Hacker News Reader

Comment by justrealist | Hacker News Reader

It's an autocracy that delivers though, realistically he is not at risk until growth drops below 4%.

A totally uncritical media, owned by crony businessmen who supports him, just amplifies his party's message and creates the impression that he delivers. Imagine if 95% of the viewership is for some version of fox news. His dramatic failures (like the botched up demonitization) are silently forgotten. Combine this with a huge social media propaganda machinery that circulates fake news, most Indians are forced to live in an alternate reality.

All media is owned by cronies for parties. It's how Indian politics works.

For example, in Punjab the main Punjabi news channel (PTC) is owned by the Badal family - who used to control Punjab as leaders of SAD until 2018 when they lost elections to the INC and then the AAP in 2022.

The main Tamil language news media company Sun Group is owned by the grand-nephew of the founder of the ruling DMK.

The 2 main Telegu language media companies - ETV and Sakshi TV - are owned by businessmen related to the leaders of the BRS and YSRCP respectively.

The BJP will end up losing power at some point, but Indian media is already owned by political dynasties and that will never change.

> like the botched up demonitization

Another disaster was his handling of Covid. People were literally begging on streets for oxygen cylinders. He can't put together a sentence to speak in front of media w\o reading from a prompter. He's winning elections by hyped-up narratives, playing with emotions, oppression, lies, religion and caste play cards.

It's all good as long as the trains run on time?

From an American perspective, unfortunately, yes. It’s long been known that autocracies deliver foreign policy goals more reliably than democracies.

No I am not claiming this is not true as a rule, and most autocracies in fact fail badly at delivering basic services.

But any government that delivers 8% growth is safe, and currently Modi is doing so.

True democracies want selfish things like nationalizing their natural resources.

You mean to say autocracies are easier to predict because they behave with a firm consistent control (until they leave). They are obviously not always aligned with our foreign policy goals. All you have to do is name a handful of current autocracies that come to mind.

> autocracies are easier to predict because they behave with a firm consistent control

Correct. This is actually a criticism of Cold War era U.S. foreign politics, where a short-term “win” was prioritised over strategic alignment, the lesson being it almost always backfired.

The only way we can build resilient alliances is by turning friends into allies, not those we’d like to ally with into “friends.” My concern is we’re doing the latter, again, with India.

There are multiple instances of Cold War era US autocratic allies developing into democracies, such as Portugal, Spain, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, and Greece. The claim that these alliances “almost always backfired” is just not true; it succeeded more often than it failed.

When those goals involve use of force, quite possible, but for anything involving trade or non-military alliances, I'm doubtful.

The basic problem being the need for trust that things will last past the head of state.

I am not making a value judgement, I am telling you how it is.

Actually this is the way the world works, whether we like it or not, whether we can change it or not. Doesn't hurt to constantly call attention to it but it may not make much of a difference if its consequences are kepr below the threshold of acute suffering.

I hesitate to respond, but in this case, it is actually a relevant argument. In Italy ( and other nations for that matter ), fascism became popular, precisely because it was 'more efficient' than the pesky democracy with all its turns and stakeholders and all that. In a sense, it delivered ( while also providing high amounts of power to its leaders -- and as we know from history, power tends to corrupt ).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com