Recent scenes in New Delhi evoke memories of past security crackdowns across South Asia, mostly by military dictators fighting to hang onto their regime. Beginning on Oct. 10, security forces swept thousands of people off the streets of India’s capital in a frantic attempt to suppress a surging citizens’ movement.
Estimates placed the number of those detained on that day alone at more than 7,000, among them opposition politicians, former chief ministers, student leaders, senior lawyers, and journalists. They had come out to protest the removal of more than 130 million names from voter rolls by the Indian Election Commission under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) that began last year.
Recent scenes in New Delhi evoke memories of past security crackdowns across South Asia, mostly by military dictators fighting to hang onto their regime. Beginning on Oct. 10, security forces swept thousands of people off the streets of India’s capital in a frantic attempt to suppress a surging citizens’ movement.
Estimates placed the number of those detained on that day alone at more than 7,000, among them opposition politicians, former chief ministers, student leaders, senior lawyers, and journalists. They had come out to protest the removal of more than 130 million names from voter rolls by the Indian Election Commission under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) that began last year.
Ahead of the Oct. 10 protest, authorities shut down 57 metro stations, canceled trains, and suspended mobile internet services in parts of New Delhi. More than 30,000 paramilitary troopers have now been deployed to the capital. Some of these forces were seen violently dragging demonstrators to police vans, including members of Parliament. Evidence of excessive force circulated widely online.
Despite the crackdown, thousands of people continued to turn up in New Delhi to protest with greater vigor. These demonstrations, galvanized in part by a youth-led movement, have escalated into a broader referendum on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Confronted with political fatigue, a falling rupee, and foreign-policy disappointments, Modi’s government has abandoned political engagement in favor of this theater of state coercion.
With formal democratic institutions weakened, tens of thousands of Indians are in the streets—seemingly recognizing that defending the vote is an existential fight for their democracy. Whether Modi navigates this volatile turning point through dialogue or further authoritarian overreach could determine not only his next few years but also India’s democratic trajectory.
The immediate demand of the ongoing protests, which have spread to other major Indian cities, is the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, whom Modi nominated to the panel in 2024, after a new law granting full executive control to appoint the election commissioners. In addition to the chief election commissioner, there are two deputies of equal standing who work with him.
Though opposition parties have complained about the deletion of voters since last year, a recent Indian Express investigation into the other commissioners’ objections to Kumar’s conduct, as well as the success of the fledgling Cockroach Janta Party movement, provided fresh impetus to the cause. In July, the Cockroach movement forced the resignation of India’s education minister over leaked examination papers. Those summer protests seemed to reveal the limits of Modi’s power, and calls for Kumar’s resignation have now become a lightning rod for wider frustration over economic discontent and democratic backsliding.
This confrontation arrives as Modi faces a political setting different from that of his first two terms, when he enjoyed absolute parliamentary dominance. The 2024 national elections were a setback, stripping Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) down to 240 seats in Parliament and making him govern in coalition. This year, Modi failed to push through important legislative measures, such as the expansion and redistricting of parliamentary seats. He retains the coercive power of the state but has lost the cushion that allowed him to ignore or isolate public dissent.
The Modi government’s reliance on police and paramilitary forces as the sole interface between the state and agitating citizens as it approaches the current protests is a crucial strategic error. Slogans and posters reveal that the youth see this as evidence of a frightened ruler hiding behind security forces. Though no pellet guns were fired this time, the heavily armed security personnel appeared to have been given a free hand to deal with the protesters.
This violent escalation has deepened public hostility and radicalized ordinary citizens; it risks escalating disparate street protests into wider civic defiance. More crucially, Modi’s continued silence over police violence is eroding his democratic and political legitimacy. By appearing to rule purely through force, he sacrifices the moral authority of a leader with popular consent; this alienates moderate voters and signals a government in retreat.
After the 2014 election, which the BJP won in a landslide, Modi’s authority was manufactured by an echo chamber of friendly media conglomerates. But shifting media consumption habits toward independent digital platforms and social media have rendered Modi’s legacy media control increasingly useless. The government’s communication machinery and its allied news networks no longer dictate the national narrative. It is no surprise then that the police picked up at least 37 journalists during the protests over the weekend.
After more than 12 years in power, Modi also faces political fatigue. Blaming past governments for current failures no longer resonates with an electorate in a country where more than half the population is under 25. These young Indians have no adult memory of another prime minister. Every voter removed from the list, every unkept promise on employment, and every instance of police overreach belong entirely to the incumbent leader.
Having personalized the government in unprecedent ways, Modi cannot deflect responsibility for the economic and political distress that Indians are now experiencing. This hopelessness about the future is recorded in recent government surveys. In one September poll, nearly half of respondents complained that employment conditions had worsened in the last year, while 35.5 percent expected the situation to further deteriorate in the next year.
This perspective is compounded by news of India’s macroeconomic stress. In 2026 so far, foreign portfolio investors have pulled a record $33 billion out of Indian equities, nearly double the entire 2025 outflow—a massive capital flight. Driven by global volatility and growth concerns, the rupee has depreciated more than 6.5 percent against the U.S. dollar this year, cementing it as one of Asia’s worst-performing currencies.
Despite the country’s official annualized GDP growth rate of 7.8 percent last quarter, these data points undercut the claim by official economic promotion agencies that India under Modi is a preferred destination for global capital.
Simultaneously, Modi’s foreign policy—long advertised as his signature strength—is fraying. Relations with the United States during President Donald Trump’s second term feature high tariffs (with threats of higher tariffs) and a stalled bilateral trade deal. A recent Pew Research Center survey shows that 50 percent of U.S. adults hold an unfavorable view of India, compared with the 45 percent who hold a favorable opinion. Having projected his comfort with Trump and having put New Delhi firmly on Washington’s side, Modi is now struggling to justify his choices.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is increasingly treating Beijing as a peer. Modi finds himself squeezed from both sides, as China shows no inclination to resolve border tensions with India, share technology, or reduce their high trade deficit. The normalcy in ties with China that Modi desperately seeks after being rebuffed by Trump is only happening on Beijing’s terms. And as India’s West Asia policy of aligning with Israel and the United Arab Emirates backfires amid the Iran war, Modi finds himself further boxed in.
The deeper problem is institutional. Citing severe restrictions on civil society and the co-option of the judiciary, the Varieties of Democracy project places India’s electoral democracy score at 0.38, its lowest level since the official Emergency of 1975, and classifies it as an “electoral autocracy.” Freedom House rates India only partly free, giving the country its lowest-ever score this year. In its latest report, International IDEA also flags declines in judicial independence and the freedom of political parties in the country.
These assessments follow the same pattern in which the autonomy of the Election Commission has also been systematically eroded. When formal institutions of accountability cease to function, the street becomes the arena where ordinary people can assert agency and demand accountability. Moreover, in a country marked by deep socioeconomic inequality, the vote is only venue where every adult citizen is equal.
Loss of confidence in the integrity of that mechanism threatens not only access to state benefits for the poor but also the sense of democratic dignity that the franchise has provided since India’s independence in 1947. Stripped of institutional recourse, people recognize that losing the vote means losing their citizenship in practice. This explains why thousands of Indians are facing down police batons and detention rather than quietly retreating.
The future of Indian democracy hangs in a delicate balance as institutional guardrails face unprecedented stress tests. Whether Modi follows the trajectory of leaders such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban remains an open question. Both consolidated power through successive electoral victories while steadily subordinating independent institutions to executive preference.
India’s federal structure, regional diversity, and coalition rule complicate this level of consolidation for Modi. Powerful state governments in the south, a reenergized opposition, and an awakened youth population present structural obstacles that neither Erdogan nor Orban faced. The recent widespread detentions in New Delhi therefore do not signal absolute power; they appear as cracks in Modi’s strongman image, revealing a politician struggling to maintain control over a resilient democratic resistance.
The events unfolding on the streets of New Delhi mark the end of Modi’s unchallenged political dominance and the beginning of a volatile, high-stakes era. Eroding institutional independence makes his prolonged personal dominance both more feasible and more costly, as relying on brute force risks further eroding India’s reputation and angering citizens.
This moment will test whether India’s political system can absorb sustained discontent without further institutional damage. The voter list controversy has crystallized deeper questions about fairness and accountability. The scale of the police response has broadcast those questions more widely than any opposition program could have managed. How Modi chooses to answer—through dialogue or continued force—will shape the remainder of his third term and the future of India’s democracy.