Patna, Bihar – Sanjeev Kumar is 27 and unemployed – a desperate situation made worse by the impending retirement of his father, a car salesman, in a few years.
The business graduate from Patna, capital of the eastern Indian state of Bihar, voted for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019, hoping to land one of the millions of new jobs promised by the country’s ruling party and its leaders .
Kumar took two exams for jobs in so-called Group D positions in the Indian Railways. This job category is the lowest in the hierarchy of public sector employment in India, but offers benefits and job security, both of which are attractive.
He failed both tests and complained that significantly fewer positions were advertised than were actually available.
“Now things are getting a little difficult. My father is retiring soon and I am under pressure to find a job. We are a middle-class family,” Kumar told Al Jazeera.
But none of this, Kumar added, will stop him from voting for Modi again in India’s ongoing national elections. Bihar, India’s third most populous state with more than 100 million people, is voting in seven phases of the mammoth electoral process – the next phase takes place on May 7.
“We don’t get jobs, that’s true. But at least the country is doing well,” Kumar told Al Jazeera.
Kumar’s policy decision underscores a broader pattern that may seem contradictory on the surface but that analysts say is crucial to Modi’s success: The prime minister’s cult-like popularity appears unaffected by many voters’ dissatisfaction with their economic situation.
A recent survey of 10,000 voters released by New Delhi-based think tank Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and its subsidiary Lokniti found that inflation and a lack of jobs are the top concerns of Indian voters. Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents said it was more difficult to find a job than it was five years ago. Only 12 percent of respondents said it was easier to find a job. Opinions on inflation were similar: 71 percent of respondents said there had been an increase in the price of essential goods in the last five years.
However, the same poll also found that voters’ confidence in Modi remained largely unshakable, with nearly two-thirds of respondents saying they would vote for the BJP in the current election.
Voters and analysts say the reasons are varied – from perceptions of India’s growing global status under Modi and the belief among many that the current government is less corrupt than previous administrations, to careful image management and a cocktail of religious politics.
“Improving the status of India”
Among the many promises that brought Modi to power in 2014, creating 20 million jobs a year was among the most prominent – and that resonated widely in a country where more than half of the 1.4 billion people are under 30 are old.
However, unemployment has reached new highs under his rule, despite India being one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The International Labor Organization and the Institute for Human Development said in a report this year that 83 percent of the country’s unemployed population are young people – two-thirds of whom have a secondary school education or higher.
The government rejected the report, saying there were “inconsistencies in the data.”
However, Modi’s government itself admitted last year that there were nearly a million vacancies in various government departments, with the highest number of such vacancies – 290,000 – in the railways alone.
But as India votes, unemployment is not a strong enough reason for many young people in Bihar – the poorest of India’s major states – to vote against Modi.
“Modi has improved India’s status on the international stage, which will actually help us get more jobs,” Kumar said. “I heard that Tesla wants to invest in India because Modi has made it easier to do business in the country.”
In fact, Tesla boss Elon Musk postponed a visit to India last week despite traveling to China.
What appeals most to Kumar, he said, are two things Modi did in his second term – building a temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya and abolishing the Muslim practice of “triple talaq,” or divorce . Both issues feature prominently in the BJP’s election manifesto.
In January, Modi inaugurated the grand Ram Temple, built on the site where the 16th-century Babri Mosque stood until a Hindu mob tore it down in 1992, claiming it was the birthplace of Ram. A popular — and polarizing — pro-temple movement that began in the 1980s essentially catapulted the BJP into India’s political mainstream.
Similarly, in 2019, Modi’s government passed a law banning “triple talaq” – a practice under which a Muslim man could divorce his wife simply by saying “talaq” – the Arabic word for divorce – three times in a row – expressed, in contrast to the recommended statement, over a period of three months. Although the practice is rare among Indian Muslims, many in the community saw the ban as another attack on their fundamental right to freely practice their religion.
Kumar sees the ban differently. “People say this government is against Muslims and minorities, but he has helped Muslim women by ending the draconian practice of triple talaq,” Kumar told Al Jazeera.
What about the destruction of Babri Mosque? “Nobody is stopping Muslims in the country from practicing their faith. But for example, if Muslim rulers have demolished temples in the past to build a mosque in their place, that needs to be corrected,” Kumar said. “He [Modi] has corrected a 500-year-old injustice against the Hindus.”
“Modi’s guarantees”
Other unemployed youth in Bihar that Al Jazeera spoke to cited the Modi government’s clean image compared to previous governments, its emphasis on a so-called “digital revolution” and India’s international status as reasons for their support for Modi.
Like Kumar, Aman Gupta, also 27, is preparing for a government job but has been unable to secure one for five years. Nevertheless, he also believes that only Modi can make India a world power.
“Internationally, the world sees India as an emerging superpower. As the largest democracy, we are pushing hard for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, despite China’s attempts to block us. I heard that the UN has even asked Modi to act as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia,” he said.
While there have been suggestions that India, with its close historical ties with Russia, could help negotiate an end to Moscow’s war against its neighbor, which it invaded in February 2022, New Delhi has largely preferred to remain on the sidelines conflict.
In India too, Gupta said, Modi had earned his trust.
Gupta referred to the direct benefit transfers that the government provides to some of the most vulnerable in Indian society through a range of programs. “People are getting cash into their bank accounts,” he said. “The government is also providing low-interest loans to the youth so that they can start their own businesses.”
Neelanjan Sircar, senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said that while polls like that of CSDS-Lokniti indicate concern about economic distress, Modi’s BJP branding has helped avoid major consequences.
“A big part of what the BJP is doing is thinking about how to centralize all political attributions on Modi,” he said. His election promises are being promoted as “Modi guarantees”.
“This is the strategy of a party where the leader is a cult figure and the party is the vehicle of the leader,” Sircar told Al Jazeera.
“Whether it’s economic hardship or even issues like violence [the northeastern state of] Manipur, Modi is not directly tainted. People can blame [the] other leaders of the BJP. In regional elections this results in [the] BJP could be voted out. But it is not anger against Modi,” he said.
Last year, more than 200 people were killed in ethnic clashes in Manipur. Although the BJP rules Manipur, Modi has not visited the state since the violence broke out.
Chandrachur Singh, a professor of political science at Delhi University, said the opposition – a consortium of nearly two dozen parties – had failed to rally people around the economic hardship despite raising it as a key election issue.
“The problem with the opposition is that it is a coalition of parties with different views whose sole aim seems to be to oust Modi. For people it doesn’t seem to be a good enough agenda,” he told Al Jazeera.
Singh said the fact that the opposition had not shown “face” against Modi was also a problem. “[Congress Party leader] Rahul Gandhi is slowly emerging as that leader but in terms of perception he is still far behind Modi,” he said.
Back in Patna, Kumar and Gupta agree.
“It’s also about who else we can vote for,” Kumar said. “Rahul Gandhi is fine as a leader of a political party, but I don’t see him leading the nation. He doesn’t have the same leadership qualities as Modi.”
Gupta said he did not believe the opposition was capable of fulfilling its promises on jobs and the economy. “The opposition’s only agenda is to destroy the BJP. Everything else seems secondary.”