London, March 2 India is facing twin economic and political crises and while the growth slowdown has been dramatic, politics is taking "an aggressively illiberal turn", according to an article in the Financial Times.
Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times, said that "after the global financial crisis, India's growth has slowed and its politics is also now moving towards an aggressively illiberal form of majoritarianism".
"These twin changes are not for the better," he said.
He said that the slowdown in India's economy has been dramatic, comparable even to what happened in the crisis of the early 1990s. Wolf also said that the Indian government has denied the slowdown and even its response has been that of what was seen in 1970s.
"The government's response seems to be to deny the evidence of a slowdown. A discussion at the ministry of finance last week suggested that the reaction is the sort of managerialism I remember from my work on India for the World Bank in the 1970s: protectionism, higher government investment, lending targets for banks and direct assistance to exports. It is impossible to believe that such actions will resolve the deep weaknesses behind recent growth failures," he wrote.
Wolf said that all policy decisions are concentrated in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office. "Instead, the best advisers have mostly gone and policymaking has, by all account, been concentrated within the Prime Minister's Office."
He added that in the current environment, people are expected to show loyalty and there is fear.
"Everybody else is expected to show loyalty, above all. Rahul Bajaj, a well-known Indian businessman, has even accused the government of 'creating an environment of fear'. In the short time I was there last week, I found many agree with him, if only privately," Wolf added.
The FT report added that the current choice of the government seems to be an easier alternative in the form of reliance on identity politics.
"The crackdown in Kashmir, the explicit discrimination against Muslims in the new Citizenship Amendment Act, the proposed national register of citizens, in a country with notoriously bad documentation, and the apparent intention to deport Muslims who cannot prove their right to stay, do together suggest a transformation of the Indian polity. So, too, is the free use of labels like 'traitor' for those who disagree and 'sedition' about those who protest," the article said.
"It is quite clear, surely, that the transformation of India into another 'illiberal democracy' is long-intended. Little wonder US President Donald Trump admires Mr Modi. They play the same game, but Mr Modi's majority gives him more cards.
"India has now come to a watershed. Its powerful government can either focus its efforts on reinvigorating the economy or it can proceed with a transformation of an imperfect liberal democracy into something very different. It is easy to understand the appeal of this dangerous project. But we must hope that Mr Modi will listen, even now, to the better angels of his nature," the FT article said.
( With inputs from )