Arundhati Roy says, India now has a democratically elected 'totalitarian' government

Asked whether she was saying there is no democracy in India, Roy said: “It would be too sweeping to say that. There is some amount of democracy. But you also can't deny that India has the largest population of the poor in the world.

“Then, there hasn't been a single day since independence when the state has not deployed the armed forces to quash insurgencies within its boundaries.

“The number of people who had been killed and tortured is incredible. It is a state that is continuously at war with its people. If you look at what is happening in places like Chhattisgarh or Odisha, it will be an insult to call it a democracy.”

Roy said:  “The massive, steeply climbing GDP of India dropped rather suddenly and millions of middle-class people sitting in the aircraft, waiting for it to take off, suddenly found it freezing in mid-air. Their exhilaration turned to panic and then into anger. Modi and his party have mopped up this anger.”