India’s Battleground State

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Karnataka emerges as a potential battleground state as India’s national election continues, farmer groups in Pakistan threaten to protest over a government decision to import wheat, and Nepal hosts Japan’s foreign minister.

Battleground Karnataka

The biggest question about India’s ongoing national election is not if Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will win but rather by how much they will win. Modi’s deep popularity makes a third consecutive term very likely. But a few factors, including inflation and opposition to the BJP’s Hindu nationalism, could deprive the party of the supermajority that it seeks.

The southern state of Karnataka is a battleground between the BJP and the Indian National Congress party, its main political opposition. Congress won big in Karnataka’s state election last year, picking up nearly 43 percent of votes. This underscores the challenges the BJP alliance faces to winning 400 seats of the 543 in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament—which would be a nearly 50-seat increase from its 2019 result.

Twenty-eight Lok Sabha seats are up for grabs in Karnataka. Half of the state’s constituencies went to the polls on April 27, with the remaining 14 voting on Tuesday. Although the BJP has often struggled in southern India, it has enjoyed ample success in Karnataka, including leading the state government between 2018 and 2023. Electoral trends in Karnataka don’t always follow national patterns: For example, the BJP won state elections in 2004 and 2008 even though Congress won national elections in 2004 and 2009.

Congress won 135 of 224 seats in last year’s state election, an outcome that surprised many observers. However, preelection estimates from a Bengaluru-based news platform, Eedina, correctly predicted both the outcome and the seat total. In an interview with India’s Frontline published on Monday, Eedina’s head of research, H.V. Vasu, offered predictions about Karnataka’s vote this year that do not bode well for the BJP.

Drawing on recent polling data, Vasu said both the BJP and Congress have support bases in Karnataka of between 30 and 35 percent. But he said there is significant public support in the state for Congress’s recently announced social welfare pledges, which could give the party an edge. Vasu added that inflation registers as the most important issue for many voters and that they blame the BJP for it.

According to Vasu, Congress draws support from the poor and from women in Karnataka—two key groups the BJP has targeted in this year’s campaign. Congress’s inroads with poor voters suggest that one of its core national strategies—pushing for more support for lower-caste communities—is paying off in the state. The BJP rejects the affirmative action policies and related measures embraced by Congress.

While concerning for the BJP, these predictions do not guarantee a strong performance by Congress in Karnataka—especially given the state’s unpredictable electoral politics. But the state remains a flash point for broader national trends.

A hijab ban by the previous BJP state government remains in place, fueling a debate under the Congress government. Bengaluru, the state capital, has emerged as one of India’s biggest technology hubs in a country that has become a global IT power. The city also has a serious water crisis, underscoring India’s natural resource constraints.

The battle for Karnataka’s 28 seats has implications that extend well beyond the state.

What We’re Following

Pakistani farmers threaten protests. Farmer groups in Pakistan are threatening to stage nationwide protests later this week in response to falling wheat prices triggered by Islamabad’s decision to import wheat despite bumper harvests at home. In addition to their own income losses, farmers say importing wheat has worsened Pakistan’s foreign exchange crisis.

According to Pakistani media, the decision to import wheat came without the knowledge of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Wheat policy has been a struggle for Pakistani policymakers in the past. Pakistan’s government is reportedly working to resolve the crisis, including through a relief package meant to ease farmers’ burdens, although no formal announcements have been made.

If protests intensify, it could mushroom into Sharif’s first major political crisis since his government took office in March. Many of the farmers reside in the breadbasket province of Punjab, the main bastion of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party. With the economy in a fragile state, Pakistan can’t afford any more food insecurity.

Next week, Sharif is scheduled to travel to Beijing, where part of his visit is expected to focus on seeking economic assistance. However, his counterparts will likely want to focus on addressing growing security risks for Chinese workers in Pakistan.

Nepal hosts Japan’s foreign minister. Last Sunday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa visited Nepal, where she met with the country’s president, prime minister, and foreign minister. Japan has long been a top development partner for Nepal—and much of South Asia, especially Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

Like the United States, Japan is also in a bitter competition with China, which likely caused some awkward moments during Kamikawa’s visit to Kathmandu. According to Nepalese press reports, she made unnamed references to China a few times and articulated Japan’s support for a “rules-based international order,” diplomatic code used by Washington and its allies to signal its concerns about Beijing’s power in the Indo-Pacific.

Nepal is formally nonaligned and aims to balance ties with China and the United States, avoiding getting dragged into great-power competition. Kamikawa’s comments won’t cause tensions in bilateral relations between Nepal and Japan; the two countries enjoy a broad-based partnership. But they serve as a reminder of the pressures faced by South Asian capitals amid intensifying geopolitical rivalries.

Pakistan marks difficult milestone. On Thursday, Pakistan will mark one year since political protesters attacked military targets and attempted to besiege the army headquarters building in Rawalpindi. The violence came in response to the arrest of popular opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan. It prompted the Pakistani state to implement one of its harshest crackdowns against the political opposition in years.

Sharif, the current prime minister, has compared the May 9 attacks to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, underscoring just how traumatic the attacks were for the country’s powerful military. In a media briefing last June, a military spokesperson said, “The events of May 9 have proven that what enemies couldn’t do in 76 years, a bunch of miscreants and their facilitators did.”

One year on, the generals are back on the front foot. Khan remains behind bars, and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is not in power despite PTI-sponsored independents winning the most seats in the February national election; the ruling coalition is led by parties that are backed by the military. Yet there are still high levels of public unhappiness with the military, and Khan reportedly retains loyalty among its lower ranks.

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Under the Radar

Rare civil unrest has bubbled up in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan. Protests broke out this month over attempts by Taliban forces to destroy opium poppy production, with two people reportedly killed in clashes with the Taliban. On Wednesday, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry reported an explosion targeting a police convoy involved in poppy eradication efforts.

Since retaking power in 2021, the Taliban have vowed to eradicate poppy cultivation, and they have largely succeeded, with significant reductions in production across much of the country between 2022 and 2023. Badakhshan, however, is an outlier, experiencing increases in poppy production during that period.

The Taliban have failed to establish alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers, a major problem in a country with few healthy economic sectors. The angry protests in Badakhshan suggest that  local communities don’t want to face the hardships of poppy farmers elsewhere in the country. But they may also suggest tensions between Tajiks, the dominant ethnic group in the province, and the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.