Episode 300: India, Then and Now

Grand Tamasha

In this milestone 300th episode, Grand Tamasha hosts Milind Vaishnove, Sadanand Dhume, and Tanvi Madan reflect on seven years of Indian poli

Key takeaways

• The 'Cockroach Janta Party' (CJP) emerged from social media-driven protests to influence domestic political outcomes.
• Recent protests in India have highlighted a generational divide between Gen Z/Millennials and older voters.

Main topics

• Gen Z protests and CJP
• India-China relations

Notable quotes

Every day spent in war pushes humanity back and every step taken towards peace fills humanity with new hope and enthusiasm.

Conclusion

The episode provides a sophisticated look at how India's domestic vola

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Anabashar. Speaker 2 (0:01) The most unpredictable. Becomes a headline. The most volatile. Outrageous behavior. Unsubstantiated narratives. A battle of personalities. Speaker 3 (0:11) Welcome to Granthamasha, a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times. I'm your host, Milind Vaishnove. Today is a special day for Granthamasha. We are commemorating the recording of our 300th episode. We started this show as an experiment in the run-up to the 2019 general elections. Seven years and 299 episodes later, we're still around and no one is more surprised. than I am. While India has changed in many ways over the past seven years, one constant has been our occasional Grand Tamasha roundtable with my guests today, Sadanand Dume of The Wall Street Journal and the Council on Foreign Relations and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution. It only seemed natural that as we celebrate our 300th episode, we have them both on to discuss the latest in Indian politics and policy. So once again, Tanvi, welcome to the show. Good to be back and congratulations. Good Speaker 1 (1:02) to be back as well. And kudos, Milan, for keeping it going. Speaker 3 (1:06) I checked because we discussed this actually yesterday. This is your 28th appearance on Grand Tamasha. So that is actually higher than I thought it was. But we have done 27. Almost to 10 Speaker 1 (1:19) percent. Seven previous Speaker 3 (1:20) experiences at recordings. We are going to talk a little bit about the show and reflect on what's changed in India over the past seven years. But there are two topics that I want to cover today, starting with kind of domestic politics and the events of the summer. A lot has happened since our last episode, which I think was towards the end of last season. I want to start with the summer's Gen Z protests and the rise of the cockroaches, the cockroach on the party. Sadan, I'll start with you. Speaker 3 (1:52) I get a little bit annoyed when I talk to a lot of people who say they saw all of this coming because I think for being really honest, there was a lot that was surprising about these protests and the way in which they unfolded. How surprised were you that things turned out in this way that ended up with the kind of ousting of, you know, a pretty central union cabinet figure, not just kind of somebody who had a minor role, but was seen as somebody who was kind of prized? minister in the Modi government? Speaker 2 (2:24) So the denouement was certainly surprising. First of all, nobody saw these people coming. Nobody imagined that something would sort of grow out of a Twitter post and an Instagram post so quickly and become something real on the ground. In fact, when the protests first started, they were pretty low key, and I don't think people were paying too much attention to them. And so what happened at the end of July, the protests intensifying, getting mass, getting volume, getting traction. The fact that so many people came out were people who were traditionally BJP supporters and the fact that they managed to tap into a very real kind of resentment about this broken examination system and translated that into a tangible political win. That was surprising to me. My sense, along with that of many others, was that Modi was not going to bend. And Dharmendra Pradhan is a very important figure in the BJP and sort of groomed for larger things. He's been a lifelong member of the party. He's been a minister in good standing and so on. So this wasn't a head that it was easy for the party to allow to let roll. And the fact that they did, that was surprising to me and spoke to not just the moment, but how well the Gokro Janata party. actually managed to exploit that moment to achieve, to make that achievement. Speaker 3 (3:47) Before I move to Tanvi, let me just ask you one quick follow-up, which is, you know, I mean, obviously the ruling party, the government were the principal target, but I mean, do you think that the protests also were kind of an indictment or a statement on the political opposition as well? Well, Speaker 2 (4:03) to the extent that, you know, you had the Cockroach Janta Party filling a vacuum, to the extent that normal opposition politicians seemed unable to take this initiative, though they did capitalize on it once the CJP took off. It's certainly an indictment of the opposition. But I think that as it evolved, I think it became somewhat complementary. And the opposition certainly helped the CJP, and the CJP certainly helped put a little wind in the opposition's sails. Speaker 3 (4:34) So, Thunby, you were in Delhi for part of the summer. We were all kind of texting to get updates on what was happening. And, you know, you got a kind of, I'm sure, palpable sense of kind of what was happening in the city. What did it feel like to be present in Delhi during this time? You know, the protests were taking part just steps from the kind of heart of national government. Speaker 1 (4:57) Look, I don't want to do the Tom Friedman, I talk to a cab or an Uber driver and TEDx. But I think there are a few things that struck me being in Delhi at the time. I think one, you know, the security studies part of my brain was surprised that so close to the steps of power that. the authorities were taken a little bit by surprise by the size and momentum of crowds. Because, you know, this at the end of the day was these were protests and it's a democratic kind of right to do that. And it's part of it being a democracy. But I was just thinking, suppose it wasn't, you know, about kind of domestic issues. So there was that aspect which I was actually struck by that that. could happen. I think on the political side, what was interesting is, you know, and we've talked about it so much on this show, is this kind of hard to quantify or even describe something about Hava or the mood. And, you know, the whole thing of has it shifted or is this another symptom? And then you'd have. the BJPA being able to adapt or has something fundamentally shifted? Is there something underlying the sense of frustration amongst the younger generation that is showing up? And, you know, where is the Hava going to get channeled and by whom? So I think that was one thing, which is, you know, kind of there was there seemed to be a shift in the Hava, but it's also not clear what that direction will necessarily take. I think there was another thing, though. I think. While we talk a lot about the CJP, there seemed to be a lot more than that. A lot of the people who you saw, and this was beyond, to me, it was not just Delhi. It was in places like, or Bombay for that matter. It was places like Bihar where you saw this. In fact, I would wonder if people were actually, you know, the government was more worried about what was happening in Bihar rather than Delhi in some ways. So for me, I think it was not just the CJP. These were people who didn't necessarily weren't organized. They were just showing up. So kind of the, you know, it wasn't just organized. There was an organic aspect to it as well. That was that was kind of striking to me. Speaker 3 (7:09) I mean, Sadanan, the question I'm sure you get all the time, I mean, I think we all get it, which is, you know, about the longer term impact of the cockroach movement. I mean, sort of, you know, as you look into your crystal ball, I mean, what do you think about, how do you assess the ability of this movement to kind of sustain itself? You know, they've gotten a victory. It's like the dog that chases the ambulance. They've got the ambulance. What happens now? Speaker 2 (7:34) You know, I'm a little bit, I have to say, on the skeptical side in terms of their prospects. I think that they made the most of an opportunity. And I think they organized well. They obviously have a very good social media game. But since then, I think they seem to be just searching for the next thing. The idea of going and, you know, going and looking for decrepit schools. I mean, sure, everybody wants schools to be good, but I don't think that, I think that's a little bit too diffused. They haven't really captured, they need to capture sort of the imagination for something else. And I don't see them at this point as the most savvy political operators. So for me, at least at this point, and I could change my mind in, you know, in two months or six months or whatever, but at this point, it seems to me that they are, more significant for what they say about the national mood, as Tanvi was saying, what they say about disaffection towards the government. That to me is significant. I'm not sure if the ultimate vehicle for that is going to, you know, to channel that disaffection is necessarily going to be the CJP. And it doesn't need to be, right? So we've seen protest movements in Indian history. in the Navnirman movement is the most obvious example, right, in the 1970s. It's not as though Navnirman ended up sort of, you know, taking over the government or ousting Indira Gandhi single-handedly. But what it did was it was a catalyst. And so at this point, if I had to characterize CJP, I would look at them more as important catalysts as opposed to important political actors in their own right. I mean, Speaker 3 (9:14) here's Speaker 2 (9:14) a Speaker 3 (9:14) question I think for both of you, but, you know, There haven't been that many examples post-2014 of this government kind of sort of facing such a decisive kind of defeat, right? I mean, there was a land acquisition bill ordinance that they had to withdraw early on that tried to reform what the Congress Party had done towards the end of UPA2. There were the farm law bills that they had to walk back. You could say that, you know, they weren't able in 2019 to push the NRC, the National Registry of Citizens. COVID happened and now those that kind of conversation went by the wayside. So how do you think about this setback within the broader set of setbacks that this government has faced, which have been relatively few and far between in such a high profile way? Speaker 2 (10:06) Like, I mean, the first one, right? I mean, on the land stuff, there wasn't even any kind of public upsurge or sentiment against it. I mean, that was basically Modi retreating from Raul Gandhi's Sootbootki Sarkar jibe, right? He was this sort of, didn't want to be identified as pro-rich or pro-industrialist or whatever early on in his terms. I thought that, the farm laws are a very interesting comparison because I do think that, you know, that the similarity is, again, the government had staked a lot. And they did back down quite decisively. They scrapped those laws despite, you know, it took over a year. And they had passed the laws and then had to repeal Speaker 3 (10:44) them. So it wasn't even that, you know, they decided to scrap them from being presented in parliament. Speaker 2 (10:50) And in policy terms, that was a much greater setback than getting rid of the education minister. So I think in some ways, the farm, you know, the retreat on the farm laws was more significant. But I think what was... Politically more significant over here was that they were really struggling to use the usual playbook that they use against demonstrators, which they used against the anti-CAA protesters, what they used against the formula, which is to kind of, you know, treat them as outsiders, to treat them as the other, to treat them as somehow suspect and anti-national. And they tried to do this with the CJP too. But at this point, I think a lot of people, particularly young people, particularly young urban Gen Z, as they say, they kind of see through this and they sort of, you know, it became sort of the subject of jokes and memes and so on. And so they were not able to characterize CJP. as hostile to the Indian national interest in the way that they were able to with the farm protests, even though they'd had to back down in the end, or with the anti-CAA protests. And I think that's pretty significant. Speaker 1 (11:54) I mean, there are a couple of other things, right, that is kind of different, but similar in some ways, where with the farm laws, there was kind of a rural-urban, perhaps not even divide, but there was a difference where, you know, if you ask a lot of people in... kind of in urban cities, they would actually, in fact, all of us would say, actually, some of those farm laws were good and necessary and people have been calling, but very different. I think in this case, it's a generational divide. And you saw this even with,