Remember this speech by Prime Minister Modi in the run-up to the 2024 general elections, where he warned supporters that if the opposition won, the majority’s resources would be taken away and redistributed among those he described as people with more children and the so-called outsiders illegally entering India. When his audience still couldn’t identify the threat, Modi made it clear he was referring to the Muslim minority.

Now, this “us vs them”, the deserving in-group versus the supposedly undeserving out-group, is not unique to India. Right-wing populism has been on the rise for the last decade. But there’s more in common between these leaders than just their rhetoric. It’s how they redefine social protection and welfare. A new UN report titled "Right-Wing Populism and the Future of Social Protections" discusses exactly this. In this special interview for The Wire, Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and the author of the report, joins Alishan Jafri to discuss his findings.

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