The remarkable rise of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is examined in a review by Max Rodenbeck of two new books about Indian politics. In 2014, Modi led the Bharatiya Janata, or Indian People’s Party (BJP), to one of the most dramatic electoral upsets in India’s 70 years as a democracy.
“Despairing opponents, for their part, tend to consider Modi’s success part of an equally inexorable global wave of strongman populism: From his appeal to voter anger, to his accusations of enemies, to his televisual talent for sound bites and gestures, he much resembles Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or Rodrigo Duterte,” Rodenbeck writes.
“With dreary regularity in Delhi as much as in London or New York, shoulders shrug and palms spread as it is explained that witless Indian voters have succumbed to some kind of wicked zeitgeist.”
However, a growing number of corruption allegations could stall the success of Modi, who was tipped as a shoo-in to win the next national elections in 2019. As “loudly touted policies have mired in Indian realities,” Modi could see himself returned to power with a reduced majority, says Rodenbeck.
“The smart money is still on Modi but recent trends suggest that he would be wise to call an early election, or he may see himself returned to power with a reduced majority, dependent on coalition allies,” he writes.
Book Review: Indian politics
Book Review: Indian politics
What We Are Reading Today: A Capital’s Capital
Authors: Gilles Postel-Vinay and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Successful economies sustain capital accumulation across generations, and capital accumulation leads to large increases in private wealth. In this book, Gilles Postel-Vinay and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal map the fluctuations in wealth and its distribution in Paris between 1807 and 1977.
Drawing on a unique dataset of the bequests of almost 800,000 Parisians, they show that real wealth per decedent varied immensely during this period while inequality began high and declined only slowly.
Parisians’ portfolios document startling changes in the geography and types of wealth over time.
Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal’s account reveals the impact of economic factors (large shocks, technological changes, differential returns to wealth), political factors (changes in taxation), and demographic and social factors (age and gender) on wealth and inequality.
Before World War I, private wealth was highly predictive of other indicators of welfare, including different forms of human capital, age at death, and access to local public goods.
