New Delhi, India – Vishal Paliwal, a 57-year-old worker of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spent Tuesday afternoon sleeping at home as India counted over 640 million votes cast in its national election.
A granite stone trader in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, Paliwal lost his livelihood after Modi announced an overnight lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Paliwal stayed loyal to the BJP. In the elections that just got over, too, he could not bring himself to go out and vote for the opposition.
