I really enjoy Modi's magic, but he's overdoing it

I melted when I heard Narendra Modi speak in Goa the other day. The vintage Modi was in full flow.

I decided to check out on this with others. Asked scores of people how they felt about this superb piece of oratory. Whether his impassioned speech changed the way they saw the demonetisation political kabaddi. I made it a point to consult only politically neutral citizens, who have no axe to grind and hardly any teeth to gnash.

I was astonished. Almost everyone felt differently from how I did. They pointed to the mismatch between the issue and the emotion. And argued that the measured display of powerful emotions, delivered to ponderous perfection, seemed contrived and unconvincing.

One of them even went as far as saying that Modi was not only emotional but also hysterical. He was astonished that the PM had to say: "They will kill me. Will not leave me alive..."

What surprised me even more is that at least half of those I consulted also referred to the visit of his venerable mother to the bank.

“Doesn’t it set a noble example that the mother of our PM identifies herself with the hardships of the common man?” I asked.

“I find it difficult to believe,” each one of them told me, “that there was no one else to go in her place. The sight of a 94-year-old lady straining herself to such an extent disturbs me. If this is her plight, what can I expect?”

Surely, no one would have reacted like this two years ago. Are we becoming an emotionally callous nation? Or, does the explanation lie elsewhere?

Perhaps the problem lies with the metaphor used by Modi’s spokesmen: “surgical strike”.  Even the Attorney General of India repeated it in the Supreme Court the other day!

A surgical strike is an Army operation. The Army is required to be deadpan unemotional. Emotion is alien to surgical strikes. All of us recall the face of the Chief of the Northern Command when he announced the surgical strike. It bristled with ferocity and aggression. 

So, the PM’s emotional pitch was already doomed by the cold hard-heartedness of the surgical strike context.

On the other hand, if it were presented as a piece of radical surgery - as in amputating a gangrenous limb - some margin would have been left for the PM to spin magic with his silver-tongued mastery of mass feelings. 

There is a lesson in this that the common man too may heed. 

While the justness of the reprisal against Pakistan is indubitable, it needs to be considered why the operation involved was trumpeted, with much chest-thumping, as a first-ever surgical strike.

Surely, the underlying assumption was that aggression has unfailing mass appeal. It is not enough that something is done. Everything needs to be done like a surgical strike. In fact how explosively something is done is more important, for mass-appeal, than what is done.

We cannot put the blame for this wholly at the doorstep of Modi or the BJP. Most of us are complicit in creating this sick mindset. I must admit I am.

I was deeply impressed, and immoderately entertained, by the thunder and lightning that Modi unleashed on his political opponents - especially the Congress - in the 2014 election campaign. None of us paid any attention to the factual merit of his claims and allegations.

We allowed ourselves to be swept off our feet. In doing so, we endorsed, right then, “surgical strike” as a national metaphor. So, demonetisation too has to be a surgical strike!

Surgical strike is electrifying entertainment when the target is other than, and far away from, us. Its temperature changes when we come within the periphery of its theatre.

To that extent, the spokespersons of the BJP are dead right in insisting that citizens must be willing to swallow what follows. Or, as Mukul Rohatgi said in the Supreme Court on November 15, those who applaud surgical strikes must accept the “collateral damages” that follow.

Let us return to Modi. Why should he worry?

First, he is over-exposing himself. Remember the good old economic law of diminishing returns? Over-exposure is not a matter merely of frequency. It is more a matter of having hit the ceiling and not being able to climb any higher, or add newer tones and themes to what has been offered hitherto.

I am sure that Modi is too prescient to not know this. That is why he sought to vary his rhetorical texture with this first-ever splash of emotion. But, sadly, it had to be done in an unforgivingly unemotional, coldly rational context: the grubby materialism of demonetisation and the unromantic ambience of mounting popular resentment.

Those of us who have been monitoring reactions of people on TV channels, other than Times Now, could not miss the palpable increase in anger and restlessness among people in the wake of this unrivalled speech.

I cannot imagine Modi, or anyone else, being able to appeal to popular sentiment more powerfully than this. If I were him, I would not expose myself any more than I already have; especially in view of the impending elections, when the BJP has nothing else to bank on except the power of his words and the charisma of his person. BJP today is no longer a cadre-based party but a one-and-a-half men juggernaut.

Second, the situation has changed radically since 2014. In the pre-election days, the stage was custom-made for Modi’s verbal magic. Popular anger against the Congress was at its peak, which is no longer the case.

It would be wrong to assume that people hated the Congress for being the Congress. They hated the Congress for letting them down, while in office. Now the BJP is in office. You cannot go on encashing the failures of the Congress, numerous though they were.

Right now the people are not bothered about what the Congress did, but what the BJP is doing: the promises not kept, the hopes raised and dashed.

Third, the BJP does not seem to have learned the most obvious lesson from the downfall of UPA-II. What offended all sensible people most was the shameless justification of misdeeds. Cleverness is not a cosmic carpet capable of covering rot of every kind.

Citizens are more likely to forgive you if you make a candid confession of misdeeds and offer to mend your ways. The more cleverly and shamelessly you justify the indefensible, the more you scare the citizens, who conclude that you are hopelessly perverse. This provokes anger.

While I still enjoy the Modi magic, I feel nauseated by his spokespersons who seem to be hell-bent on reviving the Congress.

Remember what Arun Shourie said of Sonia (Gandhi) and Manmohan (Singh)? That they were Modi’s chief campaign managers? He was on the ball. History seems poised to repeat itself.

If I were Modi, I’d worry.

Also read: One year on, how India will remember DeModitisation