India’s Next Election Faces Southern Discomfort: Andy Mukherjee

India’s next election is still four years away, but battle lines are already getting drawn in the country’s more prosperous south.

M.K. Stalin, the rather improbably named chief minister of Tamil Nadu, is trying to mobilize his neighbors against what he perceives as a grand plan by northern politicians, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu right-wing party, to extend their hegemony.

The trigger for the pushback is the Modi government’s decision to revise regional representation in national parliament with updated population data. Such a reshuffle could erode the south’s political relevance, despite its higher per capita income, greater investment success, and superior ...