Modi: The PM who walks a tightrope

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reached a tipping point in the office he holds as he seeks to balance the various pulls and pressures he faces in accomplishing his objectives. As his intervention in the Rajya Sabha debate indicated, he is seeking to soften his image because he wants Opposition support for the passage of essential bills, including the one on goods and services, and he does not have a majority in the Upper House.

Mr Modi is a fast learner and the furious pace he kept in campaigning and winning a series of state Assembly elections ended in his Waterloo in Bihar. There are indications that he will follow the precedent set by his predecessors in the next series of state elections by not staking his national responsibilities for partisan profit in the hope of achieving the goal of gaining a majority in the Rajya Sabha, a distant prospect in the best of circumstances.

However, the dichotomy in Mr Modi’s approach is determined by his bondage to his mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and its desire to change the ideological and other parameters of the country. His own upbringing in the RSS is both a help and a hindrance to achieving the pragmatic objectives of governing India and taking it forward.
In a measure, Mr Modi has already sacrificed education and culture to the tender mercies of the RSS, but he is discovering that, unlike Gujarat, taking governance to the national stage is a different proposition. And the RSS is watching hawk-eyed to trip him on any major deviation he makes in promoting the goal of veering away from the ideological path of the organisation.

Mr Modi’s dilemma is most painfully highlighted by his inability publicly to admonish the poisonous statements by his partymen punctuating the political discourse. Essentially, these outbursts are expressions of the idea of India the RSS projects as its worldview and was part of Mr Modi’s own upbringing. Yet as Prime Minister, he has to reconcile such precepts to governing a country of many faiths and ethnic background.

Mr Modi has another problem on his hands. In contrast to the preceding double-headed administration of the government of Manmohan Singh, his winning strategy in the general election was the prospect of a decisive leader as the executive head of government. And during his 18-month-rule, he has shown himself as a pugnacious leader. In the process, he sacrificed something of his popular appeal by showing his partisan nature and the limitations of the RSS ideology.

It remains to be seen whether the softer approach Mr Modi demonstrated in the Rajya Sabha is a one-shot affair to get essential legislation passed or part of a discovery that one cannot govern a diverse country by insulting and denigrating the Opposition, in particular the Congress. Partisan politics has its place in campaigning for a general election but if the Prime Minister remains the chief campaigner for his party every time a state election comes along, he does damage to the office he holds and introduces a pinch of unnecessary partisanship to the task of governance.

To an extent, every new Prime Minister learns on the job and Mr Modi is still in the learning process. To a sceptical public, especially among minorities, Mr Modi has still to prove that his heart beats for all Indians, however different they might be from the RSS definition of the mainstream. The jarring statements from his partymen and women are a constant reminder that the debate within the larger BJP family, the Sangh Parivar, is not over and Mr Modi often seems to be a bystander, rather than a principal, in the discourse.

Mr Modi is still trying to find the balance between placating the RSS and efficiently governing the country. It is a tough call because of his own upbringing and beliefs and the key role of RSS footsoldiers in winning elections. Judging by the spanner in the works thrown by the RSS chief during the Bihar Assembly election campaign by suggesting the need for a fresh look at caste reservations (in itself a sensible idea), Balasaheb Deoras marches to his own tune when he feels it is necessary.

Two questions arise even as Mr Modi seeks answers to his equation with the RSS and how pungent and partisan he should be in governing the country. How long will this process take? He has roughly about two and a half years left before the demands of fighting the next general election will impose themselves upon Mr Modi. Second, can Mr Modi, even if he is willing to jettison his long-held beliefs in a fantasy world, fight and win against the RSS?

These are seminal questions only time can answer. In immediate terms, the interesting point is that Mr Modi is seeking a way out of his dilemmas. He has found out through trial and error that his approach to governance, honed in Gujarat, is inadequate for the national canvas. At the same time he is, perhaps, ruminating the costs of displeasing the RSS for his own and the country’s future.

The challenge of governing the country will not wait. Mr Modi has realised that his wide travels around the world, some of them essential and useful, sit ill with many of his countrymen. His hyperbolic rhetoric in connecting with the diaspora and denigrating his Congress predecessors are decidedly in bad taste. There is no logic in using the diaspora as an additional instrument of promoting Indian foreign policy goals. But he must be aware, as everyone else, that his major challenges lie at home even as he revels in the adulation he receives from resident Indians and persons of Indian origin.

The next two years will demonstrate the path Mr Modi will take to define his prime ministership. There will be high points and low points and plenty of theatre to keep us glued.