For whatever it's worth, I am sharing my views as someone who lives in Tier-2 India and invests globally, I believe that a lot of the inputs in this thread recently are so out of touch with reality. We may not like Modi's social policies, but to think that he is taking India in the direction of Russia or China is totally absurd. India has a democracy that is so deep rooted with enough checks and balances for many of you to fully appreciate. You just need to check the electoral track record of Modi's party in state elections (India has a very federal structure). To put it in perspective, even at the peak of his popularity now, Modi's party is not in power in almost all major cities - Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad. The only large city they control is Mumbai and even that is through 2 allies and the local civic body is with the opposition. A lot of the western media writing about India is similar to what media houses write about Trump. You can hate Trump or Boris Johnson, but to believe that, electing them is equivalent to US/ UK becoming Russia slowly is non-sense. The reason why Prem Watsa writes so positively about Modi (other than earning brownie points with the establishment) is because most reasonable Indians and close India watchers would know that he is taking the right decisions to grow the economy and build the base for the next 1-2 decades by investing in large scale infrastructure, running tight government budgets, reforming key policies, making India more capitalistic etc etc. I too genuinely believe Modi is transforming the country in the right direction even though I may not vote for him. People with skin in the game like domestic investors or westerns firms investing large sums in India understand the positive change that is happening in the country. Please do not take the Economist or FT editorials so seriously.
