THE candidate that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has put forward for the largely ceremonial post of president looks like a canny choice: Ram Nath Kovind, a longtime devotee of a Hindu group allied with the party, but also a dalit—the bottom rung in India’s caste system. He should appeal both to the party’s religiously motivated base, but also to other dalits, who make up close to 20% of the population. Given the strength of the BJP and its allies in Parliament, which elects the president, his ascent is all but assured.

The BJP is always looking for ways to shore up its support, but not all of them are so positive. When Mr Kovind’s nomination was announced, Rana Ayyub, a journalist critical of the party, lambasted the choice on Twitter. It took a spokesman for the party less than eight hours to file a complaint with the police, claiming that she was stirring up hatred on the basis of caste—an offence in India—even though the tweet had made no mention of caste.

Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, the BJP has won a string of impressive electoral victories, at both the national and state level. The opposition is in disarray; another BJP triumph seems likely in 2019. Yet the BJP is extremely sensitive to criticism.

Mr Modi has a very easy time with the press. India’s big media conglomerates are either owned by fans of the BJP, or else reliant on the government’s favour. There are few legal limits and little oversight of government spending on advertising. Mr Modi’s image is everywhere: on giant billboards trumpeting new roads and bridges, in full-page newspaper spreads for BJP election campaigns, in television spots touting myriad government programmes. During the first week of June, state-sponsored projects accounted for three of the top five brands advertised on television, amounting to some 30,000 “insertions”. The risk of losing such revenue hangs heavily over editorial decisions.

Checks and imbalances

It is not only the media that are largely tame. Agencies such as India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate of the finance ministry, the tax authorities and even local police forces are often accused of doing the government’s bidding. Since the upstart Aam Aadmi Party won control of the local assembly in Delhi, India’s capital, from the BJP in 2015, its leaders have been hit by a barrage of investigations. Their impressive reforms to health and education have won widespread praise, but Delhi’s government has trouble filling administrative posts because career bureaucrats refuse its vacancies for fear of harassment. Not surprisingly, the BJP trounced Aam Aadmi in municipal polls in Delhi earlier this year, as voters abandoned the upstart in favour of a party that faces less resistance in getting things done.

In early June the CBI raided properties belonging to the owners of NDTV, a television channel that tries to give equal airtime to the government and its critics (and whose boss is a distant relative of a senior editor at The Economist). The agency said it was investigating an old loan that the channel had taken out nine years ago. It was repaid within months and the bank had no complaint, but the gumshoes insist that the bank should have earned more interest. To many observers it does not seem coincidental that only days before the raid, an NDTV presenter had engaged in a testy exchange with a spokesman for the BJP, who accused the channel of pursuing an anti-government agenda.

NDTV faces a separate investigation by the Enforcement Directorate. A decade ago GE, a giant multinational, bought a $150m stake in a new venture with the channel. The project was not a success and GE, in the wake of the global financial crisis, bailed out with a significant loss. India’s financial watchdog sees this business failure as a case of international money laundering. It intends to press criminal charges.

Law-enforcement agencies have not shown similar zeal against friends of the government, or against Hindu-nationalist vigilantes who have, in recent months, shown increasing boldness in enforcing their agenda. Their victims usually happen to be from India’s 14% Muslim minority, whether these are cattle-traders beaten up—and in one recent case, killed—by self-appointed protectors of the sacred cow, or cricket enthusiasts cheering the wrong team. Following India’s loss to Pakistan in an international match on June 18th, 21 men were denounced by neighbours for celebrating. They have been charged under India’s colonial-sedition laws, and remanded in custody.

Mr Modi cannot be blamed for the over-enthusiasm of righteous citizen-proctors. But his government has created an enabling environment. At state and national level, the BJP has passed laws, such as one that sharply restricts cattle-trading on “humane” grounds, or taken actions that promote the dominance of a conservative brand of Hinduism. Its leaders have either maintained a disturbing silence in the face of mounting disquiet, or added to the unease. Yogi Adityanath, the saffron-robed new chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, recently said that its most famous monument, the Taj Mahal, does not represent “authentic Indian culture”—presumably because the 17th-century tomb was built by a Muslim king for his Muslim wife. Minority groups as well as secular-minded Hindus are increasingly fearful that the country’s diversity is under threat. “We are turning into Pakistan,” says a society hostess in Delhi.

One reason for Mr Modi’s apparent indifference to such worries is that he faces growing pressure from his own Hindu-nationalist base. For decades, a network of conservative religious groups have quietly built their strength, struggling, as they see it, against the long-dominant, secular, left-leaning establishment in Delhi. It is these groups which, at the street level, have lent their vast numbers and organisational genius to Mr Modi’s electoral machine. Now they want their pound of flesh.