Welcome to The Political Fix by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, a newsletter on Indian politics and policy. To get it in your inbox every week,...
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The Big Story: Zig-zag
If history is supposed to not repeat itself, but rhyme, this one is a bit of a slant.
As we’ve reminded you before, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his first tenure in 2014 with a set of pro-business reforms to India’s land acquisition laws that drew the ire of rural India.
Having led his Bharatiya Janata Party to the first majority in Parliament in three decades, the assumption was that Modi had enough political capital to push through the new law, despite some pushback and accusations of being a “suit-boot ki sarkar” beholden to big business.
That assumption was wrong. After months of pressure, Modi caved, withdrawing the laws and – as many have observed – moving away from pro-business reforms to “new welfarism” to counter the narrative.
Over the last week, it appeared that Modi’s government was about to do something similar. Having spent much of 2020 comparing three new agricultural laws to an emancipation proclamation for India’s...
