Early results from the largest election in the world show India’s opposition leader Narendra Modi has won a landslide victory to become the country’s new prime minister. Modi is the leader of the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party. “This is the result that the corporations in India wanted,” says Siddhartha Deb, Indian author and journalist, noting that Modi “is very a pro-development politician, which basically means pro-business.” Deb adds that Modi served as the chief minister of Gujarat, where anti-Muslim riots in 2002 left at least a thousand people dead. After the bloodshed, the U.S. State Department revoked Modi’s visa. Modi has never apologized for or explained his actions at the time of the riots. Deb’s recent article in The Guardian is “India’s Dynasty-Dominated Politics Has No Space for Dissent” and his non-fiction book is “The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India.”
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