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      In India’s Election, Democracy Lives On

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      Back in January, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India looked all but unstoppable, he visited the small city of Ayodhya for the unofficial start of his campaign to win a third term. The location was freighted with symbolism. For decades, Hindu nationalists had sought to build a temple in Ayodhya, at a spot they believe to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. The only problem was that there was already a house of worship on the spot, a mosque built by a Mughal emperor in 1528. A Hindu mob had dismantled the mosque in 1992, setting off riots that killed 2,000 people, most of them Muslims. The ruins were a flashpoint of religious tensions in India for decades.Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party promised to build the temple, and the lavish event at which Modi officially opened it was a showcase for that achievement. At the time it seemed like strong election-year messaging for a politician who built his career on the twin planks of Hindu nationalism and building a muscular new India. Unlike other politicians, the event implied, Modi made promises and kept them.“It is the beginning of a new era,” he declared.Feeling supremely confident, Modi had boldly asked the Indian electorate for something akin to a blank check to remake the country — control of 400 seats in Parliament in elections that began in April and concluded on June 1. And why shouldn’t he have been confident? India’s economy was the fastest-growing in the world. India had overtaken China as the world’s most-populous country. World leaders sought Modi’s support on issues ranging from the war in Ukraine to the climate crisis, cementing India’s ascent in global affairs.But the ever unpredictable electorate of the world’s largest democracy responded to Modi’s demand for still more power resolutely: No thanks.In a stunning rebuke, election results released on Tuesday showed that India’s voters have reduced the parliamentary share of Modi’s party by more than 60 seats, not enough for an outright majority, never mind the supermajority he had sought.It struck me as particularly apt that despite all the fanfare about the glorious new temple in Ayodhya, Modi’s party lost the city’s parliamentary seat to a political opposition that had been all but left for dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Climate Challenges That India’s Next Government Will Face

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      India, the world’s most populous country, is also among the most vulnerable to climate hazards. That’s not only because of the heat and floods that global warming has exacerbated, but also because so many of the country’s 1.4 billion people are vulnerable to begin with. Most people are poor, by global standards, and they have no safety net.Early election results Tuesday signaled that the party led by Narendra Modi, the two-term Hindu nationalist Indian prime minister, is poised to win the largest number of seats in the Indian Parliament but may have to join with smaller parties to form a coalition government.That government will face major challenges brought on by climate change.Heat is now an election issue, literally.The six-week process of voting took place amid a scorching heat wave in several parts of the country. In the northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, at least 33 people, including poll workers, died of complications from the heat last week, according to government authorities cited by Reuters.Rohit Magotra, deputy director of Integrated Research and Action for Development, called on national election officials to reschedule elections in the future to avoid such calamities. He pointed out that workers from every political party suffer in the heat, and so do voters, who often have to line up under the sun.“I definitely see the momentum building up, and elections are unlikely to be scheduled in peak summer in future,” said Mr. Magotra, whose organization has advocated heat solutions in Indian cities.The Election Commission this year did set up a task force to monitor weather conditions, but only after voting got underway amid abnormally high temperatures. It also sent election workers a list of heat precautions prepared by the National Disaster Management Agency. However, according to a report published in Scroll, an Indian news site, political-party campaigners were not told to do anything differently because of the heat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Voting Ends in India, Modi Awaits a Verdict on His 10 Years in Power

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      While a newly united opposition seemed to gain some traction, it faced an uphill task in unseating a deeply entrenched prime minister.Voting in India’s general election, a six-week-long referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power, came to a close on Saturday as much of the country’s populous north was gripped by a deadly heat wave.Results will be tallied and announced on Tuesday.Mr. Modi, his power deeply entrenched, is seen as likely to win a third consecutive term as prime minister, which would make him only the second leader in India’s nearly 75 years as a republic to achieve that feat.But a newly united opposition has put up a fight, rallying against Mr. Modi’s divisive politics and management of India’s deeply unequal economic growth. The country will now wait to see whether the opposition was able to accomplish its goal of significantly cutting into the sizable majority in Parliament held by Mr. Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.The election, held in phases over a month and a half, is the largest democratic exercise in the world, with more than 950 million eligible voters. The last stretch of the campaigning drew large rallies even as northern India baked under an intense heat wave, with temperatures frequently exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than 43 degrees Celsius.At least 19 poll workers have died from heat strokes or other health complications resulting from the heat in recent days.Elections in a parliamentary system like India’s are usually fought seat by seat, with a candidate’s fate determined by local economic and social factors. But the B.J.P. made its campaign for the 543-seat Parliament into a presidential-style referendum, putting the focus almost entirely on Mr. Modi and his leadership. The party hoped that Mr. Modi’s deep popularity would help it overcome a growing anti-incumbent sentiment 10 years into the B.J.P.’s rule.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Overlooked No More: Hansa Mehta, Who Fought for Women’s Equality in India and Beyond

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      This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Human rights has long been considered a Western concept, but recent scholarship has been uncovering the influence of women from the global south. Women like Hansa Mehta.Mehta stood up against the British government during India’s struggle for independence. She campaigned for women’s social and political equality and their right to an education. And she fought for her ideals during the framing of the constitution for a newly independent India.Mehta with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1949, when they were the only two women named as delegate to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.Marvin Bolotsky/United NationsFor Mehta, women’s rights were human rights. This conviction was best exemplified at a 1947 meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to which she had been appointed as one of just two women delegates, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt. Mehta boldly objected to the wording of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the commission was tasked with framing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Deadly Fires Highlight India’s Safety Shortfall

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      Disasters over the weekend that claimed at least 34 lives prompted condolences, arrests and finger-pointing. But systemic change remains elusive, analysts say.Seven newborn babies lost their lives after their New Delhi neonatal clinic was engulfed in flames. What remained of the two-story building on Sunday morning was its burned facade, a charred spiral staircase and oxygen cylinders covered in soot.Hours earlier, in the western Indian city of Rajkot, an amusement park of trampolines and bowling lanes had turned to an inferno. The families of people who had come to enjoy a discounted offer of all-you-can-play to celebrate the start of summer vacation were left trying to identify bodies among the at least 27 dead, many of them children too charred to be recognizable.As after every such deadly episode, political leaders were quick with messages of condolence, announcements of arrests, creations of inquiries — and finger-pointing. But to analysts and experts who had warned for years about India’s abysmal fire preparedness, the back-to-back disasters on Saturday were the latest reminder that systemic change to make the country safer was still missing.Building safety compliance remains abysmal across India, the world’s most populous nation. The fire services have long faced huge gaps in the numbers of stations, personnel and equipment. Government audits after mass-casualty disasters unearth glaring shortcomings, with little follow-up.Though the number has gone down over the past decade, more than 20 fire-related deaths occur every day in India, according to government statistics. Many of the fires — particularly in crowded urban centers — are caused by short circuits, an alarming prospect as India faces an intense period of heat waves that strains electrical wires.R.C. Sharma, a former fire service chief in Delhi, said that one major problem is that fire regulations go unenforced. Another is that fire-response resources have failed to keep up with urbanization that is happening rapidly and often without regard to safety.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Deadly Fire in India Amusement Park

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      Officers said the cause of the fire was still under investigation, but that they planned to charge the owner of the facility with negligence. NEW DELHI — A huge fire broke out Saturday in an amusement park in Gujarat State in western India, killing at least 27 people, some of them children, the police said.The fire erupted at the park in the city of Rajkot. Police Commissioner Raju Bhargava said the blaze was under control and that a rescue operation was underway.Radhika Bharai, a police officer, told the Press Trust of India that the deaths of 27 had been confirmed so far, adding that the charred condition of the bodies made identification difficult. Among the dead were four children under the age of 12.The park is usually packed on weekends, with families with children enjoying the school summer vacation.Footage showed firefighters clearing debris around collapsed tin-roof structures that news media reports said were used for bowling, go-karting and trampoline attractions.The police said they had detained the owner and the manager of the amusement park for questioning as they began an investigation into the fire’s cause.The amusement park is privately owned by Yuvraj Singh Solanki. Mr. Bhargava, the police commissioner, said that a charge of negligence would be filed against him.Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X that he was “extremely distressed by the fire” in Rajkot. “My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. Prayers for the injured,” he wrote.Fires are common in India, where builders and residents often flout building laws and safety codes. More

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      Canadian Arrests Highlight Alleged Gang Role in India’s Intelligence Operations

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      India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, has long been accused of tapping into criminal networks to carry out operations in South Asia. Is the agency now doing similar operations in the West?Months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused India’s government of plotting a murder on Canadian soil — plunging diplomatic relations between the two countries to their lowest level ever — the first arrests in the killing, which came on Friday, did little to demystify the basis of his claim.The police didn’t offer clues or present any evidence that India had orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh nationalist leader who was gunned down at the temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia, in June. What they did say was that three Indian men had committed the killing and that an investigation into India’s role was ongoing.Before the arrests, Indian officials had maintained that Canada was trying to drag New Delhi into what it described as essentially a rivalry between gangs whose members were long wanted for crimes back in India.After the arrests, a report from the CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting corporation, based on anonymous sources, also said the suspects belonged to an Indian criminal gang. But analysts and former officials said that the possible role of a gang in the killing does not necessarily mean the Indian government was not involved in the crime.India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has long been suspected of tapping into criminal networks to carry out operations in its immediate neighborhood in South Asia while maintaining deniability.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More