{"id":119528,"date":"2013-04-11T08:20:18","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T02:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=119528"},"modified":"2013-04-11T08:20:18","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T02:50:18","slug":"me-myself-adrenaline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/me-myself-adrenaline\/","title":{"rendered":"Me, Myself & Adrenaline"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Photo:<\/strong> Arun Sehrawat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Narendra Modi is no longer the elephant in the room. He is the lion (from the Gir sanctuary in Gujarat, if you please) lording the jungle already, all but named its king. A receptacle of the hopes of a billion-plus nation, the messiah that everyone \u2014 the industrialist, the economist, the analyst, the nationalist, the jingoist, the optimist, the Hindu (of course), and, we are now told, even the Muslim \u2014 believes is just paces from seizing charge of this potentially great nation and shaping for it a destiny it deserves.<\/p>\n

Or so runs the boilerplate. The BJP\u2019s most incandescent poster boy since Lal Krishna Advani rode out into the sunset in 2009, Modi got four back-to-back chances at the lectern since last weekend to lay out his agenda, vision and programme of action for running India. All four of his speeches \u2014 including one at the \u201cladies\u201d wing of the business chamber, FICCI, and another to (mostly non-Bengali) businessmen in Kolkata \u2014 became a sensation. Delighting his red meat base, Modi\u2019s televised speeches were an imprimatur of his wishful ascension as India\u2019s next prime minister after the 16th General Election that is due in a year, but some believe may even be called earlier.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly that last uncertainty is now informing Modi\u2019s political strategy towards realising his goal. He has too much to pack to sell and too little time to run his campaign. Although clearly the most popular BJP leader in the country today, it is an open secret that he needs to constantly look over his shoulder to forestall an insurgency towards a factional coup, which isn\u2019t all that unlikely given that Modi\u2019s rise would decimate a generation of BJP leaders that has nursed ambitions for decades. Needing to fully use the little time that is left until the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Modi may well have already kicked off his campaign. His speechifying is only likely to increase.<\/p>\n

But Modi is hampered not only by the paucity of time but also the messaging. His central pitch foregrounded in his four speeches during 6-9 April \u2014 in Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Kolkata \u2014 is this: I have run a flawless administration in Gujarat for 11-plus years. I have made everything incredibly better there since I became chief minister in 2001. Look at my initiatives across government, business and the social sector. The growth in Gujarat is unparalleled. The change is revolutionary because my ideas are. I\u2019m modern and progressive and, importantly, an outlier who isn\u2019t driven by political gamesmanship. Gujarat is a template for the nation. Ergo, I should be prime minister.<\/p>\n

Not since VP Singh in 1987-89 has a politician (barring Advani in 2009) so categorically pitched himself as a front-runner. But Singh got a solid two-plus years for his campaign. And that dream run was gifted on a platter as then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi sank deeper and deeper in popular perception over his alleged role in the bribes a Swedish arms company, Bofors, paid to secure a sale to the Indian Army. By the time the 1989 Lok Sabha election arrived, Singh\u2019s aura was such that nearly the entire non-Congress Opposition across India, including stalwarts such as NT Rama Rao from Andhra Pradesh, had banded behind Singh as he battled Gandhi\u2019s Goliath.<\/p>\n

It helped enormously that Singh\u2019s image in a decade-long political career in high office had been spotless: seemingly incorruptible, he had twice resigned on principle. As finance minister under Gandhi, he had arrested mighty industrialists who allegedly evaded taxes. When shunted to the defence ministry, Singh had begun snooping around for likely corruption. To this day, Singh remains the only prime minister given support contemporaneously by both the Hindu Right and the ideological Left.<\/p>\n

But Modi has none of the luck and the circumstances that favoured Singh a quarter century ago. It hardly bears repetition that Modi\u2019s candidature has divided the Indian society on sectarian lines with India\u2019s nearly 180 million Muslims fearful of his chances. The killing of some 2,000 Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat on his watch as chief minister is still unresolved, legally, emotionally and politically. In the Muslim mind, Modi either directly connived with that massacre or held back the police to let zealots linked to the Hindu supremacist RSS, to which Modi has belonged for decades, kill Muslims. If this was only about the Muslim vote for the BJP, it would not worry Modi. In fact, he would likely cultivate that image \u2014 of The One Who Put Down The Muslims \u2014 that helped him win the 2002 and the 2007 Gujarat Assembly polls. But, the BJP is unlikely to fetch 272 Lok Sabha seats, a simple majority, by itself and would need other anti- Congress parties.<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s Toxic stock vis-\u00e1-vis the Muslims has made him a pariah with potential allies such as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati. The four potentially can offer anything between 60- 90 seats to the next coalition government, but none of them can accept Modi as prime minister. The reason is that each owes his or her success to a solid Muslim backing, and they would not want 2014 to be the last election they win. The only parties that won\u2019t mind backing Modi as prime minister would be the Akali Dal in Punjab and the Shiv Sena from Maharashtra, and, perhaps, either of the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu. Add to that a smattering of independents, and Modi could still fall short by 30-odd seats in his quest.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to the content of Modi\u2019s four speeches this week, three of which were made before captains of industry, their wives and other movers and shakers. Pontiff, pedagogic and preacher in parts, Modi\u2019s speeches kept miles away from subjects that have traditionally been the BJP\u2019s staple: he made no reference to anti-India terrorism bred in Pakistan or threats to India\u2019s internal security. Surprisingly, Modi even sidestepped the string of corruption scandals that have engulfed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh\u2019s government over the past two years, including the alleged siphoning of hundreds of billions of dollars in the sale of coal mines and telecom licences. Modi made no reference to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, neither for her being an Italian by birth, which once the BJP said disqualified her to lead India, nor to her overlordship over Prime Minister Singh. Any time Modi mentioned the prime minister, it was only to express exasperation over an alleged policy paralysis in New Delhi that delays decision-making. Modi\u2019s only message: India needs good governance and I alone can give it.<\/p>\n

Indeed, for sheer breadth and variety, the sweep of Modi\u2019s speeches given since the weekend must be unmatched by any political speeches in recent decades, save perhaps the prime ministerial invocations from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day. Look at the subjects Modi spoke of: female infanticide and foeticide; women empowerment, including through right to property, skill development, vocational training; business acumen of Indians; financial grants for villages; tribal economic structures; cooperative dairy farming; solar energy; tourism on an upswing in his state; Centre-state relations (by referring to two panel reports three decades apart); power companies that cut back losses and turned a profit; cultivable agricultural land that shot up by nearly two million hectares; industrial planning and development; purchasing power; soil health; micro-irrigation; agricultural technological upgrade; grain policy; cotton exports; cattle camps that eradicated diseases; value-addition chains such as warehouses and cold storages; and even a muscular foreign policy for South Asia!<\/p>\n

Modi said what his captive audiences loved to hear. In Kolkata, before chambers of commerce, and in New Delhi, at a speech organised by Network 18, a media company, Modi held forth on how he had cast his lot for small government \u2014 though not by cutting down the size of bureaucracy (not only do clerks and their families vote, they also supervise elections). Although, within minutes, he contradicted himself by suggesting his government had indeed sacked workers from municipalities who, he quickly insisted, had found jobs in the private sector.<\/p>\n

It was instructional that Modi, as much a carrier of neocon bromides as a Hindutva poster boy, struggled to dodge a direct question on the need for \u201clabour reforms\u201d, an industry euphemism for hire-and-fire, that the moderator, Raghav Bahl, put to him. When Bahl said, without a touch of irony, that India was a \u201cright of centre society\u201d and told Modi that government was intruding into all public life inhibiting it sorely, Modi said, \u201cIt isn\u2019t as bad as you make it sound.\u201d Who would have imagined there could be someone to Modi\u2019s right too?<\/p>\n

Of course, in his speeches Modi has not needed to pander to Hindu sectarianism for those credentials are already strongly established. He skipped any reference to Muslims and other minorities. Ditto for the divisive Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi campaign in Ayodha. (By contrast, Advani, who is struggling to stay politically relevant, revived the long dormant topic by telling the party faithful in Delhi he was proud of his role in the movement that ended with Hindu zealots razing the mosque in 1992.) But even Modi could not help slip in, perhaps subconsciously, an oblique reference to the RSS\u2019 revisionist history of India: before the FICCI ladies in New Delhi and with the industrialists in Kolkata, he mentioned \u201c1,200 years of servitude (ghulami)\u201d, no doubt referring to the period of Muslim rule over parts of India since the late 11th century which secular historians have always held as indigenous governments but which right-wing Hindu outfits have always projected as alien rulers. Similarly, Modi played to the wider Hindu gallery by referencing to Mother India and Swami Vivekananda.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Modi\u2019s speeches were full of over-simplifications and not a few contradictions. While he indicted the culture of centralisation that he said pervades governance across the country and stressed repeatedly the need for a devolution of powers and decentralisation, he let out that when industrialists come to his state to buy land to set up industry, he counsels them himself on how to approach the farmer whose lands they eye. \u201cDon\u2019t go meet the farmer in a big car,\u201d Modi said he tells the industrialists. \u201cDon\u2019t wear a coat and pants.\u201d Surely he can trust his officers to do such counselling?<\/p>\n

Certainly, it would seem Modi is fully convinced of his manifest destiny as his party\u2019s top candidate for the prime minister\u2019s job. In none of his speeches he made any reference to Advani, and spoke only thrice of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the only prime minister from the BJP. (Although Modi, apparently carried away, referred to the \u201ceight-to-nine years\u201d of Vajpayee\u2019s rule. Vajpayee was PM for six years until 2004.) Neither in New Delhi and nor in Kolkata did he refer to the newly installed party president, Rajnath Singh, who only last month inducted Modi into the party\u2019s top decision- making body, its parliamentary board.<\/p>\n

ajit@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Narendra Modi has launched an unannounced bid to be India\u2019s next PM. Ajit Sahi explains why his hard sell in speeches this week hides the fact of a tough climb up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":119544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[481],"tags":[6854,8626,8906,453,593,2683,1005,2667,262,316,2684,8907,1681,7597],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}