Much of the credit for this hope has to go to Narendra Modi who not only shrugged off the 2002 Gujarat riots taint but also inspired people from all walks of life to dream, work hard and achieve their desired goals.
In nutshell, he did what any good leadership is supposed to be doing. But now it is time to put him to test and judge if he is leading the country in the direction that he had promised. More than six months have passed since he took oath of office as Prime Minister.
The massive mandate that the people delivered had freed him from the constraints that established leaders could have imposed. Look at the ease with which he dealt with the likes of L.K. Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi. The message was loud and clear. He was bent upon breaking free from the past and move in a direction that he said would lead India to greater prosperity.
It was in this context that he gave a number of dreams to the people. For the ever increasing urban population asserting in aggressive language he promised a hundred smart cities; he asked all parliamentarians to adopt villages so that they could see accelerated growth; he talked of the need to have bullet trains so that business could grow at a faster pace; in fact, he touched all aspects of human life. But when the year was about to close many of his staunch supporters, including Gurcharan Das, had begun to declare that the honeymoon was over and it was time to demand answers from the Prime Minister and his government. Few others have begun to find faults and notes of despair have already begun to appear.
To be fair to the Prime Minister, it must be said that before he took to the major task of accelerating economy there were political issues that needed attention. There were elections in the states that had to be fought and won because his advisers believed that unless the BJP secured clear majority in the Rajya Sabha no meaningful legislation could be enacted by the BJP government. Therefore, the think tank said, some of the emotive issues had to be kept alive and exploited for electoral gains. This was evident during the Maharashtra elections where the race between BJP and Shiv Sena was about who would emerge as the number one champion of the Hindus.
Even then, there were other signs that seem to have been overlooked by the party. BJP had become so focused on the financial state of India that it failed to see what was happening in Haryana. A progressive state with a curious mix of conservative communities it was remarkably free of the communal equations and yet the people voted heavily in favor of the BJP. It has to be a major conquest for BJP and should have been a lesson that the country has moved away from divisive politics and yearns for greater prosperity. Haryana notwithstanding the Jammu and Kashmir election was fought on an agenda that has kept the party going in that state since long and the lip service to development apart the national agenda of development had shied away from the state .
Now the elections to the states are out of the way and it is time for the Prime Minister to remember the task that he had undertaken. These columns have often warned how the development agenda was in danger of being derailed by combined strength of culture and religion. This danger is becoming even more real and threatening. In this context, the Prime Minister needs to be taking a close look at his government and remember that five years mandate is only for five years and that the aspirations of the people have a tendency of growing into frustrations, despair and anger and that then there might not be a second chance.
The Prime Minister needs to look back and remember what and how he had infused hope. As an opposition, BJP had been a disaster. It had obstructed all those legislations that it now wants the opposition to support. During the past two years, the BJP’s thinking was dramatically transformed by Narendra Modi who everyone believed was single-mindedly focused on investment, jobs, skills and growth. His success is said to lie in giving clear direction to the bureaucracy which has helped him in making it shed its smugness.
It was also believed that Modi was likely to reduce corruption as well because of his record as Chief Minister of Gujarat. It would be a folly not to give him credit for the shrewdness that he has displayed as a politician. Look at the manner he had dealt with the leadership issue within his party and look at the enthusiasm that he has created among the leaders of the world regarding India. BJP without Modi is an unappealing option. For the Indian voters, voting for him has not been necessarily an endorsement of RSS’ social agenda. But therein lies the problem.
Ironically, the RSS appears to be afraid of him. It fears that its Hindutva programme might be marginalized by his economic agenda. Add to it the political impasse that has hit the parliament and we know the kind of rough weather that is awaiting Prime Minister Modi in 2015. He has had the advantage of inheriting a society and an economy that has been gradually moving towards the ‘right’. Whether like it or not that has been a reality. Ever since late Narsimha Rao ushered in reforms, the economy has been galloping towards the right.
Few are willing to give credit to Dr. Manmohan Singh because of his inarticulate nature but the fact is that under his stewardship India navigated the choppy seas of economic downturn safely. So Modi will be facing very little problem in ushering in reforms that push the economy further to the right in the hope that the trickle down impact of capitalism will be helpful to a large number of people.
So even if the BJP opens up the economy to greater participation of foreign equity or capitalist friendly land reforms are introduced or labour laws drastically changed in favor of the employer there will be only weak and probably token resistance to it. The greater challenge to Modi comes from the cultural ‘right’ of the RSS that is in a great hurry. From introducing Sanskrit in schools to marginalizing Christmas the priority of the Government seems to be shifting from governance and development to establishing the cultural superiority of Hindusim as defined by the BJP supporters.
It is ironical that just when the BJP is riding a wave of success the opposition believes that it has good reason to smile. It did not begin with any victory that the Opposition might have chalked up but because in its arrogance the fringe groups of Sangh Parivar took up the issue of ‘love jihad’. The BJP should have learnt its lesson then as it lost the bye elections to Assemblies but it failed to do so. As a result of that indulgent tolerance now that group has become bold enough to announce that its goal is to continue the ‘ghar wapsi’ program including the new one that has been provocatively called ‘bahu lao, beti bachao’.
The message is clear. A Hindu marrying a Muslim girl is desirable but the opposite is not to be tolerated. Even as this controversy continues to hog limelight there is also the issue of the blatant attempt to present the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi as some kind of a hero. Books in praise of Nathuram Godse are being promoted in order to what is being said as the other side of the story. Also one need not forget that a Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti had divided the society between followers of Ram and bastards! That was the first issue that gave the opposition the occasion to stall the parliament. Ever since then stalling has become a potent tool in its hands and the consequences are visible.
The Opposition in Parliament was delighted by the issues of ‘ghar wapsi’ and India being a Hindu Rashtra. To quote Gurcharan Das, “It has embarrassed the government, paralysing the last weeks of the Rajya Sabha and blocking key economic reforms. For a brief moment, ‘strong’ Modi resembled ‘weak’ Manmohan Singh. It must have felt strange for a universally regarded strongman, internationally feted, to be thus felled. Singh must have felt like this when activists of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council drafted the bizarre, damaging land acquisition law that has ended in bringing land transfers to a halt, harming industry, farmers and jobs.”
The challenge before Prime Minister Modi is to pursue the path of growth and development after reconciling with the interests extremists and loyalists of the party. He had presented himself as a statesman who was talking of development and growth and now he cannot allow himself to be pushed around by the hotheads and lunatics in his party. Politics is conducted on the basis of reconciliation of various interests. All political parties win elections when they move to the moderate centre. So did Modi’s BJP. It can leave the old extremists and loyalists dissatisfied but a successful leader knows how to manage them.
In this context it is instructive to remember the life and times of President Lyndon Johnson. In the biography ‘The Years of Lyndon Johnson’ Robert Caro has brought out an interesting aspect of the challenges faced by the Democrat President during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. Those were the times when the Congress was dominated by the Republicans and there appeared little hope for any legislation yielding ground to the blacks and yet that is a period marked by the most momentous Civil Rights Bills being passed by the Congress.
Caro has brilliantly brought the characteristics of President Johnson that show the remarkable resilience and ability to convince the opponents through dialogue and discussion. The opposition of the Republicans did not deter him from legislating a record number of Bills and still retain the support of the people and respect and friendship of his political opponents.
Indian politicians are often found repeating that politics is the art of the impossible and that all possibilities can be explored and yet during the six months that Prime Minister Modi has been in office remarkable intolerance has been displayed towards the opposition. The Rajya Sabha has been allowed to be stalled because the BJP is not prepared to yield any ground to opposition. It is unfortunate and it is here that a lesson may be drawn from the manner in which President Johnson dealt with his opponents. There is no loss of face in keeping the engagement with the opposition alive and the Prime Minister would do well to reach out to the opposition even if in his view it is guilty of churlish behavior.
The BJP also needs to draw a lesson from another episode of contemporary American history. It would be recalled that recently, Mitt Romney failed to defeat Barack Obama because he pandering to his party’s cultural right. Former Labour Prime Minister of UK Tony Blair, in contrast, had successfully marginalised the left wing unions of the Labour Party with his New Labour policy. But most importantly, BJP in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular would do well if they remember that the huge mandate that he and his party got was not because of the agenda being pushed by the fringe and also lunatic elements of the Sangh Parivar.
Like the reinvention of Labour Party under Tony Blair, Modi had reinvented the BJP for the voters with his mantra of development, growth, accountability and eradication of corruption. He owes it to the country to redeem his promises. The country is still hopeful and the vast majority of the youth still have implicit faith in his ability to lead the country in the right direction.
One hopes that the New Year brings in genuine change and for that Prime Minister Modi has to be more assertive. He is capable of that. We all know how he snubbed his Ministers Jitender Singh and General (Retd) V.k Singh soon after assuming office when both had taken the liberty of speaking out of turn on issues that concerned policy. That is how a Prime Minister should act!
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