Modi has solutions to India's problems, but he must shed his saffron baggage

"Modi runs the most centralised, personality driven government since Indira Gandhi's Emergency."

I am, I suppose, an old-fashioned liberal, one who believes in political liberty, social freedoms, minimal restrictions on economic activity, and a concern for social justice.  

A liberal hawk is a rare bird anywhere, but particularly in an India whose social and economic pieties and peace-loving credentials were sanctified by the hallowed freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi.

And yet, as this book suggests, India may be coming increasingly around to the point where my beliefs might one day even appear mainstream. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches and sound bytes since his election could certainly have been scripted by a liberal, though the gap between articulation and implementation, in his case, remains currently wide enough to drive a rath through.

What can one make of a man who speaks of tolerance and accommodation while condoning hate speech by party members he has appointed as ministers? How does one interpret a PM who speaks of ‘minimal government, maximum governance’ but is in the process of running the most centralised, top-down, bureaucracy-driven, personality-cult dominated central government since Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule? What conclusion can one reasonably derive about a leader who says ‘the government has no business to be in business’ but has never said a word to question the anomaly of his government owning and running airlines and hotels?

How can one interpret the intentions of a prime minister elected on a promise of delivering results, whose very fine speeches and liberal pronouncements appear completely disconnected from any tangible action plan, adequate funding or execution capacity? So the jury is still out on how much we can celebrate the "Modi-fication" of India.

Identity versus performance: The paradox of Modi's leadership

We need to devise creative, ambitious responses to deal with the challenges faced by our people—to connect them to the opportunities the 21st century offers, while uniting them in the perception that what divides them is irrelevant to fulfilling their core aspirations for themselves and their families. As a political representative in India today, I certainly do not take the prospects of success for granted.

The process of doing what I have described is not just huge in itself; it also involves something no society, not even China, has yet attempted. And that is to connect millions of citizens in a functioning democracy to their own government: not just to announce entitlements that they are expected to grasp for themselves, but to create delivery mechanisms that ensure that these entitlements are not just theoretical, but real and accessible.

Prime Minister Modi seems to understand this, if his speeches are anything to go by. But in India the right diagnosis does not always result in the right prescription, and even when it does, there is no guarantee that it will cure the condition—implementation of good ideas has long been our national weakness. If Modi can change this familiar narrative, he will have earned his place in history. So far, we in the Opposition have not seen enough to dispel our scepticism, though it is reasonable to argue that six months is far too short a time to draw emphatic conclusions either way.

There is a paradox at the heart of Modi’s ascent to the prime ministership. His speeches and rhetoric appear to recognise, and harness, a vital shift in our national politics from a politics of identity to a politics of performance. Yet, he has ridden to power at the helm of a party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is ill-suited to the challenge of delinking India’s polity from the incendiary issue of religious identity that it had built its base on. And his rise to office has empowered the khaki-shorts-wearing ‘cultural organisation’, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose views on every subject — economics, politics, history, culture, morality, gender relations, even matters of appropriate dress or conduct — are totally illiberal.

Modi has built his appeal by putting the focus on what the Indian people manifestly need—more development, better governance, wider socio-economic opportunities. But having won an election by attracting voters to these themes, he has given free rein to the most retrograde elements in Indian society, who are busy rewriting textbooks, extolling the virtues of ancient science over modern technology, advocating protectionism and self-reliance against free trade and foreign investment, and asserting that India’s identity must be purely Hindu.

Modi cannot be oblivious to this fundamental contradiction, but he can only resolve it by jettisoning the very forces that have helped ensure his electoral victory. I am not sure whether such a fundamental contradiction can even be resolved, and in that may lie the seeds of Modi’s future failure.

 Reprinted with the publisher's permission.