What’s worse than 2020 in America?

The year started with protests. Spurred on by a new law imposing the very first religious test of Indian citizenship, Muslims and secularists organized rowdy sit-ins. Protesters feared that the government would combine the new law, accelerating the naturalization of non-Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, with a proposal for a national registry of citizens to deprive the Muslim minority in India. The pandemic ended the protests, but not before the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Delhi in February killed more than 50 people, most of them Muslim.

India was slow to respond to the virus threat, but in late March, Mr. Modes with just four hours’ notice abruptly exited a nationwide lockdown, leaving many people in cities without work, money, or transportation. The television screens soon filled with images of thousands of new unemployed migrant workers heading home to remote villages.

Experts disagree on whether Mr. Modi’s lockdown was an outright disaster or a response that nonetheless saved lives. Regardless, India is one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. In terms of the total number of formally reported cases, it only lags behind the US. On Tuesday, 10.2 million Indians had captured Covid-19 and 147,901 had died. Given the sketchy coverage in poorer 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 Asian counterparts, including densely populated Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. East Asian success stories such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam are almost in a different universe.

The Indian economy slowed even before the pandemic, thanks in part to a bizarre cash ban in 2016 and the rocky nationwide enactment of a complicated goods and services tax. The pandemic pushed it over a cliff. The International Monetary Fund estimates that India’s gross domestic product will have contracted 10.3% by the end of the fiscal year, easily the worst performance since independence in 1947. Of the 20 economies, only Argentina and Italy are likely to contract more sharply. In terms of per capita income, India lags behind Bangladesh.

In addition to Mr. Modi’s troubles, China chose India’s moment of disorder to look for weaknesses along a disputed 2,200-mile boundary in the Himalayas. In May, hundreds of People’s Liberation Army troops pitched tents in the territory claimed by both countries, blocking Indian access to traditional patrol routes and threatening access to an Indian strategic air base. In June, Chinese troops armed with spiked clubs and iron bars wrapped in barbed wire fought with Indian soldiers. The collision killed 20 Indians and an unspecified number of Chinese, the largest loss of human life on the China-India border in more than 50 years.

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

and by strengthening military cooperation with the US, Japan and Australia. But despite diplomatic talks, heavy military build-up on both sides, and eight rounds of military negotiations, PLA forces are showing no signs of clearing newly occupied territory five times the size of Manhattan.

What does all this mean for Mr. Modi? That depends on whether Indian politics follows its traditional pattern of punishing leaders who fail to keep their promises, or whether it has entered a new phase of Hindu nationalist supremacy.

If history provides clues, he has cause for concern. In 1971 Indira Gandhi easily 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 largest national mandate in nearly two decades. Two years later, a growing anti-corruption movement interrupted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s legitimacy.

Still, it would be premature to predict Mr. Modi’s demise. For starters, he dominates Indian politics in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1980s. Much of the domestic media is acting more like a lap dog than a watchdog, reinforcing the government’s talking points and devastating its critics. An opaque money-raising system gives the ruling Bharatiya Janata party a thicker wallet than all of its opponents combined. Many ardent adherents believe that India is in the early stages of a glorious Hindu revival. These are not people who are prone to switching loyalty based on IMF projections.

Meanwhile, the inept leader of the Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, a fourth-generation dynastic politician, symbolizes a waving opposition devoid of ideas and charisma. Last month, the BJP and its allies held sway in Bihar, India’s third most populous state.

The year ends as it began, with protests. Since the end of November, tens of thousands of farmers have camped on the Delhi borders to protest sensible but politically risky new laws that give the private sector a greater role in agriculture. Mr. Modi can overcome this challenge just like others in the past. But 2020 was the most difficult year for him as prime minister.