0:00

Politics has never been stranger, or

0:03

more online. Which is why

0:05

the Politics team at Wired is making a

0:07

new show, Wired Politics Lab. It's all about

0:09

how to navigate the endless stream of news

0:11

and information, and what to look out for.

0:14

Each week on the show, we'll

0:16

dig into far-right platforms, AI chatbots,

0:18

influencer campaigns, and so much more.

0:21

Wired Politics Lab launches Thursday, April 11th.

0:25

Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. I'm

0:31

Dalia Lithwick, and I'm host of

0:33

Amicus, Slates' podcast about the law

0:35

and the U.S. Supreme Court. We

0:38

are shifting into high gear, coming

0:40

at you weekly with the context

0:42

you need to understand the rapidly

0:44

changing legal landscape. The

0:46

many trials of Donald J. Trump, judicial

0:49

ethics, arguments and opinions at

0:51

SCOTUS. We are tackling

0:53

the big legal news with clarity

0:55

and insight every single week. New

0:58

Amicus episodes every Saturday, wherever

1:01

you listen. If

1:04

you are just someone who believes in

1:07

democracy and checks and balances, then this

1:09

is a good thing. Then this election

1:11

actually means that everyone wins

1:13

out to a certain degree, and that democracy

1:15

wins. Which is not something we can say

1:17

that often these days. What

1:23

could go right? I'm Zachary

1:26

Carabell, the founder of The Progress

1:28

Network, joined as always by my

1:30

co-host, Emma Varvalukas, the executive director

1:32

of You Got It, The Progress

1:34

Network. And this week

1:37

on our podcast, we're going to look

1:39

at something that in many

1:41

ways went much more

1:43

spectacularly right than

1:45

almost anyone anticipated. Right

1:48

in terms of the process, right in terms

1:50

of the entire

1:52

arc, and I

1:55

suppose for some people, given that we're about to

1:57

talk about an election in one of the world's...

2:00

democracies, in fact, in the world's largest democracy.

2:02

I'm sure some people didn't like the outcome

2:05

of the election, in which case it didn't

2:07

go right at all. It went spectacularly wrong.

2:09

But from a democratic process perspective, it certainly

2:11

went right. And from an outcome perspective for

2:14

those who were despairing about the future of

2:16

democracy, it also went rather

2:19

right. So we're going to talk about

2:21

India. For many Americans, and a

2:23

lot of our audience is American, this may

2:25

seem a bit other, but the fact is

2:27

India is the world's largest democracy. It says

2:29

a lot about the nature of democracy in

2:32

the world. And we are

2:34

tethered to that, just like we are tethered to everything else.

2:36

We are, whether we like it or not, global

2:38

citizens and the results in India are

2:41

dramatically important because this is a

2:43

sizable portion of the 8 billion

2:45

people on the planet. It's nearly a fifth of

2:48

the entire population of the world resides

2:50

in India, and it's a democracy.

2:52

So we're going to talk to somebody who has looked

2:55

at these things deeply, continues to look at these things

2:57

deeply, and who I believe will

2:59

shed some light on what was both

3:01

a surprising and in many ways unexpected

3:04

outcome. So today we're going

3:06

to talk to Revy Agrawal. He's the

3:08

editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy, and he also

3:10

hosts Foreign Policy Live, which is the

3:12

magazine's video channel and podcast. Before

3:15

that, he was at CNN, I believe for

3:17

more than a decade. And as Zachary mentioned,

3:19

we're going to talk to him all about

3:21

India, of which he's also written a book

3:24

that's called India Connected, How the Smartphone is

3:26

Transforming the World's Largest Democracy. Are you ready,

3:28

Zachary? I am ready. Let's talk to Revy.

3:31

Revy Agrawal, it is a pleasure to

3:33

have you on What Could Go Right.

3:35

You know, we scheduled this interview, we

3:38

and I think an astonishingly large

3:41

percentage of everyone else who either

3:43

cared about the Indian election was polling, expected

3:46

an extraordinarily different outcome.

3:50

And before we get into the weeds of that, I mean, this, I think

3:53

for those, we have a predominantly American audience,

3:55

for those who are listening to this. It's

3:58

unclear right now whether this also should tell.

4:00

us something about the contemporary state of polling,

4:03

whether there was an aspect of what went on in

4:05

India that just says, weirdly enough, in

4:07

a world full of data and data

4:09

mining and AI and what appears to

4:11

be the ability of us to marshal

4:13

huge amounts of data in ever more

4:15

sliced and diced and micro fashions that

4:17

our ability to get things completely wrong

4:19

has not changed at all. So,

4:23

I mean, maybe if we could start there, Ravi. Again,

4:25

we're going to presume that there's

4:27

a generalized understanding that the BJP,

4:29

which is the ruling party of

4:31

Prime Minister Modi, while it

4:34

did return to power in a coalition,

4:37

vastly underperformed. I think it got 240 seats

4:39

as opposed to whatever they had said, oh,

4:41

we're going to get 400 seats

4:43

and have a super majority. Lost what,

4:45

63 seats? I think that was... And

4:47

it was a big electoral setback, even though

4:50

it is certainly true that Modi is still

4:52

and will be now Prime Minister for the

4:54

third term. So I

4:57

guess maybe Ravi, if we could start

4:59

with, how did everybody, including Modi's party

5:01

as well, get this so wrong? Yeah,

5:03

it's a great question. So there were

5:05

three sets of expectations that were dashed.

5:07

One is all of the opinion polling

5:09

over the last year or so, all

5:12

of which suggested that not only

5:14

would Narendra Modi and his BJP

5:16

come back to power, but that

5:18

they would win an outright majority on

5:21

their own, so more than 272 seats,

5:23

and that they would easily exceed

5:25

that as well. Modi

5:28

and his deputies

5:30

themselves then, closer to the

5:33

election time, said that they

5:35

expected to cross 400 seats,

5:38

which has never been done before

5:40

in Indian electoral history. And this

5:42

would mean that they would get

5:44

a super majority. They would

5:46

allow them to push through

5:48

constitutional reform even. And

5:51

then finally, on June the

5:53

1st, which was three days

5:55

before the election results emerged,

5:58

and India's elections go on for six weeks.

6:00

weeks. They're just this incredibly long process in

6:02

various phases in various parts of

6:04

the country. On June 1st,

6:08

poll after poll, these are exit

6:10

polls conducted by different news channels

6:12

and media companies. Almost

6:15

all of them predicted that not

6:17

only would the BJP win

6:19

a majority on their own, but some of

6:21

them went as far as saying that, yes,

6:24

the exit polls show that they would get 400

6:27

seats. So everyone got

6:29

it wrong. This could be

6:31

a fundamental misreading of the

6:33

national mood. This could be

6:36

the fact that vote shares don't

6:38

always translate into seats. And India

6:41

is especially complicated here, partly

6:43

because this is not a two-party

6:45

system. This is a multi-party system.

6:47

And then there's some evidence now

6:49

that the opposition's vote share combined

6:51

and coalesced in a way that

6:54

it had it in the last

6:56

two elections, which made it much

6:58

harder for pollsters to try and

7:00

wrap their heads around how this

7:02

converts into seats. Now, there

7:05

are some theories, and I won't

7:07

endorse them, that this

7:10

was part of a ploy, that there

7:12

were some very powerful people who wanted

7:14

to put out flawed opinion

7:16

polls, flawed exit polls even, to

7:19

make a killing on the stock market. I have

7:21

seen no real proof that that is the case.

7:23

Where I fall, I think, is that everyone just

7:25

got it wrong because they

7:28

had gotten it wrong before as

7:30

well in underestimating how powerful the

7:32

BJP is and was, and

7:35

Modi. And I think in

7:37

fear of getting it wrong again and thinking

7:39

that Modi tends to

7:42

overperform, not underperform, if you look

7:44

at his history, that's kind

7:46

of where everyone was. In US

7:48

elections now, I think there's a policy not

7:50

to report on exit polls, or at least

7:52

to not report on them as if they're

7:54

conclusive. So people will talk

7:56

about them with some kind of, if they want

7:58

some descriptive flavor before the results come in.

8:01

But it is one of these things where, I mean,

8:03

you would think, right, someone leaves the polling place and

8:06

someone goes up to them and says, you

8:08

know, who did you vote for? You'd think

8:10

that that would be a fairly binary, simple

8:12

equation. And yet for reasons that I'm not

8:14

sure everyone understands, it's just not. So

8:16

I get the exit poll factor. It's the,

8:19

it's everything else that seemed, was

8:23

how badly he underperformed in the

8:25

north and places like Uttar Pradesh

8:27

and kind of areas that had

8:29

been the Hindu, you know, Gangetic

8:32

Plains stronghold of

8:34

the BJP, the Hindu nationalist. And, and

8:36

that really, like if you massively underperformed

8:38

in the south, and for those who

8:40

don't know, there's a real south, north

8:42

divide in India, politically,

8:45

culturally, linguistically, historically. But

8:47

like that seemed surprising.

8:50

Surprising. Yeah, it was

8:52

surprising and surprising in part because if you

8:55

go back to the start of the

8:57

campaign, Modi inaugurated this big temple to

8:59

the God Ram in January.

9:01

And at the place where this was

9:03

inaugurated, Ayodhya, his party lost the seat

9:05

there. This was meant to be the

9:07

thing that the people really wanted. This

9:09

was meant to be the thing that

9:12

would consolidate the Hindu vote. And

9:14

yet it didn't. And I mean, there's several

9:16

lessons you can draw from it. One is

9:18

that Hindus are not this monolith, you know,

9:20

they're not all going to vote on one

9:22

issue and one issue alone, which is religion.

9:25

Two is that, you know, when a

9:27

leader comes out publicly and says, I'm

9:30

going to win all these seats, I'm going to dominate,

9:33

it's not the most likable thing. And

9:35

there is now some sense that they

9:37

just completely overreach. They in telling the

9:39

people that we are coming

9:42

back to power with this huge

9:44

landslide majority. I think there's an

9:46

element here of the people just

9:48

wanting to check that power

9:51

and to check that not

9:53

just the power itself, but the

9:55

perception and the self perception of

9:57

power. And in a

9:59

sense, Doesn't matter where you are in the political

10:01

spectrum, checking power and

10:04

checking, in general,

10:07

too much power. One could

10:09

argue, one should argue, in

10:12

fact, that Narendra Modi weakened the

10:14

media. He weakened the judiciary. He

10:17

may have been seen as business friendly, but

10:19

he was also seen

10:21

as too cozy with billionaires. There

10:24

were elements of his power that needed

10:26

to be checked, needed to be balanced

10:29

out, and India needed a stronger

10:31

opposition. And obviously hindsight

10:33

is in 2020, but it

10:35

could be that India's voters, as diverse as

10:38

they are, made a set

10:40

of choices that was a check

10:42

on what they were hearing in

10:44

the media about dominance. And

10:47

there could be lessons there for other countries

10:49

and parties around the world. I mean, do

10:51

people feel generally like, yes, like, let's go

10:53

forward, let's do the same? Or are they

10:55

worried? Or what's the general vibe? I would

10:58

say the general vibe is actually quite good.

11:00

If you are a fan of Modi's, he

11:02

is prime minister. If

11:05

you want his agenda,

11:07

which is a mix

11:09

of welfare policies, subsidies

11:11

for the poor, a

11:13

focus on infrastructure and development,

11:15

a very bullish projection of

11:17

Indian power overseas, if you

11:20

like all of that stuff, if you

11:22

like his pro-Hindu agenda, most

11:24

of which has been accomplished already, to

11:27

be clear, then you're pleased in that

11:29

he is still your prime minister. If

11:32

you supported other parties, you

11:34

now feel like you

11:36

have a shot. You now feel like your

11:38

parties have more of a say. You

11:41

feel like parliament matters again. So parliamentary

11:43

debate, which Modi shunned largely, is now

11:45

going to be much more important. The

11:48

media will feel a little bit more

11:50

emboldened and I hope, frankly, chastised and

11:52

ashamed of the fact that most of

11:55

the big news channels were quite subservient

11:57

to Modi over the last decade or

11:59

so. So if you are just someone

12:01

who believes in democracy and checks and

12:04

balances, then this is a

12:06

good thing. Then this election actually means

12:08

that everyone wins out to a

12:10

certain degree and that democracy wins, which is

12:12

not something we can say that often these

12:15

days. You know, there had been a narrative

12:17

emerging and it's a global narrative, but it

12:19

was also particular to India that you had

12:21

this form of kind of authoritarian or as

12:24

Fareed Zakaria talked about illiberal democracy years and years

12:27

and years ago and is still talking about you

12:29

did a conversation with him recently as well

12:31

as did we. And that

12:34

Modi was the like the prima

12:36

interparis of this narrative, that it

12:38

was the most obvious example of

12:40

a sort of populist

12:43

leader with authoritarian nationalist tendencies

12:46

who was using

12:48

that animated spirit to

12:51

get more votes and kind of crowd out

12:53

the public sphere using the

12:55

levers of democracy and then also some levers

12:58

that were much more questionable. I mean, it's

13:00

true, the press had become quite subservient. But

13:02

what does it do about that narrative? I

13:04

mean, was that narrative like because the international

13:06

community bought into it as well. I think

13:09

we all bought into it, right, that this

13:11

was working. Successful. It was

13:13

popular. Does that mean that we should have been

13:15

telling a different story or was it working for

13:17

a while and then suddenly it didn't. So

13:20

I don't think we got it wrong

13:22

in that sense. I think the diagnosis

13:24

that authoritarianism is on the rise globally

13:26

is is a correct

13:29

diagnosis and a correct trend

13:31

line. I think illiberal democracy is on

13:33

the rise globally. That is also a

13:35

trend line that, you know,

13:38

holds true even with this election,

13:40

by the way. But I

13:42

think what India's election tells us is that

13:45

trends work until they don't. When people

13:48

get to vote, they vote based

13:50

on a certain set of parameters. And frankly,

13:52

to some degree, one of them was these

13:54

trends. I think they wanted a more

13:57

democratic India. I think they looked around.

16:00

be looking to India with some sense of

16:02

hope and optimism wherever they are in the

16:04

world. This

16:17

is Sarah. And this is Beth. And

16:19

we are Pantsuit Politics. A podcast where we

16:21

take a different approach to the news. We

16:25

talk about news, we talk about politics, but

16:27

we also talk about parenting and travel and

16:29

pop culture and how all of that affects

16:31

how we understand the world. We're

16:34

really different people. Sometimes you'll hear us agree and

16:36

sometimes not. We think that's where the fun is.

16:38

We laugh and learn together and with all of

16:40

you twice a week, every week. Pantsuit

16:43

Politics is about engaging with each other

16:45

and the news without the anxiety and

16:47

the frustration. We

16:49

hope you'll join our conversation every Tuesday and

16:52

Friday because politics doesn't have to be exhausting.

16:54

Our listeners tell us it's like time spent with your

16:57

good friends who did their homework. Ryan

17:01

Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price

17:04

of just about everything going up during inflation,

17:06

we thought we'd bring our prices down. So

17:08

to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently

17:11

a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. I bet you get 30,

17:13

30, I bet you get 30, I bet you get 20, 20,

17:15

20, I bet you get 20, 20, to get 15, 15, I

17:18

bet you get 15, 15, 15,

17:20

15, just 15 bucks a month.

17:22

So, give it a try at

17:24

mintmobile.com/switch. $45 upfront for three months plus

17:26

taxes and fees. Promo rate for new customers for limited time.

17:28

Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium

17:30

Wireless. Do you

17:32

essentially agree with the piece that Foreign Policy

17:35

ran recently that India has reached peak moating,

17:37

like despite the fact, as you were just

17:39

talking about, his face was everywhere. People give

17:41

him a lot of credit for India's booming

17:43

economy, whether or not that's valid to give

17:45

him that credit. Do you think that from

17:47

here it's going to be like a slow

17:49

slide down or is it possible that we

17:51

could like go back in the

17:53

other direction again? I edited that essay. This

17:55

is an essay by Devesh Kapoor,

17:58

who teaches at Johns Hopkins. widely

18:00

seen as one of

18:02

the leading authorities on Indian politics

18:04

in the United States. He's trained

18:07

many South Asia scholars in

18:09

this country, so he has a lot of fans.

18:12

And his piece was titled Modi's

18:16

Peaked, and the BJP is

18:19

Peaked. And he

18:21

basically looks around the world at

18:24

various other kind

18:26

of dominant parties, whether it's the

18:28

PRI in Mexico or the ANC

18:31

in South Africa,

18:33

you know, makes the point that when you

18:36

have dominance for a long time, a range

18:39

of problems begin to set in.

18:41

And, you know, you're not as

18:43

efficient as you could be. Cult

18:46

of personality is the kind of thing

18:48

that just erodes a party's power over

18:50

time. I think he's

18:52

broadly right. We, by the

18:55

way, discussed this essay weeks before

18:57

we published it. So I'm not

18:59

saying Devesh was prescient about the

19:01

results. The results surprised him and

19:04

me both, but we thought it would be provocative

19:07

to posit that the BJP

19:10

had peaked. And then the

19:12

election results came out and we rushed the piece

19:14

out because it was

19:17

no longer a provocation. It

19:19

was an explanation of

19:21

what had happened. And I think

19:23

Devesh is right. Look, if

19:26

you claim to be fixing a

19:28

problem at some point, you either have to

19:30

fix it or you have to move

19:32

on. So when you're in power for long enough and

19:35

you've railed against previous governments,

19:38

at some point you're carrying the can. You have

19:40

to fix it or you have to

19:42

be judged. And I think that's part of

19:44

the cycle of parties around

19:46

the world. And as long as you're

19:48

a democracy, then the judgment is one

19:51

that actually works. And then you get

19:53

booted out or you get corrected, as

19:55

we've seen in India. And what makes

19:57

India fascinating is you

19:59

had this. moment at the beginning

20:01

of the 21st century where there was a lot

20:03

of sense that

20:06

there were a bunch of countries

20:08

that had whatever troubled, challenging, interesting

20:10

history they had in the 20th

20:12

century that were poised for some

20:14

sort of breakout politically

20:16

and or economically. And

20:19

India and China as well as Brazil and

20:21

some others were kind of part of that

20:23

mix. And then you had a 20-year period

20:25

where China very evidently, at least economically, experienced

20:28

even the wildest expectations of what was

20:30

possible. And India in many ways underperformed

20:33

even modest expectations about what was

20:36

likely. And now

20:38

you have this moment in the 2020s

20:40

where when I was

20:42

in India last year, it felt very

20:44

much like what people were saying

20:46

and thinking about China in 2002, 3, and 4. There was a

20:48

sense, kind of a palpable sense

20:53

of possibility, of confidence,

20:56

of like this is our moment. And

20:58

some of that was in spite of Modi, not because of

21:00

him. Some of that clearly was a feeling

21:04

amongst more professional classes

21:06

that whatever Modi's faults in

21:08

terms of Hindu nationalism, that there was kind of an

21:10

economic stability slash opening that was

21:13

new. Is there still a

21:15

sense of if the global

21:17

story was largely

21:19

shaped by the emergence of China,

21:22

let's say for the 20 years after 2001?

21:24

And what I mean by

21:26

that is like that was a potent X factor that has

21:28

shaped a lot of the world. Could you say the same

21:31

still being true or is it, do you think going to be

21:33

true of India for the next 15, 20 years? So

21:37

yes and no. I think China is

21:39

just an outlier. I think China's growth

21:41

miracle, double digit growth for four decades

21:44

is as big a deal in

21:46

the global span of history as like

21:49

the Industrial Revolution was. It's just something

21:51

that was a very specific set

21:54

of circumstances for an incredibly large

21:56

number of people over a

21:58

prolonged period of time. that seem

22:00

to sort of defy market forces. So it

22:03

sort of had a lot to do

22:05

with China's style of government

22:07

and very sort of single-minded focus

22:10

on development and growth. I

22:12

don't think that can be replicated anywhere

22:14

else in the world, maybe even ever.

22:17

Having said that, I think the Indian

22:19

growth story is remarkable.

22:21

I think what India has achieved

22:24

in the last 20 odd

22:26

years, 30 years, if you look at 1991, was

22:28

the year that

22:31

India's Congress coalition government, by

22:33

the way, put in

22:35

place a set of reforms. In a

22:37

moment of crisis, they opened up to

22:40

the world, which allowed India's

22:42

growth to really take off from

22:44

the 90s onwards. If

22:46

you look at all the trend lines, they

22:49

point to the 90s as the period where

22:51

people first began to see India as

22:53

this economy that had immense potential. Modi's

22:57

done some good things and

22:59

actually has stood in the way of some

23:01

other things. I

23:04

think there's little doubt that he

23:06

has worked hard to make India

23:08

a friendlier place for

23:10

business for both domestic and

23:12

international investors. He

23:14

has really pushed hard to improve

23:17

infrastructure. So building thousands and

23:19

thousands of miles of highways

23:21

and roads every year, doubling the

23:23

number of airports in a decade, building

23:26

more rail lines, little

23:30

things like gas connections, electricity connections

23:32

are up by 45% in the

23:35

last decade. So

23:37

a lot of infrastructural pushes that

23:40

are commendable, to say the least, and

23:43

have won him support, by the way.

23:45

Women, for example, have voted for him in

23:47

droves in 2014 and 2019 at

23:49

the very least, in part because of

23:52

his focus on the construction of toilets

23:54

or electricity or gas

23:56

connections. I think where

23:58

he's fallen, I think, And we've seen

24:01

some of this in the

24:03

way in which people have to

24:05

some degree moved on from him in the 2024

24:07

election is job creation. He

24:11

has really struggled to create

24:14

good jobs for people. Unemployment

24:18

is in the 7, 8% range, just

24:20

too high. Youth unemployment for

24:23

a country as young as India is, is around

24:25

about 15% by some estimates. That's

24:28

just way too high and means

24:30

India could well face a demographic

24:33

disaster in the coming years. So

24:35

those are all things that I think another

24:38

Modi government and other governments after that will

24:40

have to address. There's one very

24:42

interesting data point, however, FDI, Foreign Direct Investment

24:45

in India is actually down in the last

24:47

three years. And

24:49

there are a range of potential reasons for

24:51

this. But one reason is

24:54

that some investors are spooked

24:56

by the fact that if

24:59

you want to get something done in

25:01

India, you've kind of got to be

25:03

within this sort of special cabal of

25:05

Modi friends. So for example,

25:08

there's India's second biggest billionaire, this

25:10

guy called Gautam Adani. All

25:14

of the stocks linked to him bear his

25:16

name. So

25:18

various Adani stocks. They're

25:20

known on the market as Modi stocks. And

25:23

the day that the election results

25:25

began to emerge, those stocks tanked by

25:27

double digit percentages, every single one of

25:30

them. Because there

25:32

was this broad acceptance that

25:35

if Modi wants to build, I don't know, a

25:37

factory for semiconductors, he's going to call one of

25:39

his friends and say, build it. And then they

25:41

will build it. And so

25:43

if you were a foreign investor or even a

25:45

domestic investor, to get something done, you

25:48

needed to be in that circle. It

25:50

could be that in a coalition

25:52

government with more checks and balances,

25:55

market forces may actually be strengthened,

25:58

not weakened, which actually roads

26:00

well for India. If you look

26:02

at historically, coalition governments have

26:05

actually been better for Indian growth

26:07

and development than the opposite. Yeah,

26:10

I'm really glad you mentioned this point

26:12

about FDI, foreign direct investment, because the

26:14

contrast there with China is so extreme.

26:16

We had literally trillions of dollars

26:18

of foreign direct investment in China from 2001 until the

26:20

late to mid-2018s. In many ways, a lot of

26:26

China's industrial base or contemporary

26:28

manufacturing base was paid for

26:30

by outside China.

26:34

You've almost none of that in India. There

26:36

is definitely foreign direct investment in India, but

26:38

it's fractional. I think it's 1

26:40

20th or less than 1 20th. That may

26:43

not be an

26:45

accurate number, but it actually may be worse than that.

26:48

That's a huge differential in

26:50

the way things work. Yeah,

26:52

exactly. As I think

26:55

the American companies especially, I don't

26:58

like the word decoupling, but as they look

27:01

to French shore or near shore

27:03

or turn to other markets, Apple,

27:06

for example, is trying to build more

27:09

of a manufacturing base in India, perhaps

27:12

because it was over-reliant on China. As

27:16

companies and countries look to do that, India

27:18

will be a destination, regardless of the

27:20

government in power, will

27:22

be a country that they turn to.

27:24

Of course, it's competitive, right? They will

27:26

also turn to other Southeast Asian markets,

27:28

maybe even Latin American markets. If

27:31

you look at the mix of political

27:34

stability, availability

27:36

of skilled labor,

27:38

and the potential for land

27:42

acquisition, which by the way has always been

27:44

a problem in India, land acquisition and labor

27:46

laws. If the Modi

27:48

government can look to focus on those,

27:50

they'll remain a very attractive place for

27:52

companies to come and do business. So

27:56

this vision for India in the next 25 years,

27:58

I think there's a goal to become... a

28:00

high-income nation, right? And there's also the

28:02

goal of becoming a leader for the

28:05

global south, becoming a leader generally in

28:07

the world. You just described

28:09

both some of the factors

28:12

that would lead India for that direction and

28:14

some of the missing ingredients. I mean, taking

28:16

that all together, would you place your bet

28:18

on India making it to this vision that's

28:20

been described or do you think it might

28:22

be a little bit rocky? It will muddle

28:24

its way there. I think one

28:27

distinction to make here, and again,

28:29

perhaps the Indian voters voted based

28:31

on this, is there's a

28:33

lot of noise about India being the fifth

28:35

largest economy in the world and within a

28:38

decade or so will become the third largest

28:40

economy in the world behind only the United

28:42

States and China. And I

28:44

think what that narrative of a

28:47

big rising collective ignores is

28:49

that average incomes in India are still extremely low.

28:51

So the average Indian makes the equivalent of $2,500

28:53

a year. That is about a fifth what the

28:59

average Mexican makes, similar,

29:01

about a fifth of what the average

29:04

Chinese makes. And in terms

29:06

of what the average American makes, gosh, you're looking at

29:08

1 20th or something like

29:10

that, 1 25th. India

29:13

is a poor country and it takes

29:15

a long time for average incomes to

29:17

actually rise. And so while India may

29:19

have all these billionaires, and

29:21

if you travel to one of the big cities,

29:23

there are a lot of things that look impressive.

29:26

Again, I mean, India has a lot of median

29:29

growth that would need to take

29:31

place for India to become a

29:33

middle income country. That's 5x

29:36

to reach Mexico's levels

29:38

of median prosperity.

29:41

So I think the path to

29:43

that is not an easy one.

29:45

I think India would have to

29:47

liberalize further, a lot of

29:49

reforms it would have to put in place.

29:51

And there are a lot of structural hurdles

29:54

that begin with the fact

29:56

that it has simply been unable to

29:58

create manufacturing jobs. let alone

30:00

moving up the skilled ladder. So it will

30:02

not be an easy path. It's not a

30:05

far gone conclusion at all. At

30:16

Evernorth Health Services, we believe costs shouldn't

30:18

get in the way of life-changing care.

30:20

And we're doing everything in our power

30:22

to make it possible. Behavioral

30:24

health solutions that also keep your projections

30:26

at their best, it's possible. Pharmacy

30:29

benefits that benefit your bottom line,

30:31

it's possible. Complex specialty

30:33

care that cares about your ROI,

30:35

it's possible. Because we're already

30:37

doing it, all while saving businesses

30:40

billions. That's wonder made

30:42

possible. Learn more at

30:44

evernorth.com/wonder. Broadening

30:50

the aperture a bit, and you

30:52

referenced Mexico a moment ago in terms

30:54

of comparative rates of affluence

30:56

and or poverty depending on whether

30:59

you want to look at it as a cup half full or

31:01

cup half empty. There has been, we talked

31:04

a little at the beginning about the

31:06

trend toward let's say authoritarian democracy or

31:08

illiberal or, and yet you do have

31:10

over the past several months, multiple

31:13

countries, multi-ethnic, complicated,

31:16

challenging, go to the polls,

31:19

have an electoral result that was

31:21

widely accepted within those countries. And

31:23

there's always accusations of fraud here

31:25

and there and corruption, and

31:27

produce governments in many ways that were

31:29

governments of change. So

31:31

you had Mexico, South

31:34

Africa, Indonesia, India, obviously Brazil

31:36

last year. Does that

31:39

offset or counter

31:41

the narrative of democracy

31:44

and retreat, rise of,

31:46

you know, it just, it

31:48

strikes me that if you had said to somebody in 1960

31:50

or 1970 that

31:53

at this point in the 20th century, you'd have

31:55

a series of quote

31:58

unquote non-Western countries. go

32:00

to the polls and produce unequivocally

32:02

democratic results that

32:05

would be widely accepted and

32:08

would then kind of go about their business. That

32:11

would have been seen as an

32:13

unbelievably optimistic scenario given

32:16

the world. And I

32:18

mean, in many ways, I don't know if we take it for granted today,

32:20

but I do think it's

32:22

something worth stepping back

32:25

and recognizing that it's

32:27

been an awfully positive few months for

32:29

just the concept of democracy, hasn't it?

32:31

It really has. And especially with India,

32:33

I think more than any of the

32:35

other elections you mentioned, India strikes me

32:37

as the one that is the

32:40

most positive in that there was a trend line

32:42

of less democracy

32:45

and democracy corrected the trend

32:47

line. That

32:49

to me is the most powerful example

32:52

of how democracy can

32:54

be self-correcting despite all

32:57

kinds of things that are arrayed against

32:59

it, from authoritarian leaders

33:02

to pillars of

33:05

democracy being systematically weakened, whether it's the

33:07

media or the judiciary. It's

33:09

interesting that you mentioned Mexico and South Africa.

33:12

I feel like they're at different stages of

33:14

the India curve. So South

33:16

Africa, for example, with the ruling

33:19

African National Congress, ANC, they

33:21

kind of remind me of India's Congress

33:24

Party in that they were at the

33:27

forefront of freedom struggle

33:29

of some form. And

33:32

then over time, a mix

33:34

of corruption, inefficiency led

33:37

to decay and

33:39

then eventually led to coalition governments

33:41

and then led to the emergence

33:43

of an alternative. So if

33:46

you look at what happened with India's Congress in the 50s

33:48

and 60s and 70s and 80s, in

33:51

a sense, the ANC in South

33:53

Africa is pretty much on that

33:55

same trajectory where it is

33:58

going from absolutely... good power and

34:00

popularity to now struggling to figure

34:02

out how to form a coalition

34:04

government. And then you may see the

34:06

rise of stronger alternatives in

34:08

the future. Mexico

34:11

is a very complicated one where

34:13

PRI could be the

34:16

Congress in the Indian reference

34:18

point. That then

34:20

declined and then you had essentially

34:23

a much more democratic Mexico in

34:26

the early 2000s. And

34:28

now you have this party, Morena, which

34:31

is led by or was led by,

34:34

founded by Amlo, Andres

34:37

Manuel Lopez Oprador, who

34:39

like Modi is a leader who

34:41

is immensely popular, very

34:43

populist, raised the minimum wage, for

34:46

example, has been very good for

34:48

workers, but not business friendly, but

34:51

also increasingly authoritarian. A real

34:53

cult of personality has essentially

34:55

allowed for the military to

34:58

control all kinds of institutions,

35:00

whether it's policing, whether

35:03

it is control of the airports, ports,

35:06

the military is really just back

35:08

in Mexico in a big way.

35:10

And in many senses, while on

35:13

the one hand we've been wanting

35:15

to celebrate the victory of Claudia

35:17

Shanebaum, Mexico's first female president, breaking

35:19

a glass ceiling. Democracy

35:22

is Amlo's protege and the

35:25

signs are that democracy is

35:27

still weakened in Mexico, that

35:31

yes, the people have voted for her

35:34

in essentially a landslide victory where the polls

35:36

were proven to be correct for once. But

35:41

there are many people who rightly will worry

35:43

about democracy in Mexico, where you have a

35:46

person in power, a party in

35:48

power that is all powerful, that

35:50

is reducing the role of the state and

35:52

increasing the role of the military to

35:55

achieve their ends. So it's

35:57

a mixed picture globally and I think we are...

36:00

right to worry about the trend

36:02

lines of the rise of a

36:04

liberal democracy, the rise of nationalism,

36:06

jingoism, all of these forces that

36:08

make it harder for true democracy

36:10

to flourish. And then

36:13

you have an example like India's where

36:15

it self-corrects despite the system, not

36:17

because of it. I get that none

36:20

of these are perfect and there

36:22

is a whole series of shades of gray and

36:25

we can kind of cherry pick around the world

36:27

whether you want to see examples of whatever

36:30

democratic backsliding versus democratic

36:32

efflorescence. People can point to

36:34

Poland as an example of it didn't, you

36:36

know, it looked like it was going down

36:38

the path to kind of Hungarian semi-authoritarianism and

36:41

then Donald Tusk and his party won and

36:43

they're kind of doing their best

36:45

to reverse that. You thought Bolsonaro was

36:47

going to be on the verge of a kind of

36:50

darker version of the 1970s and

36:54

Brazilian politics that didn't happen, doesn't mean it

36:56

won't, but Lulu won. I

36:59

don't even know what to make of Javier

37:01

Mille in Argentina. I mean, that's his own

37:03

kind of interesting sui generis. It's

37:05

not like Argentina's politics have been

37:07

anything resembling functional for an extraordinarily

37:10

long time if ever. But

37:12

it does show me that this is the challenge of like, we

37:14

all live in the present, right? And

37:17

there's a human desire to have very conclusive narratives

37:19

about what's going on that will

37:21

then extend presumably into the future so

37:23

that we can, you know, grapple with

37:25

the unknown by stamping it with false

37:27

certainty. And the

37:30

present is always going to be messy, certainly compared to

37:32

the past because we don't know how the future is

37:34

going to turn out. So there are all these threads

37:36

and there are all these possibilities and we don't know

37:38

which one and we're always

37:41

trying to guess and ascertain. I'm

37:44

just struck by if you

37:47

had felt and done the temperature of how

37:49

I think people have been feeling the past

37:51

few years. These

37:53

outcomes in my mind don't

37:56

follow that narrative neatly. Now

37:58

that doesn't mean they won't. And it doesn't mean

38:00

that all these things aren't true and that Claudia Scheinbaum

38:03

in Mexico will prove to be some sort of weird,

38:05

you know, maybe she'll be the medvedev

38:08

to Vladimir Putin and Amlo will be

38:11

pulling the strings. That's

38:13

an obscure reference, but it'll do

38:15

as an analogy. So I

38:17

don't know, it just, I am more heartened by

38:19

the fact of what's going on in the past

38:22

year and the demonstration of people

38:24

at least, you know, collectively

38:26

deciding their future of

38:28

all the messiness that it entails as

38:31

opposed to, oh well,

38:34

you know, the great experiment of the

38:36

20th century and some version of democracy

38:38

and open markets and open societies has

38:41

proven to be an abject, if not

38:43

failure, then it's been rejected or seized

38:45

or overthrown or whatever. And

38:48

like that's my provisionally optimistic view in the

38:50

moment. I kind of agree with

38:52

you on this in that I think things

38:55

could have been much worse on

38:57

all of the elections that we're discussing

38:59

and including the ones that we haven't

39:01

discussed. I think when

39:04

you think of the challenges that people

39:06

have faced, and one of the big

39:08

ones is the media. So I think

39:10

in the last few years, alongside countries

39:13

that have seen a cult

39:15

of personality, there

39:18

has been an element of media

39:20

capture where, you know,

39:22

you mentioned Putin, he controls TV

39:24

in Russia. Modi

39:27

largely, I won't say controls the

39:29

media in India, but he is

39:31

connected to the people who

39:34

really have control over India's mass media.

39:38

Most countries around the world that have leaders

39:41

who have an authoritarian bent,

39:43

they are accompanied with situations

39:46

where media as a pillar of

39:48

democracy has been weakened. And

39:51

I think the heartening thing

39:53

here is that despite that,

39:56

regular people have found ways of cutting

39:58

through and using. YouTube and

40:01

being influencers who tackle

40:04

this kind of media capture

40:06

with humor and with jokes

40:08

and with memes and with

40:10

very powerful narratives of speaking

40:13

truth to power. That's what we saw in India,

40:15

by the way. There were all of these YouTubers

40:17

with tens of millions of followers who

40:20

were able to basically

40:22

call BS when they needed to and

40:25

were immensely popular and led to a

40:27

sense of a bubble being pricked, which

40:30

may have then in part led to people voting the

40:32

way they did. And there's

40:34

a feedback loop from

40:36

country to country, from election to election.

40:39

And I think we are going to

40:42

see more and more influencers,

40:44

so not people who are paid to

40:46

sit behind an anchor desk,

40:49

but just people, regular people who

40:52

rise up, who are able to speak truth

40:54

to power and who are able

40:56

to do so with humor by

40:58

using memes, by connecting with people

41:01

where they are in an authentic

41:03

way that I think will end up

41:05

shaping political

41:08

movements, elections, choices

41:11

in ways that I think

41:14

most people haven't cottoned on to. And

41:16

I include myself in that as an

41:19

old school media guy who

41:21

is just beginning to grapple with how

41:23

fragmented and fractured the media is. And

41:26

I used to lament that, but I'm coming

41:28

around to the notion that there are real

41:31

upsides to that. Well, what

41:33

you're saying was certainly the case in

41:35

the European Parliament elections in Cyprus recently

41:38

with Fidias Panayotu, because he's a 24

41:40

year old YouTuber, two million followers, went

41:43

on TV with three neckties and was

41:45

like, hey, I'm running for parliament, guys.

41:47

And 40 percent of Gen Z voters

41:49

voted for him and he did get

41:51

voted in as an independent, which I

41:54

I've heard people interpreting again, like we were saying

41:56

with Modi, as like a screw you to the

41:58

current government of Cyprus, but it's also just like,

42:00

wow, really, like anybody can become a

42:02

politician as they have, you know, influence

42:04

and reach. Yeah, exactly. If

42:07

you look around the world historically, politicians

42:09

were more likely to be like landed

42:11

gentry, you know, I mean, there's a

42:13

term in Pakistan, the term

42:16

is electable, you know, someone who basically

42:19

has land and has people who work on

42:21

the land and, you know, of

42:23

course, going to get elected. And

42:26

I think what you're describing this

42:29

example is something we'll see more and

42:31

more of around the world. And it's

42:33

a churning of traditional

42:35

systems of achieving

42:37

power. It breaks through funding models,

42:39

which our campaign finance is broken

42:41

the world over. We can agree

42:44

on that. In as

42:46

much as young media influencers have a

42:48

way of getting around all these systems,

42:51

you know, the party system, the

42:53

funding system, that's

42:56

a good thing. I think it's a

42:58

new form and phase of democracy that

43:01

will shake things up in a way that also

43:04

frankly energizes young people who often don't

43:06

feel energized when they have to vote

43:08

for people who are four times their

43:10

age. Well, it was quite optimistic,

43:12

Ravi. There wasn't at all a depressing dinner

43:14

guest takes. I tried. We

43:17

appreciate you. We appreciate the

43:19

effort. Ravi, I want to thank

43:21

you for your thoughts today. And as we mentioned

43:24

in your intro, India

43:26

is the largest, most complicated democracy on

43:28

the planet. Full stop

43:31

with a population bigger than

43:33

the next few democracies, including the United

43:35

States and Brazil combined and the

43:38

entire EU for that matter. So paying

43:41

attention to it really does matter. It matters

43:43

to all of us. It is the ultimate

43:45

laboratory of democracy. I think again, the fact

43:47

that had this result that surprised us, we

43:50

didn't even get into the polling questions.

43:52

I think for Americans certainly, I think

43:54

we're aware of this really, that even our

43:57

own polling system is largely broken cell phones.

44:00

people who picks up the phone, who talks. It's

44:02

one of the more bewildering aspects of our contemporary world

44:04

that it's actually hard to figure out what people think

44:07

and what they're planning on doing. Which I

44:09

kind of like, by the way, in a world where we

44:11

think everything is predictable, right? Yeah, I

44:13

celebrate that. I mean, it's nice to

44:15

have surprises. It's nice also that people

44:19

have a mind of their own. Like we, we, we,

44:21

we tend to think sometimes partly because

44:23

of polls that we've

44:25

got it. We understand them. And

44:27

I like that people, you know,

44:30

throw up surprises. That's exactly what democracy was

44:32

meant to be. And I would

44:34

say to all of you who don't go

44:36

read foreign policy, it's certainly,

44:40

you know, provides coverage

44:42

of the world that you cannot find

44:44

almost anywhere else. I mean, maybe in

44:47

the economist sometimes, but an

44:49

awareness and a

44:51

rigorous look every day as to what's

44:53

going on in places that are vital

44:56

and important, but at least for Western

44:58

audiences often get ignored. I mean,

45:00

everybody ignores everything except what's provincial.

45:03

That's another human tendency. But go

45:05

read foreign policy. Robbie's done an amazing

45:08

job and I

45:10

urge all of you to pay attention. And thank you for your time

45:12

today. You are very kind to say

45:14

that. Thank you very much. Thank you so

45:16

much, Robbie. So I like the

45:18

point that you made at the end there, Zachary,

45:20

about kind of cherry picking things that are going

45:22

well as far as democracy and things that are

45:25

not going well. My sort of like favorite pet

45:27

example at the moment was Senegal's big democratic turnaround.

45:29

And then another one that I found out about

45:31

recently is Mauritania. I mean, when's the last time

45:34

anyone talked about Mauritania? They had their

45:36

first peaceful transition of power in 2019, and they're about

45:38

to probably

45:40

hopefully head into their second. So

45:42

obviously, it's not like Senegal, Mauritania

45:44

are world players the way that

45:47

Mexico and India and China and Russia

45:49

are and so on. So forth. But still,

45:52

there are kernels of hope in places that people

45:54

just don't really care about looking at. Right.

45:57

And I think, again. Let's

46:00

take it as a given that most people are

46:03

paying attention to the nascent

46:05

and not so nascent problems in the world.

46:08

And so some of this commentary is

46:10

in relation to

46:12

that. Like if everybody were just,

46:14

oh, Hosanna, Hosanna, everything's great. Look

46:17

at how flourishing democracy is. I

46:20

might be the first person to say, hey, wait a minute, there's

46:22

some problems here and let's look at them. It's

46:25

a kind of trying to create a more balanced view

46:27

of what's going on, particularly in a time where, as

46:30

we know, and the whole conceit of this podcast,

46:32

and what we're doing is there isn't a balanced

46:34

view of what's going on and it skews largely

46:36

negative, not positive. And I think

46:38

Ravi described it quite well at the end, like,

46:40

yeah, yes, it's great that

46:42

a first woman was elected in Mexico

46:46

and she's certainly different

46:48

from her predecessor, but there were

46:50

a lot of problems in that election and we don't know whether

46:52

or not this is just going to go badly. We

46:54

just know what happened on the

46:57

day of the election. And that's

46:59

kind of true everywhere. And look, the elephant in the

47:01

room for American viewers is trying to figure out what

47:03

the hell is going to happen and

47:05

whether or not that democratic result will be

47:07

accepted, whether it'll be accepted by Democrats if

47:10

Trump wins, and I think more crucially, whether

47:12

it'll be accepted by Trump if Biden wins

47:14

or whoever's running for president at

47:16

that time. And

47:19

what that will say about the health of American

47:21

democracy, it's almost certainly

47:24

the case that whoever wins in

47:26

the United States on November 5th will win because

47:28

they won within that system. I

47:30

mean, we have a screwy system because of the electoral

47:32

college and kind of means you can win without winning

47:35

the majority of the actual vote. That's a

47:37

structural problem, but that doesn't make it illegitimate.

47:39

I mean, it could make it illegitimate if

47:42

people start feeling like that's illegitimate, but that's

47:44

a whole separate issue. And

47:47

there we are in a messy world that to me feels

47:49

so much more functional than people think, full stop.

47:53

And I think the India result obviously demonstrated

47:55

that unbelievably. And

48:00

also more surprising, right, ties back to the

48:02

U.S. discussion as well, where the polls

48:04

in India were wrong. You know, the polls in

48:07

the U.S. right now are very Biden's going to

48:09

lose by a large margin. I'm

48:11

not saying that they're wrong, but they've certainly been wrong in

48:13

the past. And India is an

48:15

especially interesting example because I've read analyses that

48:17

were like, well, the polling was wrong because

48:19

they haven't done a population census in India

48:21

in a while, so they weren't waiting things

48:24

correctly. And I've also read, you know, Fareed

48:26

Zakaria wrote, for instance, that there is some

48:28

evidence that Indians are just flat out lying

48:30

about who they voted for. So there's

48:32

just so many factors that we

48:35

can consider a lot better after the fact than

48:37

before the fact. And well,

48:39

we'll see what happens in November. We will

48:41

definitely see what happens. And it will not be for

48:43

lots of commentary from lots of people who claim that

48:45

they know what's going to happen. Thank

48:48

you all for listening to this week. As

48:51

you know or may not know, we're

48:53

also doing shorter news episodes weekly, so

48:55

please tune into those as well. And

48:59

send us your thoughts. Sign up for our

49:01

newsletter, What Could Go Right, at theprogressnetwork.org. It's

49:03

free. It's weekly. It gives

49:06

you some news to think about that

49:08

you might not otherwise have noticed. And

49:11

please do enter into a conversation

49:13

with us. Tell us what you think. Tell us what you'd

49:15

like us to look at. Tell us what you

49:18

think we're not looking at the way we should be. We will

49:20

listen. We will take note whether or not we

49:22

agree. We very much appreciate the time.

49:27

Thanks for listening.