Do we end the year 2014 on a note of hope or despair? For most people, I imagine, the sentiment as January 1, 2015, approaches, is somewhere in between.
Yet, when Narendra Modi won the election for the Bharatiya Janata Party, the feeling was overwhelmingly positive. A recent poll by one of the pink papers gives revealing figures. In the views of its readers — presumably executives, businessmen and captains of industry — India’s then brand new Prime Minister had a favourable rating of 86 per cent. Seven months later, that figure is down to 68 per cent. Now 68 per cent is still a formidable rating for the leader of any democracy, but given the first, almost unreal figure, it could represent the beginning of, not quite disillusionment, but perhaps a return to reality in Mr Modi’s primary constituency.
By primary constituency I do not mean just business leaders; Mr Modi’s main supporters, the voters who gave him a clear majority in the Lok Sabha, were people who wanted just one thing — leadership. After 10 years of Manmohan Singh’s rule (and that’s stretching the word), there was a clear yearning for someone who not only had a firm grip on power, but who was demonstrably in charge. Mr Modi undoubtedly was the man who fulfilled these expectations.
So what has happened since then to diminish the Prime Minister’s lustre, even if slightly so? Part of the problem was Mr Modi the campaigner’s impossibly high build-up of expectations. But more than that, there is now a feeling that Mr Modi, the talker, is a bigger figure than Mr Modi, the doer. This is an astonishing transformation for a man who has wielded the broom, both figuratively and literally, so very firmly since coming into office. Perhaps the seeds of this were sown, though most of us were unaware of it, at his swearing-in ceremony itself: on the one hand was Mr Modi’s brilliant move to invite all Saarc leaders to the event; in contrast was the parade of politicians who made up his council of ministers.
This was business-as-usual, with no outside professionals brought in to bring new thinking into government. Instead, there were the inexplicable choices, none more so than the drafting in of Uma Bharti and Smriti Irani with full Cabinet rank. The former is at best, ineffective, while the latter has become the single-most disruptive factor in government with every week bringing in the most unpleasant of surprises. There is also a feeling that the much-touted Gujarat development model will not work at the Centre for the simple reason that India is too large a country to be run by centralising power in a single pair of hands: what may work in a relatively small state cannot work when you’re dealing with a constituency of 1.2 billion people.
Is this too harsh a judgment? Perhaps, for in Mr Modi’s favour are his energetic, and imaginative foreign policy initiatives (anyone seen Sushma Swaraj, our external affairs minister?) and his cracking the whip at a somnolent bureaucracy. This is where hope gains ascendancy: maybe Mr Modi is a work in progress; maybe he will change his style of functioning as he goes along; maybe he will induct more outside professionals to counter his ineffective council of ministers.
What about Mr Modi’s other constituency, the no longer silent majority?
No one has conducted an opinion poll here, because I suppose, it would be impossible to do so. But from their aggressive, uninhibited posturing, their outlandish and disruptive projects like “love jihad”, “ghar wapsi”, compulsory teaching of Sanskrit, glorifying Nathuram Godse and remarks by assorted sadhvis and sants, we can see that these extreme manifestations of Hindutva now confidently occupy centre stage. The Left, people with secular values and the liberal intelligentsia, can no longer dismiss them as the lunatic fringe. For the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and other similar groups, Mr Modi’s ratings must be sky high.
Looked at objectively, the two contradictory sides of Mr Modi are thus on opposite trajectories: the public perception of the forward looking, development focused Prime Minister is on a slight downward curve, while the public perception of the backward looking, cultural revivalist RSS pracharak is on an upward swing. Looked at objectively again, would we not say that the future of our country would be far, far better if these trajectories were reversed?
Given the current state of affairs, what is needed is a strong Opposition to keep government policies — political, economic and especially cultural — on track. That must come principally from the political Opposition and secondarily from the media. Overall, the media continues to play its part, but there are serious worries on this front with changes in media ownership, in which either business houses or those with political ambitions have gained control. For obvious reasons, their objectivity will be suspect; in fact they will become supporters of the government, even becoming its mouthpieces at a later, not too distant, date.
As for the political Opposition, what can one say?
With each state election, the Congress Party gets decimated. As the only national party besides the BJP, the Congress’ imminent demise is worrying because an ideal democracy should be a two-party state. In this area at least, one’s feelings veer to despair because Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi seem so very clueless as to what’s to be done to stop the downward slide. If Mr Modi as a work in progress gives us some hope, Mr Gandhi as a work in progress leads us to complete despair.
But as the New Year approaches one should end on an optimistic note. This epiphany is provided by the non-resident Indian. As is well known, China’s spectacular growth was fuelled by the non-resident Chinese. This is why Mr Modi’s reaching out to NRIs in the US and Australia and their enthusiastic response everywhere to the “New India” is a good sign for our future growth. There is the added factor of Indians now heading some of the world’s largest corporations: while their investment decisions will obviously be based on sound commercial considerations, their feelings for their country of birth will also as obviously give us an edge in their decisions. That’s enough, don’t you think to go into the New Year on a note of cautious optimism?
The writer is a senior journalist
