Narendra Modi led his BJP to a historic election win.
He is a powerful speaker and draws huge crowds. He talks about himself
in the third person. He's the most energetic leader India has had in years, burning the midnight oil and campaigning for his party with equal fervor.
He's also an
astute performer: recently he dropped into a police station and picked up a
broom to promote a campaign to clean up India . Behind the bluster and performance, he, according
to insiders, is a loner who trusts his instincts but very few people.
Narendra Modi is also possibly India 's most powerful leader after Indira Gandhi, the mercurial former prime
minister.
Five months
ago he led his Hindu nationalist BJP to a historic win.
In a country used - in recent decades - to feeble leaders running flimsy
coalitions, Mr Modi is a marked departure.
Like Mrs
Gandhi, a cult of personality is slowly building around him. Similarly, Mr Modi
is also his party's biggest vote-catcher.
Centralising
power
No surprise,
then, that he rules firmly. The party old guard has been effectively
retired. One of the few men he trusts, Amit Shah, a savvy organizer
with a controversial past, runs the BJP. Media access to his government is
tightly controlled, though recently Mr Modi promised to make amends
and meet journalists.
Although his
cabinet is somewhat thin on talent, he runs his team of ministers and a bunch
of trusted bureaucrats in his office with an iron grip.
"His
working style is very presidential. He centralizes power. He needs to delegate
more authority and crack
the whip," says analyst Neerja Chowdhury.
Mr Modi rode
to power in May on the promise of getting India 's economy back on track. All the good work of the
Congress government led by the taciturn Manmohan Singh in the first term had unraveled
in the second thanks to a string of corruption
scandals, a slowing economy and inept governance.
Mr Modi
inherited a sluggish economy with high inflation and declining employment. His
supporters expect him to reform the economy, tame inflation, create jobs and
cut red tape to make it easier to do business.
Mr Modi has launched a
campaign to clean up India
It is early
days yet, but Mr Modi has energized government and launched a few
headline-grabbing schemes, some of which are smartly retooled programs
introduced by the previous administration.
There's a
commendable campaign to
clean up what remains a filthy country, though critics say it
ignores reprehensible practices like manual scavenging of human waste.
Another
proposes to provide a bank account
for every household in
a country where only 40% of people have one. The success of this will possibly
be linked to eventual welfare cash transfers, which Mr Modi proposes to move
ahead with. Mr Modi also wants to turn India
into a manufacturing hub to
create the millions of new jobs that India badly needs, so he's launched a curiously named Make
in India scheme.
All of the
campaigns, say critics, are long on promise, but short on specifics. Mr Modi
clearly believes that he needs to rejuvenate a tired and cynical people into
believing that his government can work with them to make change possible.
A lot of
people continue to believe the rhetoric, as his party's
recent win in state elections prove.
"The initial days of the government," says analyst Milan Vaishnav,
"have been characterized by an almost exhausting hyper-activity in many
respects."
Mr Modi has
also unveiled a few labor reforms, freed diesel
prices from state control and
backed an executive order to allow
private companies to mine coal, which supplies some 60% of
India's energy needs.
There's talk
of more reforms in the days to come. He also, quite rightly, plans to get rid
of obsolete laws that clog the statute books, though
there is still no word on why India can't do away with a retrograde law which
makes homosexuality a crime,
and a colonial era sedition law
which is often used by governments to harass opponents.
Options
Mr Modi's
foreign policy moves have been marked by briskness. There is a new dynamism in
bilateral ties in the neighborhood - he made quick trips to Bhutan and Nepal early on; his first major foreign visit was to
Japan, where he secured a $33bn pledge from Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe.
Mr Modi also
made a bold initial foray in reaching out to
Pakistan by
inviting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration. But he later cancelled planned talks and India threatened
heavy retaliation after
a recent surge in violence on the disputed border left 19 people dead.
So, according
to Harsh V Pant of London's King's College, Mr Modi has decided to take a
gamble by resetting the terms of engagement with the nuclear-armed neighbour.
"It was possibly long overdue, but it is not clear what India 's options are should this gamble fail," he
says.
Mr Modi wants to make India a manufacturing hub.
Although
Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India turned out to be a bit of damp squib, Mr Modi's
government, according to Mr Pant, is "trying to increase its scope for
diplomatic manoeuvring vis-à-vis China by building substantive ties with Japan , Vietnam and US". And during his trip to the US, he reached out to expatriate Indians and tried to put defense ties back on
track.
"He
seems to be redefining the terms on which India is likely to engage with the world in coming years.
Pragmatism coupled with a more confident assertion of Indian interests is
likely to be the hallmark," says Mr Pant.
At home, Mr
Modi needs to allay some fears.
One is rising
concerns over a resurgent
Hindu right, exemplified by the RSS, the BJP's ideological
mentor, and a bunch of hardline outfits who believe in establishing Hindutva
(Hindu-ness) as a superior political ideology. Many fear that unchallenged by a
weakened opposition, Mr Modi will help turn the world's largest - and most
diverse - democracy into a Hindu nationalist state.
There's
trepidation over a lack of tolerance among many of Mr Modi's supporters,
particularly on social media, to any criticism. There are more prosaic fears that environmental
concerns will be given short shrift as he pushes reform, and
some headline
welfare schemes will
be cut back.
So will Mr
Modi change India or will India change Mr Modi? Many believe the latter will happen. "You cannot
be a polarizing leader and rule a diverse and plural country like India . You have to take everybody along with you,"
says Neerja Chowdhury.
Will Mr Modi
turn out to a reformer? With growth expected to rebound and inflation on the
decline, Mr Modi will continue to win admirers. But, as Milan Vaishnav says,
without deeper policy reform or "revisiting a government style which is
premised on centralizing power", the jury is still out how sustainable
this rebound - and Mr Modi's popularity - will be in the long run.
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