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A profile

India Today

Rajdeep Sardesai

December 25, 2014

India's most powerful prime minister in decades,Narendra Modi has become the focal point of a young nation's aspiration for a better tomorrow

In 2014, Narendra Modi was literally everywhere. On the campaign trail, with clenched fist and self-proclaimed 56-inch chest, Modi was the defining symbol of an India hankering to be liberated from the effete elitist UPA, roaring out a near universal echo against silver spoon-fed dynasts and ancien regime aristocrats. Ranging around with furious energy from Amethi to Chennai, from Bastar to Kerala, he rode tidal waves of expectation, each of his appearances a call to overthrow the old order, the up-by-his bootstraps "chaiwallah" flaunting his humble origins and perfect wardrobe as if to say, "If I can, you can too." Class warrior against the Oxbridge elite yet capitalist-friendly to desi business, Hindutva champion yet armed with modern high-tech media, the publicly endorsed emblem of a globalising India with a triumphant eye turned towards the Vedic Age.

Indeed, power in the country now flows from a designer kurta that was once made in Gujarat. Recently, on a chilly December evening, Rashtrapati Bhavan held an event to celebrate the construction of a new wing of the Ceremonial Hall. The Lutyens power elite were in attendance: ministers, governors, service chiefs, and the Rashtrapati himself. Dot on the appointed time, in walked the Prime Minister in his trademark salwar kurta, not a hair out of place. The chatter in the room shrank sharply to pindrop silence, as gathered VIPs jostled to catch the eye of the Supreme Leader. In 2014, Modi has become truly larger than life. Armed with a massive majority for the first time after 25 years of coalition governments, he's arguably the most powerful PM India has seen since Indira Gandhi in the 1970s.

It wasn't always quite like this. In 2002, Modi made it to the cover of this magazine for the first time. He was then labelled a "Master Divider", a politician who had presided over the terrible Gujarat communal violence that had left more than 1,000 people dead. He had become a sharply polarising figure: to his critics, he was a Hitler-like despot, someone who had knowingly failed to stop the killing of innocent Muslims. To his supporters, he was a 'Hindu Hriday Samrat', a macho leader who had protected the majority community in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning in which 56 kar sevaks were killed. The Congress leadership called him a "maut ka saudagar" (merchant of death); his flock called him "Gujarat ka sher" (lion of Gujarat). Never before has an individual so starkly divided public opinion.

Turn the clock a little further back. It's the 1990s and Modi is struggling to make his way up the political ladder. In a slowly rising BJP, clawing its way up to challenge Congress hegemony, he wasn't even a first among equals among his party's Generation Next. There was Pramod Mahajan, the suave man Friday and strategist for then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Sushma Swaraj was an electrifying campaigner while the sagacious Govindacharya was party ideologue. As a pracharak who had never fought an election. He was neatly attired even then, was an effective party spokesperson on television, and had shown superior organisational skills during the yatras of L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. But he never was in the front row of the BJP's potential successors to the Vajpayee-Advani duo. What he did possess though was an unshakeable self-belief, a dogged conviction that he was destined for greater things. There was a single-mindedness of purpose: he was a loyal karyakarta, unwaveringly committed to the growth of the BJP, but he was also fiercely individualistic, the ruthless practitioner of realpolitik who would not hesitate to sideline a political rival.

If 2002 and its immediate aftermath revealed a darker side of the Modi persona as the unflinching flag-bearer of divisive Hindutva politics, the years that followed showed another side to his image. From Hindutva icon to governance guru, Modi crafted a makeover that was deliberate and strategic, but also the result of hard work and a constant quest for self-improvement. When he took charge as Gujarat CM in October 2001, he self-confessedly had never sat in a government office or worked on government files. But he was determined to succeed. He built a reputation as a "karmayogi" politician who could work with the bureaucracy in effectively micro-managing government programmes: 24x7 power, girls education, irrigation schemes. Modi harnessed the state administration into an effective project-driven machine under his leadership.

There were, in a sense, two turning points in Modi's political career. The first was, undoubtedly, the train burning in Godhra and the riots that followed, where he acquired a distinct political identity by refusing to appear remorseful or apologetic for the state's administrative failure. The second defining moment came on October 7, 2008 when the Tata group announced it would set up a Nano plant in Sanand in Gujarat. The decision to move the plant from Bengal to Gujarat gave Modi what 2002 or election triumphs could never give him-credibility as a trustworthy administrator.

It was at this point that Modi's ambitions began to soar well beyond Gujarat. The riots had left him politically isolated; Tata's vote of confidence, recognition from a well-respected corporate citizen, gave him the self-confidence that the tide had turned. He unleashed a public relations blitz positioning himself as a politician committed to good governance, as a leader who was incorruptible and who had driven a "Gujarat model" of high growth and robust infrastructure. The Gujarat model and the cult of Modi would henceforth be inseparable.

The was now pitching himself as the icon of what he described as the "neo-middle" class. This "neo-middle class" was Modi's answer to the Congress's "aam admi" and would, eventually, form the core of his appeal ahead of the 2014 elections. Modi defined this constituency as the "aspirational" India, the India restless for a better life and upward mobility, a class which was, ironically enough, a beneficiary of the great economic transformation triggered in 1991 by the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh dispensation. Singh changed the economy but didn't quite understand the political upheaval it unleashed. Modi, in fact, grasped the politics created by the Great Change of '91 better than the Congress did.

Today, liberalisation has created a generation of young Indians for whom wealth creation and social and material advancement have become the fundamental markers of the good life, a mindset sharply at odds with their licence-permit raj-era parents and grandparents whose ambitions may have centred around government jobs and academic qualifications. This class-socially conservative on religious identity and cultural roots yet pushing towards economic liberalism and a relentless focus on growth-was a potential catchment area for an avowedly right-wing party which in the quest for newer voters had started to embellish its Hindu roots and aggressive nationalism with the promise of good governance.

To this class, in a rapidly changing and urbanising India, Modi was offering, quite simply, hope, as symbolised in his election promise of "achche din aayenge". Not surprisingly, the highest support for the BJP in the 2014 elections came from "young" Indians and first-time voters: a CSDS election study shows that as many as 42 per cent Indians in the age group of 18 to 25 wanted Modi as their PM as against just 16 per cent who wanted Rahul Gandhi.

It is one of the more fascinating features of the 2014 elections that the 64-year-old leader had a higher rating among younger voters than his prime opponent who was 20 years younger. Modi appeared to connect with the young, constantly communicating with them, be it while addressing town hall meetings in college campuses or through his crack communications team that focused on youthful social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Rahul, of whom it could be said that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, doesn't even have a Facebook or Twitter account.

It isn't just Rahul to whom Modi should send thank you cards this new year for assisting in his "Mission 272" project. He should certainly send a thank you card to Manmohan Singh. The former prime minister, Sonia Gandhi's appointed wazir, was the soft-spoken scholar, hopelessly at sea, surrounded by a charged media, demanding citizenry and fierce calls to accountability. The gentle Sardar retreated into prolonged silences in the face of mounting charges of corruption against his ministers, giving the glaring impression of an absentee PM who had surrendered the executive space. In Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav was shown up to be a political novice, struggling to handle the complexity of India's most populous state. In the other key state of Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar with his infamous "let the farmers urinate in dams" remark was seen to typify the moral bankruptcy of a ruling clique which was now being labelled as the "nationalist corrupt party". Mani Shankar Aiyar, with his chaiwallah statement, only scored one of the Congress's biggest self-goals, a sneeringly condescending remark which enabled the BJP's PM candidate to go to town with a contrast between his own self-made achievements with the privileges of an entitled born-to-rule class.

There should also be a thank you note sent to the media, a large section of which became cheerleaders of the Modi juggernaut. Modi is a made-for-TV politician: he is a terrific orator, has a narcissistic love for the camera, and an uncanny knack to know what will make "news". In a soundbite-driven public discourse, Modi used the media, and television in particular, to position himself as a strong, bubbling-with-ideas leader who would rid the country of sloth and corruption. For the media, Modi was TRP (television rating points) and it seemed like we were in a permanent embrace with the BJP mascot, his images beaming out of every media outlet.

The campaign itself was quite brilliant: it used a deadly mix of media, money and technology to literally shock and awe the opposition. Modi in 3D, for example, showed how high-end technology could be used to spread the message of Modi Everywhere; a missed call and an SMS showed how the cell phone could be tellingly used to build a volunteer base; a video rath beamed out to 'media dark' villages in UP and Bihar and bridged the rural-urban divide. Nor was it a one-man show.

And yet, truthfully, the media did not create the Modi wave as much as simply ride on it. The "wave" (which Shah described as a "tsunami" or "tsunamo") was created by a political environment in which low growth, rising inflation, big-ticket corruption had bred a sense of negativism, even defeatism in the minds of voters. The voter was looking for an Arnold Schwarznegger-like Terminator who would offer instant solutions to a nation's problems.

A post-election study showed that 27 per cent or one in every four of those who voted for the BJP said they did so only because of Modi. Given the low morale in the Congress, the BJP would probably have been the number one party in any case but it was the Modi factor that brought in the incremental vote that pushed the party into the seemingly unthinkable territory of a majority on its own. He was, as a senior Congressman conceded, "a leader at the right time, at the right place, in the right context".

On May 26, 2014, Narendra Damodardas Modi was sworn in as India's fifteenth prime minister, the chief executive of the country's first unabashed Hindu nationalist government. This wasn't an unwieldy coalition in the Vajpayee-led NDA mould; NDA 2 was a BJP government where allies, even long-standing ones such as the Shiv Sena, had to be completely subservient to the BJP leadership. The swearing-in ceremony itself had a quintessential Modi touch. It wasn't held in the conventional Durbar Hall but in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan: a ceremony aimed to announce the arrival of the "outsider" and the new Delhi durbar.

Modi's always been an excellent impresario: his swearing-in too was a remarkably well-crafted event. The presence of the leaders of SAARC countries for the first time, including Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif, was again designed to create a stir and project the new prime minister as a putative statesman. Apparently, Ministry of External Affairs officials didn't know about the plan until the very last moment. In typical Modi style, he wanted to shake up the establishment. He takes pride in his "outsider" image, someone who doesn't want to be chained by the protocol and rules of Lutyens' Delhi, someone who is so strikingly singular that he didn't even invite his family for the swearing-in. By contrast, corporates, film stars, even his old Hindutva comrades such as Sadhvi Ritambhara were in attendance. "Mr Modi isn't going to decide his invitations based on traditional definitions of political correctness," is how one of his aides described the invitee list.

He played the showman role again in the US, turning Madison Square Garden into an NRI lovefest; he even dropped in to a music festival in Central Park and rubbed shoulders with Hollywood hero Hugh Jackman and greeted the crowd with a "may the force be with you", the Star Wars-style, rather quaint 1970s chant. The US may have denied him a visa for years in the aftermath of the riots, but Modi wasn't letting that come in the way of taking a stab at becoming a global leader.

Modi's penchant is for headline-grabbing one-liners at prime time (for example, his anti-corruption slogan 'na khaoonga, na khane doonga'); he likes to identify himself with inspirational figures (Sardar Patel one day, Vivekananda the next) and prefers to market simple but salient ideas that he thinks will resonate with a larger audience. His Independence Day speech was a performance more than just a traditional address to the nation. He promised to abolish the Planning Commission and made toilet building his new mission. "What kind of PM stands at Red Fort and talks about toilet building?" he asked with a rhetorical flourish. Swachh Bharat, a concept that he formally launched on Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, is a campaign to spread the message of cleanliness.

Symbols and messages come easily to Modi, even though a more classical right-wing government would probably have opted for incentives rather than for social engineering of the Swachh Bharat kind, for a lesser role for the government than for an overweening position for the PMO. Is Modi a believer in right-wing market-friendly economics or is he in fact only delivering a more efficient UPA? That question hangs in the air. Those who had hoped that Modi would be India's Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher may be in for disappointment because Modi's economics is likely to be dictated entirely by his politics rather than a free market capitalist vision. This is the UPA with saffron lipstick, complained columnist Swaminathan Aiyar after the Government's maiden Budget.

Interestingly, the UPA government too had spoken of a Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan with a focus on sanitation. "We even had actor Vidya Balan as our brand ambassador, only we didn't know how to market it quite like Mr Modi," Jairam Ramesh remarked rather ruefully at the Aaj Tak Agenda conclave. However borrowed the schemes may be, even his critics now admit that Modi is the master communicator with an instinct for artful messaging. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, says that it's a gift which even the Father of the Nation possessed. "The important difference is that while for Bapu the message was all-important, Modi is keener to market himself first," Gandhi told me recently.

Modi though is perhaps clever enough to realise that eventually the message will have to triumph over the individual and substance will have to override slogans. In 2014, the individual and his slogans have been dominant: even today he seems in perpetual campaign mode, sometimes in tribal headgear, sometimes in a Kashmiri phiran, addressing rallies in some corner of the country, rousing NRIs across the world, delivering Sunday sermons on All India Radio. He has made multiple promises, raised expectations, energised the bureaucracy, created an aura of invincibility around himself.

Indeed, with every passing election, it is becoming clearer that the battlelines in Indian politics are drawn as Modi versus the rest: even sworn enemies such as Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar have been forced to come together in a desperate bid to try and stop Modi's electoral rath from trampling through Bihar. He is the glue that unites a disparate opposition, much like Indira's dominance in the 1970s created a 'khichdi' called the Janata Party. With the Congress still struggling to come to terms with its electoral debacle, the opposition space has shrunk. It has been left to a Mamata Banerjee, feeling threatened in her bastion in West Bengal, to lead the charge, a sign that self-preservation is dictating the terms of the political debate against Modi Raj.

With his trusted lieutenant, Amit Shah, as BJP president, Modi has also ensured that the party is firmly in his control. The old guard has been effectively retired to a 'margdarshak mandal' while his peers have little choice but to accept Modi's absolute leadership. Shah appears to have mastered the electoral math, and while the slogan of "Congress mukt Bharat" raises the troubling spectre of authoritarian oneparty rule, it also reflects the sheer audacity of ambition to create an impact from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. And while the Valley has been immune to the blossoming of the lotus in 2014, the fact that the Modi-Shah combine could speak of a "Mission 44" in the Jammu and Kashmir elections confirms their determination to occupy mindspace at all times.

And yet, Modi isn't the universal messiah his bhakts would like to project him as. For a loquacious politician, he has stayed worryingly silent when Hindutva hotheads have raised issues such as 'love jihad' and conversions, thereby widening the trust deficit with minorities (he broke with tradition and refused to hold the prime minister's annual iftar party and rejects wearing a skull cap as tokenism even while happily adding every other dress code to his wardrobe). He hasn't yet been able to push major economic or institutional reform, or revive manufacturing, he still hasn't broken logjams in Parliament and hasn't dealt with critical issues of Centre-state relations. Modi's relationship with the Sangh also remains unclear: is the powerful Prime Minister in control of the Parivar within? Will all executive decisions be soundtested for Sangh acceptability?

Sooner or later, the media honeymoon will end and the tough, but rather prosaic task of governing India outside the glare of the TV camera will have to begin. 2014 was the year of the campaigner: an election was won by the sheer force of personality. 2015 could well be the year of the administrator, where promises made will have to be backed by performance. Voters have seen Modi on TV, social media and in 3D, now they need to see him in flesh and blood.