. Aditya Chakrabortty (Opinion, 10 November) and Pankaj Mishra (G2, 10 November) provide critical assessments of Narendra Modi’s lopsided personality and politics, but they do not present the true impact of two state elections in Delhi and Bihar on Modi since he became prime minister 16 months ago. The comprehensive and crushing defeats of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party in Delhi, where the BJP won only three of the 73 seats, and in Bihar, where it won only 58 of the 273 seats, signal the decline (and even fall) of the invincible Modi. In both these elections Modi staked everything – his own reputation as well as his party’s – and took personal charge of the campaigns. In Bihar he addressed some 30 election rallies, as your Delhi correspondent Jason Burke reported (India’s ruling party defeated in key regional poll, 9 November) and, according to a report on an Indian TV channel, he didn’t win seats even in some of the constituencies which he addressed. The Indian electorate, even in small towns and villages, is not as ill-informed and backward as we are told and the voters have an innate capacity to make the right choice in elections. I think this is what makes Indian democracy unique. M Riaz HasanPinner, Middlesex • Members of the Nepali community in the UK will be protesting peacefully on Thursday 12 November, demanding that the Indian government immediately stop its de facto economic blockade against our landlocked country. The reason behind this blockade, it is widely believed, is the Indian government’s dissatisfaction with Nepal’s constitution, promulgated on 20 September, 10 years after the end of a decade-long Maoist insurgency in 2005. The Indian government claims this constitution disenfranchises the ethnic Madhesis, who live along Nepal’s border with India. While it is true that the Madhesis have grievances against the constitution, it is up to the Nepali people to resolve this issue and we would be in a better position to do so without a blockade that, following on the heels of the catastrophic earthquakes earlier this year, has further crippled the economy and led to great human suffering. The Indian government denies imposing a blockade and claims the obstruction at the border is solely the result of agitation within Nepal. This is not true. There is ample evidence to the contrary, as observed in the go-slow at customs checkpoints, the refusal by the Indian Oil Corporation as monopoly supplier to load fuel tankers from Nepal, and reports in the Indian press quoting border security force officers saying that they have been asked to block shipments. Through this peaceful protest, which coincides with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK, we want to draw the attention of the British government and the international community towards the plight of millions of Nepalese people. Ganesh KhadkaEnd the Economic Blockade on Nepal |