The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party

This book examines how the BJP became the world’s largest political party. It goes beyond the usual narrative of the party’s Hindutva politics to explain how, under Narendra Modi, the party reshaped the Indian polity using its own brand of social engineering. According to the findings of this book, this reconstruction was cleverly powered by new caste coalitions, the claim of a new welfare state that focused on marginalised social groups and the making of a women-voter base.

Based on data from three unique indices--the Mehta-Singh Social Index, which studies the caste composition of Indian political parties; the Narad Index, which calculates communication patterns across topics and audiences; and PollNiti, which connects and tallies hundreds of political and economic datasets--The NewBJP is full of startling insights into the way both the party and the country function. Previously untapped historical records, exclusive interviews with party leaders and comprehensive reportage from across India provide a fresh understanding of the BJP’s growth areas, including the Northeast and south India.

A lucid and objective study of the BJP and India today, this book will be useful to researchers, journalists, students, activists and general public alike.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).

Nalin Mehta is Dean, School of Modern Media, UPES; Advisor, Global University Systems; and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is an award-winning social scientist, journalist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major Indian media companies and in international financing institutions like the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland. He has taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (ANU, La Trobe University), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (IIM Bangalore, Shiv Nadar University).

He was previously Executive Editor, The Times of India-Online, where he led a number of AI-led tech innovations to redefine digital media. He has also served as Managing Editor, India Today (English TV channel) and Consulting Editor, The Times of India. Mehta is the author of five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including India on Television (winner of the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009), Behind a Billion Screens (longlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literature Live, 2015), and most recently, Dreams of a Billion (co-authored, Ekamra Sports Book of the Year, 2021).