The Assam voter who no longer supports the BJP because of the CAA

What do young Indians who voted for the first time in 2014 think of the past decade? Scroll reporters find out in The Modi Generation.

Dulal Kalita, a 29-old-resident of Amguri town in Assam’s Sivasagar district, had hoped that his first vote in 2014 would bring meaningful change to his life and society around him.

“There was a glimpse of hope in 2014,” said Kalita, who owns a small grocery shop in Amguri. While he cast his vote from the Jorhat Lok Sabha constituency in the first phase of the election, on April 19, other parts of the state will vote in upcoming phases, on April 26 and May 7. “Before 2014, there were massive corruption charges against the previous Congress government. We had hoped that we would get rid of the corruption and misrule of the Congress government by electing the Modi government.”

He had also hoped that voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance would ensure that the government would tackle what he saw as a problem of illegal migration into Assam. “Modi had said that after May 16, Bangladeshis would be gone,” Kalita said, referring to a 2014 campaign promise. “He said that foreigners would have to leave our land, bag and baggage.”

But, he noted, his “hope...

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