What’s worse than 2020 in the United States?

The year began with protests. Driven by a new law imposing the first religious test on Indian citizenship, Muslims and lay people staged noisy noises. Protesters feared the government would combine the new law, which would speed up the naturalization of non-Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, with a national register of citizens proposed to deprive India’s Muslim minority of rights. The pandemic reduced protests, but not before the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Delhi in February, killed more than 50 people, mostly Muslims.

India reacted slowly to the threat of the virus, but in late March Mr Modi abruptly declared a national closure just four hours in advance, leaving many people trapped in cities without jobs, money or transport. Television screens were soon filled with images of thousands of recently unemployed migrant workers walking home to distant villages.

Experts differ on whether Mr Modi’s closure was a palliative disaster or a life-saving knee response. Either way, India is among the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. As for the total number of formally reported cases, it lags behind only the United States. On Tuesday, 10.2 million Indians had captured Covid-19 and 147,901 had died. Given the incomplete reports in the poorest parts of the country, the actual figures are almost certainly higher.

In terms of officially recorded cases and deaths per million people, India looks better than most Western countries, but worse than its densely populated Asian counterparts, including Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Success stories in East Asia such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam are almost in a different universe.

The Indian economy slowed even before the pandemic, in part thanks to a strange 2016 cash ban and the deployment across the country of a complicated tax on goods and services. The pandemic pushed her onto a cliff. The International Monetary Fund estimates that India’s gross domestic product will have fallen by 10.3% by the end of the fiscal year, its worst performance since independence in 1947. Among the group of 20 economies, it is likely only Argentina and Italy will contract harder. In terms of per capita income, India has lagged behind Bangladesh.

In addition to Mr. Modi’s problems, China chose India’s time of turmoil to investigate weaknesses along a disputed 2,200-mile Himalayan border. In May, hundreds of People’s Liberation Army troops set up tents in the territory claimed by both countries, blocking Indian access to traditional patrol routes and threatening access to a strategic air base. India. In June, Chinese troops armed with clubs nailed with nails and iron rods wrapped in barbed wire fought with Indian soldiers. The crash killed 20 Indians and an unspecified number of Chinese, the worst loss of life on the border between China and India in more than 50 years.

India responded by banning dozens of Chinese applications, including TikTok and WeChat,

and strengthening military cooperation with the United States, Japan, and Australia. But despite diplomatic talks, a strong military buildup on both sides and eight rounds of military negotiations, PLA troops show no signs of vacating the newly occupied territory five times larger than Manhattan.

What does all this mean for Mr. Modi? This depends on whether Indian politics follows its traditional pattern of punishing leaders who do not keep their promises or who has entered a new phase of nationalist-Hindu ancestry.

If history offers clues, you have reason to worry. In 1971 Indira Gandhi comfortably won her second national election. Two years later, amid high inflation, student protests erupted in much of the country, threatening national stability. In 2009, the Congress party ran for re-election with the longest national term in nearly two decades. Two years later, a growing anti-corruption movement undermined the legitimacy of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Still, predicting Mr. Modi’s downfall would be premature. For starters, he dominates Indian politics in a way not seen since the 1980s. Much of the national media acts more like a dog than a watchdog, amplifying the government’s and savage discussion points of its critics. An opaque fundraising system gives ruling party leader Bharatiya Janata a bigger portfolio than all his opponents put together. Many ardent supporters believe that India is in the early stages of a glorious Hindu renaissance. These are not people prone to change loyalties based on IMF projections.

Meanwhile, the inept leader of the Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, a fourth-generation dynastic politician, symbolizes an opposition that has no ideas or charisma. Last month the BJP and its allies held power in Bihar, India’s third most populous state.

The year ends as it began, with protests. Since late November, tens of thousands of farmers have camped on Delhi’s borders to protest the sensible but politically risky new laws that give the private sector a bigger role in agriculture. Mr. Modi can overcome this challenge, as he has others in the past. But 2020 has been the toughest year he has faced as prime minister.