MEERUT, Uttar Pradesh Nine hundred million people, just shy of the combined populations of Europe and America, will have the chance to vote as Indians line up to decide who will lead the country for the next five years.

The phased polls begin on April 11 and will continue for a month in different parts of the country. The results are expected on May 23.

Five years after Narendra Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP ) swept to power, the country appears at a crossroads: Indian society is fractured along the lines of caste and religion, the economy is still recovering from a series of ill-considered shock measures, and unemployment is rampant.

Yet many still expect Modi and the BJP to hang on to power, largely due to an opposition that has struggled to counter the current governments potent brew of toxic religious nationalism, a supine press that actively sides with the government on most issues, and the ruling partys vast online army of trolls that spread government propaganda and intimidate critics.

Despite this, the government was struggling earlier this year, right up to 14 February when a suicide bomber killed over 40 paramilitary troopers by driving a van-laden with explosives into a troop convoy. A brief military skirmish with Pakistan followed, ensuring that national security dominated the headlines for the next several weeks.

This is not a real election. It is a virtual election being fought on the imaginary issues of national security, said Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist and professor at O.P. Jindal Global University. It is a total invention.

If the 2014 elections were about hope for Indias vast swathes of unemployed youth, the 2019 elections are about fear.

This election has become a patriotic election, Visvanathan said. Development was round one. Patriotism is round two.

Rashmi Jain, a 40-year-old homemaker in Meerut, a northern Indian city with a history of communal violence, said she saw no alternative to Modi.

After the attack in Kashmir, Modi took action. That is how it should be, she said. He has a great personality. He has put India on the map. The leader of countries like Japan, America and Indonesia support him. They want to work with him.

The worlds largest election is a referendum on one man.

As she turned to look at a television screen, which showed Modi raising his arms while giving an election speech in his home state of Gujarat, Jain said, He has a vision. He doesnt think short-term, but long term, even if it means getting a lot of criticism. Is this not enough for anyone to want to vote for him?

Visvanathan noted there was a difference between the Modi who ran in 2014, and the man who is contesting the election now. Modi is not an aspiring character anymore. Aspiration has moved to permanence. Modi wants to be a legend.

Yet Sudha Pai, a political science professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, cautioned that the outcome of the election was not a foregone conclusion.

We still have to see whether people are sold on national security and all this we have to be a great nation. she said. We still have to see whether the election is going to be about the economy or national security.