India: General Election 2014

Lord Bach Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Short Debate, not least because it has been obtained and opened by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. I congratulate him and the other speakers, and we look forward to the Minister’s reply to the important Question that the noble Lord has asked—namely, the Government’s assessment of the outcome of the 2014 general election in India. I thank the noble Lord for his Diwali wishes. As he knows, I come from Leicester, where we are proud to have the largest Diwali celebrations anywhere outside the subcontinent.

I start by restating what all of us believe, that India is a magnificent and great country which, placed in the modern world, is growing in strength and influence year after year. In this country, we are obsessed by a general election next year in which roughly 50 million citizens will have the right to vote and perhaps 30 million will vote. It is worth repeating that the general election in India involved 815 million eligible voters, of whom 551 million voted—that is over 66%—to elect a new Lok Sabha and Government of India. It was a brilliant logistical exercise but, much more significantly, it was a demonstration of the principles of democracy in action that no other country in the world can come near to. In a world full of one-party Governments, dictatorships and phoney elections, for almost 70 years India has stood out as the world’s largest functioning democracy, in spite of political, military and economic difficulties that might well have destroyed democracy in a lesser country.

The result of the election surprised the world, not because it was not widely believed that the BJP would win and that Mr Modi would become Prime Minister but because of the extent of that victory. A majority for one party of members of the Lok Sabha is a rare event. When the BJP achieved it and could have governed alone, that it chose not to do so but preferred to be the dominant party in a coalition Government, with 337 seats out of 545, was no doubt in the tradition of modern Indian politics but also with the awareness that it achieved its majority of seats with 31% of the total vote.

All elections everywhere are called watershed elections, but the 2014 general election in India can genuinely be described by that name. It seemed as though the Congress party coalition Government had perhaps run out of steam, having enjoyed a successful first five years of its 10-year term. From afar, it seems as though the country wanted change. Perhaps a rather loose comparison with British political history in 1979 and—dare I say it—in 1997 is not too far-fetched.

Commentators have argued with some force that Mr Modi’s appeal was not what has been described as his “bold Hindu nationalism” but rather expressed the view that a liberalisation of the Indian economy to increase growth rates, an attack on what was perceived as being too much corruption, plus an appeal to the vast and growing youth vote and across caste as well, were more significant factors in his victory.

In the five months that have passed—which is an incredibly short time to make any sweeping judgments—it is clear that Mr Modi is the dominant figure in his Administration. At home and abroad, it is he who makes the news, and of course it is by his actions that his Government will eventually be judged. From the BJP victory in state elections this week in Haryana and Maharashtra, both states unused to BJP leadership, it is clear that the Prime Minister’s honeymoon period is far from over. There has been some impatience about the pace of economic reform, and some criticism of the July budget. However, only this week a series of announcements involving labour laws, diesel prices and the Indian coal industry have led commentators to argue that the pace of reform is being stepped up.

Mr Modi has also been busy in foreign affairs, with considerable publicity concerning his visits to Brazil, the United Nations and Japan. As we have heard in this debate, Britain is tied closely to India on so many fronts: history, a belief in democracy, a very large number of British citizens with Indian backgrounds, the trading relationship and the investment in each other’s countries, to name but a few. The present Government in Britain, as much as the previous one, have made the relationship a priority for this country. We of course support the work done by current Ministers, who no doubt supported us when we were in power as well. India is too important a country as far as British interests are concerned for there to be any party-political point-scoring. However, the decline in the number of Indian students who study in the United Kingdom, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, is a matter that needs responding to, and needs some quick action.

This country has much work to do with India on climate change, where the Indians have a huge role in global climate talks, particularly the Lima climate change conference in December, and in Paris in 2015. India was this week re-elected to the UN Human Rights Council, which of course we also welcome.

The next few years will be an exciting time for India—but when is it not an exciting time in India? A former British high commissioner once told me, when I was lucky enough to visit India as a Minister, that if you look out of a window on a car journey in India, anywhere and at any time something interesting is always going on. He was absolutely right—India is permanently interesting. I am proud to have spent some of my early years in Chennai—of course, when I was young it was called Madras—and of course I was also lucky enough to represent many British Indians as a councillor in Leicester for many years. We on this side wish the new Government well in their difficult and important work.