Author Nitasha Kaul (Opinion, October 30) overstates her claims that India’s electoral bond system is having a pernicious effect on its democracy by entrenching the power of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).
In reality, the ruling government in New Delhi is anything but a centralising autocracy. The BJP has witnessed an erosion in its control of state governments over the past five years. At its peak in March 2018, the BJP and its allies were governing 21 Indian states, encompassing 70 per cent of India’s population and more than three-quarters of its area. Since then, Modi’s coalition has experienced a cavalcade of electoral defeats, most recently in Karnataka, home to the tech metropolis of Bengaluru.
The BJP alliance is now in power in only 16 states, covering less than half the country’s population and land mass. The peaceful transfer of power, the cardinal feature of a democracy, is alive and well in Modi’s India.
This is far from the rhetorical sophistry of Professor Kaul’s assertions of a majoritarian political project subverting the nation’s democratic values.
Nathan Punwani
Scottsdale, AZ, US
