VARANASI, UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA—As June’s monsoons swell the Ganges River, raising it to its zenith as it flows past the ancient holy city of Varanasi, the activities of the devout who throng to its banks for worship and rituals will ebb.
India’s national elections have taken place over the past six weeks. As voting ends on June 1, it wraps up the biggest, most complex and most expensive election in the world, a remarkable feat of electoral democracy, with nearly 970 million people eligible to vote.
Among the 57 constituencies in 8 states/union territories that will go to vote on June 1, the last in the seven phase long schedule and one of the most talked about is Varanasi. The densely populated city, one of the world’s oldest, is the constituency of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is running for a third term in India’s lower House of Parliament, the Lok Sabha.
The Modi campaign has touted ten years of “unprecedented development” in Varanasi, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kashi. The city stands as an iconic example of India’s new economy, which is straddling old and new, encountering never before seen opportunities as well as challenges.
Mr. Modi, originally from Gujarat, a coastal state in India’s west, is not the first outsider to call Varanasi home. For millennia this city, almost directly at the intersection of the north-south civilizational routes, was a major hub of the Indian subcontinent.
Dt. Rajani Kant is a noted resident of Varanasi who has been awarded Padma Shri, India’s forth highest civilian award. He is famous for his work with GI certification—global proof that goods are a unique representation of a specific culture, society, or craft. Dr. Kant told The Epoch Times that Varanasi has been called the “soul of India.” It was a major business center even 2,500 years ago, he said, and it has remained so.
“It’s the oldest living city in the world. This city has been a global hub of culture, religion and spirituality since thousands of years,” said Dr. Kant, also the General Secretary of the Human Welfare Association, a Varanasi head-quartered NGO.
Until the recent past, before the formation of the Indian nation replaced a system of innumerable kingdoms and fiefs, Kashi, as Varanasi was known, was a cosmopolitan city. The ghats of the Ganges were divided into their respective establishments.
On Wednesday evening, on the wider ghats—which, ironically, are lined in some places with both centuries old pavement as well as freshly laid marble—India’s leading news channels could be seen hosting live election debates. They attracted crowds, while boats and tourist cruises sailed in the background over the Ganges.
In the foreground, some people walked along the ghats, others attended to temple chores, vendors sold their colorful wares, while others bathed in the river. Life would have looked remarkably business-as-usual if it were not for the news cameras.
Not a single election banner or political party flag could be seen, in compliance with the directives of India’s Election Commission. Moreover, campaigning in this elections had largely moved to people’s mobile screens—symbolic of India’s digital revolution, with over 1.2 billion mobile users in 2024 and a jump of 1700 percent in mobile production in the last decade under Mr. Modi’s rule.
On Thursday morning, the last day of campaigning, while classical Hindustani ragas played live on Assi Ghat before dawn as usual, immediately after sunrise the ghat was taken over by loud chants of BJP’s slogan: “Ab ki baar Charso Par.” In essence, the political slogan conveys the BJP party’s goal to win more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha.
Outside the older city, in Ravindranagar, a massive billboard from the opposition political party, the Indian National Congress (INC) proclaimed in bold, “Haath Badlega Halaat.” Literally meaning “The hand will improve the circumstances,” the slogan’s “hand” refers to INC’s election symbol.
Further, in Navodit Nagar, the gate of almost every house bears the sticker of Mr. Modi’s ruling party, the BJP, with its slogan “Main Hoon Modi ka Pariwar”— “I’m Modi’s Family.”
Vinay Singh, a senior journalist from Varanasi, told The Epoch Times on Thursday that small campaigning groups from various political parties have been walking through the city’s narrow streets, going from home to home urging citizens to vote for their parties. Meanwhile, mass campaign events have happened outside the congested older city.
Congestion is an issue that the historic city has to face more than ever before. Mr. Singh said that during the last decade, the city has drastically transformed, particularly after the creation of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor—a project that Mr. Modi launched in 2019 and inaugurated in 2021 to accommodate burgeoning crowds at Kashi Vishwanath, the city’s iconic religious and pilgrimage center.
“[The] economy is growing, [the] challenges are growing, ” said Mr. Singh, citing the exponential increase in tourism and the way it has increased accommodation challenges for tourists in the city.
According to a Thursday report titled “Poll-time lens reveals decade of transformation in Kashi” by Indian daily newspaper, The Hindustan Times, during the ten years since Mr. Modi was elected from Varanasi and became Prime Minister, the city has expanded from its original radius of 4 miles to 7.5 miles. Tourist footfall has increased from over 18 million in 2017 to over 129 million in 2023, with the latter including over 200,000 foreign tourists.
According to Dr. Kant, increasing tourist footfall means that almost 80 percent of the homes on the ghats of the Ganges have been converted into tourist home stays. The ever increasing tourist flow is illustrated by the fact that on a single day of Mahashivratri, a major Hindu festival, 700,000 tourists visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple alone.
The city is also becoming a new hub of real estate and medical tourism in India, he said, with four massive new hospitals under construction, while the older ones are undergoing expansion.
On Wednesday morning, from an airplane approaching the landing strip, along a stretch of almost 30 miles, agricultural fields could be seen lined with brick kilns at almost every half mile, witness to the city’s rapid infrastructure development.
Dr. Kant, who is known as “GI man,” said that in 2014, Varanasi had merely 2 of the retail identification tags. The state of Uttar Pradesh, in which Varanasi is located, was tenth in the list of leading states with GI tags in India.
In a country like India with its great diversity of cultures and geographical identities, each state boasts a diversity of indigenous and geography specific products, which need GI tags for market protection. According to Dr. Kant, within ten years, these GI tags increased to 36 in Varanasi and 75 in the whole of Uttar Pradesh, making it the leading state with GI tags in India.
The encouragement and support of Mr. Modi and his office were vital to the GI tag expansion, Dr. Kant said.
In Varanasi alone, he said, the 32 new GI tags brought in an annual turnover of over $300 million, encouraged artisans to take up dying crafts and saved languishing crafts from extinction, while ensuring excellent products and massive markets.
However, citizens are also concerned that while new connectivity corridors are developing, and new townships are being built, the older city will remain the same in its dimensions. It’s the hub of the tourism attracted by the larger city. The situation will not only lead to traffic congestion but could pose wider risks to the heritage and the historic identity of the town.
Despite the potential issues, Dr. Kant says Mr. Modi’s team in Varanasi has been working on “blueprints” to solve the impending challenges. Some of the developments seen in the prime minister’s constituency are unprecedented, he emphasized.
