Maya Tudor is associate professor of government and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. She is author of The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (2013)and Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities (with Harris Mylonas, 2023).
Pakistani voters sent the military a message in the February elections: They no longer trust the “guardian of the country.” Worse for the generals, they can no longer escape accountability for their corruption and incompetence because everyone knows the military is in charge.
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
Long prone to coups, Pakistan now for the first time has seen a freely elected government duly serve out its full term and peacefully hand the reins of power to another.