The Garcetti Effect
As the world's largest democracy, India has garnered significant global attention during its seven-phase election, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaigning for a third term and the Opposition INDIA bloc striving to regain power, highlighting a true democracy in practice.
US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, recently lauded the elections as "inspiring," highlighting the vibrant democratic process. Garcetti emphasised the importance of the natural partnership between the two nations and suggested that enhanced economic collaboration could drive global growth, especially in regions like Africa and Southeast Asia.
However, this admiration marks a significant turnaround from earlier US criticisms. In March 2024, the US Department of State expressed concerns about India's Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). This prompted a strong defence from India's Ministry of External Affairs, which described the CAA as an internal matter aligned with India's inclusive traditions and human rights commitments.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar criticised Western media for disparaging Indian democracy. He rebuked the US Commission on International Religious Freedom for recommending India's classification as a 'Country of Particular Concern' for the fifth consecutive year.
Despite these tensions, Garcetti's recent remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations expressed optimism about India's democratic future, signalling a notable shift in the US stance from interference to endorsement.
Induslens has chosen to describe this strategic pivot as ‘The Garcetti Effect’ to underscore stark contradiction in a country's foreign policy, where it initially interferes or critiques another nation's democratic processes, and later, contradictorily, endorses and praises these same processes. Coined by Induslens, this term captures the hypocrisy and strategic duplicity involved in the approach of some countries in the Global North.
In this specific context, it denotes the U.S.'s initial attempts to meddle in India’s elections, followed by a pronounced shift to lauding the transparency and fairness of the ongoing elections.
