Narendra Modi’s 2014 election victory in India, the most resounding for 25 years, was built on two weaknesses: the shattered credibility of his opponents in the Congress party and the economic downturn the country was experiencing. One of Mr Modi’s most memorable campaign pledges was to create 10m jobs a year, or about 840,000 jobs a month. It was a promise that resonated across India’s caste divides for young people, who represent roughly two-thirds of nation’s population of 1.35 billion. However, it turns out Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government has been creating jobs – just not enough.

Rather than admit this, Mr Modi’s government sat on the official report detailing the scale of the problem. Two senior officials at India’s National Statistical Commission resigned, and then a draft report was leaked showing that unemployment had climbed to its highest rate in 45 years. Almost one in six rural young men were unemployed. None of this should surprise anyone: last year it was reported that 93,000 people applied for 62 jobs as government clerks. It is also true that in the absence of a comprehensive welfare system, few Indians can afford not to work. Most end up self-employed or taking informal jobs to earn cash.

Yet instead of admitting to its failure to meet its ambitions, the government has been caught hiding the facts and calling into question how it could credibly be held to account. To perhaps obscure negative headlines in the run-up to this year’s general election, Mr Modi’s finance minister broke with convention to present a budget of electoral sops to 120 million poor farmers, tax cuts to India’s middle class and a pension bung to urban young workers.

Mr Modi is facing a familiar problem in India. Despite impressive rates of growth for decades, many of India’s poorest people have yet to feel the benefits. Mr Modi trumpets India as the fastest-growing major economy in the world. He’s not too keen about the fact that very little has trickled down in the form of jobs. He ought to take a broader view of what development is about, especially given the country’s extreme social inequalities. The Modi regime has not done much to provide universal quality education, a glaring failure of the Indian state, which is home to a third of the world’s illiterates. India’s government launched a vast health-insurance scheme – but only budgeted a tiny sum for it. A revitalised Congress opposition won plaudits with its minimum income guarantee for poor people and calls for more resources to be diverted to the bottom of society.

Democratic governments have to win elections and face public criticism. They ought to have a strong incentive to meet their public commitments. Mr Modi prefers to campaign on his own reality. In a break with Indian political tradition, the prime minister has never held a traditional press conference. His spat with the central bank revealed a penchant to suborn independent institutions for political purposes. His administration suppresses inconvenient facts. Since 2014 there has been no update on official poverty statistics. There is scant indication Mr Modi will be running on his economic record. The concern is that he might fall back on the BJP’s Hindu majoritarianism to whip up social tensions. Since he came to power there has been a 28% jump in the number of incidents of communal violence, including lynchings of Muslims. When the country heads to the polls, at stake will – almost certainly – be matters quotidian but also something deeper about the struggle for India’s soul.

• This article was amended on 22 March 2019 to correct a misspelling of the first part of the name of Bharatiya Janata party as Bharitya.