General

The Myth of ‘Modi Magic’

February 22, 2015

“Don’t confuse confidence with arrogance. Arrogance is being full of yourself, feeling you’re always right, and believing your accomplishments or abilities make you better than other people. People often believe arrogance is excessive confidence, but it is really a lack of confidence. Arrogant people are insecure, and often repel others. Truly confident people feel good about themselves and attract others to them”.

                                                                                      Christie Hartman

Foreword

This is my first post on contemporary Indian politics. I am not sure how the reader would take or understand the views expressed herein. Let me, therefore, make it clear that I am neither for or against any politician or political party.  This is because I do not believe that as long as India  remains a Constitutional Democracy, no government, irrespective of their political and economic ideologies, would be able to act in an arbitrary manner to dilute India’s democratic and secular values or to the detriment of the larger and long-term interests of its citizens.  The information I present  and the views I articulate herein are based on my  understanding gathered mostly from the media. I have no personal agenda in writing this article except that of sharing views. Also, I have tried to be objective in my opinions although I leave it to the reader to judge.  I request the reader to read this post with an open mind. All opposing and differing views are welcome.

Introduction

The political dynamics of India changed in May 2014 when Sri Narendra Modi became the nation’s Prime Minister after he won the Parliament elections for BJP with a thumping majority. The Parliament election verdict was a slap on the face of the UPA-II regime that had become untenable in the wake of the almost unending procession of scams and scandals it produced. The Parliament elections saw the comprehensive rejection of the Indian National Congress by the Indian electorate. In just eight months thereafter, the situation of Indian politics apparently shifted once again. In February 2015, the Delhi voters used the power of their ballot to jolt the Modi monolith. The verdict of the Delhi election seems to have  suddenly exposed the assumed invincibility of  the ‘Modi Magic’.

The message that comes through the Delhi election results is that the Indian voter, although mostly poor and illiterate, would not always fall for rhetoric and gimmickry. The verdict makes it clear that the electorate would eventually put its foot down to make it clear to those attempting to win polls on the basis of personality cult and communal politics  that ‘enough is enough’.

It might be puerile to believe that the Delhi defeat has sounded the death knell of the Modi charm. It also looks foolhardy to expect that the AAP would emerge as a serious national challenge to BJP in the near future. Yet, there are signals that cannot be overlooked by any political party. In the May 2014 Parliament elections, BJP had led in sixty out of the seventy Assembly segments in Delhi. But the party ended up with just three seats in the February 2015 Assembly elections. At the same time, AAP that had a majority only in ten Assembly segments May 2014 virtually swept the February 2015 Assembly elections winning 67 seats.

The scales of the rise of AAP and the fall of the BJP have surprised all.  The question is what changed with the Delhi electorate between May 2014 and February 2015 that they should so emphatically decide against BJP. This post is an attempt to briefly examine this question.

Parliament Elections 2014

“Veni, vidi, vici” – I Came, I Saw, I Conquered. These words attributed to Julius Caesar aptly sum up the overwhelming success of BJP lead by its Prime Ministerial candidate Sri Narendra Modi in the May-2014 Parliament elections. For the first time after 1984 when the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Sri Rajiv Gandhi secured an absolute majority in the Parliament for his party, the BJP came out with a comfortable majority on its own. For the first time the people of India gave BJP a mandate to wield power without being constrained by the pressures of coalition politics. It was clear as day light that it was the personal victory of the party mascot Sri Narendra Modi.

Sri Modi had much to thank the UPA-II regime under Dr Manmohan Singh for his spectacular triumph. Perhaps, the last three years of the UPA dispensation would be remembered as the most dreadful period of Indian democracy since 1991. The series of scandals and allegations of mega frauds kept hitting the regime to shake it at regular intervals. The ‘Radia’ tapes exposed how the industry-politician-bureaucrat nexus (Crony Capitalism) was bleeding the nation white. The mega swindles involving mindboggling numbers appalled the nation. The fear of corruption charges made decision makers apprehensive.  Authorities dragged their feet and sat on files. After ten long years, the nation had a bellyful of the UPA rule. Rigor mortis was setting in on an already dead government.  The settings were perfect for the entry of Sri Modi into the national political arena. And he entered with all guns blazing. 

The Indian voters were mesmerized by the ‘Modi Magic’.  He presented himself as a 21st century Messiah, who would deliver the nation from the stranglehold of what he described as the sixty-five long years of corruption and dynastic rule of non-development. He exuded profuse personal charm and spoke glibly. He was ruthless in his attack on the Congress Party and its legacy. He mercilessly tore into the UPA dispensation mostly targeting the Ma-Beta(Mother-Son) duo. He ridiculed Dr Manmohan Singh throwing all restraints into the wind and in total disregard of his age and his acclaim as an economist respected across the world who brought the nation back from the brinks of economic disaster in 1991. Against a soft-spoken and media shy Dr Manmohan Singh, Modiji emerged as a media darling and development icon. People were enthralled by his sound and fury. Some of his statements like development needing a ruler with a 56-inch chest size made many wince. But the electorate happily gobbled up his extravagant assurances and enticing slogans like, ‘Congress free India’ (Congress Mukt Bharat), ‘Together with all, the Progress of all’ (Subke Saath Sub Ke Vikaas) and ‘Good days are on its way’ (Acche Din Aane Waale Hain).

The Indian voters gave Sri Modi a resounding thumps up at the hustings. Psephologists may argue that BJP got only just over thirty per cent of the votes polled. They may do their hair splitting until the cows come home. But the simple fact remained that BJP had won the 2014 Parliament elections with an absolute majority for a single party for the first time in the last 30 years. It had won 282 out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. The electorate trusted Sri Modi to usher in the good days for him.  The winning streak of BJP continued in the Assembly elections that followed in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir. It appeared that BJP’s juggernaut was unstoppable, although the mandates in the state elections were much less convincing in comparison to the Parliament elections. Yet, hardly anyone had any serious doubts about the power of the ‘Modi Magic’ to win elections for BJP. The media went to town proclaiming that the Modi-Shah combination was simply invincible. But the Delhi Assembly election seems to have exploded several such myths. 

Delhi Assembly Elections 2015

With 32 seats under its belt, BJP had the highest number of seats in the seventy-member Delhi Assembly after the 2013 elections.  The AAP had come a close second with 28 seats. AAP had formed the government with the support of the eight MLAs of the Congress Party. But the oversized ego of Sri Arvind Kejrwal, the AAP Chief Minister, would not be contained within the borders of the tiny State of Delhi.  After ruling Delhi for 49 days, he quit office and left for Varanasi to fight Sri Modi, leaving his party comrades, admirers and the citizens of Delhi in the lurch. At Varanasi he came to terms with the reality that while it was easy to floor a three time Chief Minister groaning under the burden of fifteen years of anti-incumbency, defeating Mr Modi who then stood blazing in the national firmament as the symbol of India’s resurgence was an altogether different kettle of fish. Having bitten dust at Varanasi, and realizing that he still had a long way to go before he could eye the chair of India’s Prime Minister, he returned to Delhi; a sober and wiser man. 

In the Parliament elections held in May 2014, BJP had swept Delhi, bagging all the seven seats on offer.  It has secured a clear majority in sixty assembly seats. AAP did not win a single Parliament seat. It had an edge in just 10 Assembly segments. In hindsight, that was the right moment for BJP to go in for the Delhi Assembly poll. But the election did not take place. That gave Mr Kejriwal the time he badly needed to regroup and rearm. He and his volunteer teams fanned out in earnest to convince the Delhi electorate that in spite of their past follies, the AAP and its leader Mr Kejriwal remained the best choice before them. The image makeover from that of a ‘Bhagoda’ (Fleer) Chief Minister to a Chief Minister committed to stick with his mandate for five years was painful. The slogan ‘Paanch Saal Kejriwal’ (Kejriwal for the next five years) and the flash mobs that danced to its tune were effectively used to calm the fears of the Delhi electorate. They understood that with the Congress Party having been reduced to the level of an ‘also ran’ in the Delhi elections, their choice was between BJP and AAP. They also realized that Delhi could not afford another hung assembly.

The Delhi campaign had started as a Modi-Kejriwal duel. The media described the Delhi election fight as the battle between David (the meek shepherd boy) and Goliath (the giant warrior) (Bible). But long before, BJP could sense that there was no manifest ‘Modi Wave’ on the ground. The party realized that a defeat in the hands of a perceived nonentity like Kejriwal would be suicidal for the all-conquering image of Sri Modi. The party had to prevent a direct Modi-Kejriwal combat. So BJP decided to bring in Ms Kiran Bedi, a former IPS officer, in to Delhi as the Chief Ministerial candidate of BJP. Many thought it a masterstroke to pit comrades of the same (Anna Hazare) feather against each other to put the voter into a dilemma. She had the image and glamour of tough a cop (mostly exaggerated). BJP assumed that she would marvel the masses and capture Delhi for them. 

Delhi election was a prestige battle for the BJP and Sri Modi. The ‘Modi Magic’ was on test at the seat of his official power. The result of the Delhi polls was expected to have a bearing on national politics. It was a desperate attempt for BJP and Mr Modi to win at any cost. Turncoats from AAP and Congress were given tickets to contest (and all of them lost badly). Last minute attempts were made to cast aspersion on AAP funding using a breakaway outfit of AAP. The Prime Minister had addressed no less than five ‘mega’ election rallies in Delhi. The entire Union Cabinet along with 120 Members of Parliament were camping at Delhi. Added to that was support from the cadres of RSS, VHP etc. The whole city was plastered with huge images of the Prime Minister’s mug grinning from ear to ear. The media was flooded with promotional blitzkrieg. It was a spectre of overkill. Although the real size of the envelope would never be known, BJP was lavish in its campaign-spending in Delhi. But, as the nursery rhyme goes, ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put humpty-dumpty together…’.

The Delhi election results were declared on 10 Feb 2015.  It simply stunned both the winners and losers (and also the pollsters) – the winners by the incredibility of their mammoth victory and the losers by the shock of their massive crash. BJP could pick up just three seats leaving the remaining sixty-seven seats to the AAP. Of course, Congress party came a cropper with zero seats – the only news that surprised none.  Of course, as in the case of Parliament elections, analysts (and BJP) can say that BJP has not lost their vote base in comparison with 2013 Assembly elections. That is fine. None is challenging. The only problem is that does not change the reality that the party could muster just three seats out of the total seventy.

BJP’s Delhi Debacle

The question as already mentioned is this. ‘What changed for the Delhi electorate between May 2014 and February 2015 that it would vote overwhelmingly in favour of Sri Modi in May 2014 and would still more emphatically vote to decimate BJP in February 2015’? Many factors contributed to the fall of the BJP in Delhi elections. But we limit our focus here on just three – The Chief Ministerial Candidate, the Union Government and the Prime Minister. 

 The Chief Ministerial Candidate of BJP

While there are arguments for and against the view that Ms Bedi was the BJP nemesis in the Delhi elections, there can be no dispute in hindsight that Ms Bedi was not the right choice as a Chief Ministerial candidate for Delhi. Someone who was not even a party member was parachuted into Delhi as Chief Ministerial candidate. It could not have gone down well with the people who had been working for the party for decades. For the Delhi citizens suffocating under the insensitive and corrupt raj of the Delhi Police, a Chief Minister with Police tag was not a very embraceable figure. The lady who had always played the role of a boss might have found it difficult to mix  easily with ordinary party functionaries.  Her publicity in-charge threatened to resign. Perhaps like Dr Manmohan Singh, Ms Bedi was more a professional than a politician.  She was a reasonably good debater frequently seen on the national TV (defending Sri Modi and BJP). Yet when the other Chief Ministerial candidates challenged her for an open debate on the TV, she ran away muttering some fig leaf of an excuse. Her public interactions did not look spontaneous. And her lack of nicety in dealing with the media was conspicuous. Almost every time she opened her mouth, she invariably put her foot into it making habitually noisy TV anchors like Arnab Goswamy of Times Now channel to scream, ‘Here is yet another blooper from the BJP CM candidate!”. Then she went silent in between purportedly for ‘voice rest’.  As a final drama, she tried tears, which did not cut much ice with the Delhi voters (Modiji was, perhaps, a far better performer in sob shows).  The Delhi electorate thought Mr Kejriwal a less intimidating and more down to earth person and decided to vote for his party. 

The Union Government

BJP came to power on the strength of an overdose of promises. People were told that there was no development during the last sixty five years and the rolling out of the mythical ‘Gujarat Model’ of development was going to flood the country overnight with milk and honey.  People were told that the Modi government would bring back the black money hoarded in Swiss Bank accounts within hundred days of assuming power. They were promised that the money so brought back would be put into the savings account of the Indian citizen at fifteen lakh rupees per account. Modiji had promised that there would be no Aadhaar or Direct Benefit Transfer Schemes… Sensible people could easily understand that those promises were impossible to be implemented even for a Prime Minister boastful his 56 inch chest size. (Incidentally, does Sri Modi really have a fifty-six inch chest sir? Media say that he was boastful even it that!).  But a huge proportion on the Indian electorate had believed the hypes to put their faith in the tall promises. After eight long months, they have discovered to their utter dismay that nothing had changed for them. The voter had already become wiser by the time he went to cast his vote  in the Delhi Assembly elections.

While admitting that eight months is too short a period for evaluating the performance of a new government, the portents seem to be disturbing for the majority of the people of this country. The government looks too cosy with the big corporates. Wherever the Prime Minister went, the corporate honchos were in full attendance. The nation saw an industrial house personally close to the Prime Minister signing a coalmine agreement in Australia in his presence with the funding for it promised by one of India’s leading nationalized banks. The government has issued an ordinance to amend the Land acquisition Act to facilitate the taking over of the land of the poor farmers for setting up industries. The original bill was debated for long to become law with the support of the BJP, which was then in opposition. The bill mandated certain extent of  land owner consent and social impact studies before acquisition could take place. The amendment waters down these provisions and blocks even recourse to legal remedies for the landowners so that the government can take away the land of Indian farmers and give it to the private industrial houses under the pretext of industrial growth. The government wants to cut down on subsidies and reduce allocation to poverty alleviation programs. The BJP which had vehemently derided the India-US nuclear while in opposition alleging that it was a sellout of national interests now says the deal is the best thing for India.

Perhaps, this attitude of ‘let the rich become richer and poor go to hell’ would not be sustainable for long in a predominantly poor country like India. The poor were looking forward for his Achhe Din sooner than later but was disenchanted to see them side-lined in the priorities of the government. The apparent contempt of the people in power for the poor seemed to have been articulated in no uncertain terms by the BJP President, when he reportedly told his audience in the course of his Delhi election campaign that the poor would vote for the AAP because they hoped to get freebies from the government. It spoke volumes on where the heart of the regime lies. The Delhi voter seemed to have spoken through their ballots to make it clear that they would not take such arrogance and insensitivity of the rulers, lying down.  (Incidentally in a TV debate on the coming budget (NDTV) the Indian industrial barons were heard saying that they are now faced with the worst crisis in the last ten years and that they were far better placed even during the peak of the global economic meltdown, 2008. So much for Make in India). (You may read my post on Global Financial System Crisis – 2008 here)

The Prime Minister

Modiji did not enter the national political arena with the image of the run of the mill politician we have so far seen in Independent India. His image has been that of a high voltage and massively masculine fashion icon. His outfits and appearances are meant to amaze and bewilder. I honestly doubt whether any other politician today would deck out himself with the kind of variety he wears. I wonder about the size and mix of his wardrobe. There certainly must be a battery of highly creative fashion designers working behind the scenes to ensure that the Prime Minister is power-dressed and uniquely packaged for every occasion.  I have nothing against the Prime Minister of my country immaculately tailored. (In fact, I have fallen for the ‘Modi Kurta’ and have bought a couple of it for my own use).  The only difficulty is that while he wears a suit costing a million with his name embroidered all over it in gold threads for a few hours’ use*, he also wants us to  believe that he was a poor tea vendor (chaiwala) who easily identifies with the poor of India. He said in an election rally that those who ruled India “don’t know what poverty is all about, but I know it”. I do not know how many people in India can afford the designer attire he wears and changes by the hour. 

Modiji has been on a roll in the international arena since his swearing in as the Prime Minister of India. Referring to the rousing reception Modiji received at New York’s Madison square, the former Chairman of White House Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Kreuger said, “He is being treated as a Rock Star!” At Sydney, Australia, and elsewhere the welcome accorded to Modiji was no less spectacular. Media say that the diaspora is drooling (and loosening  their purse strings) because they believe that Mr Modi as Prime Minister has boosted the image of India across the globe so much that it is only now that they feel proud of being Indians. Amen.

The world may never know the size of the sums spent on making our Prime Minister a Rock Star.  We are being told that they were all private arrangements.  The moot question is, ‘How has the common man of this country benefited from these stage managed high decibel national and international mega shows’. In an article appearing in the ‘The Hindu’ daily on 20 Feb 2015, Shiv Viswanathan, Professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, wrote, “Mr Modi looks like a designer creation, a soldier in perpetual uniform…He is a project who is no longer a person…He may not have transformed the nation in six months but has transformed the nation’s perception of him…Today, he is a designer commodity.  He is compulsorily fashionable. To talk of him as a chaiwala is no longer tenable. His chai is sipped in board rooms; it smells of power and privilege”.  The Delhi voter opened his eyes and discovered that this was not the chaiwala to whom they had voted in May 2014.  

And finally, the Delhi voter also saw how even the official visit of the US Presidential  as the Chief Guest of our Republic Day celebrations was touted to catch vote in Delhi. Most of the rather crude displays of bonhomie between the two leaders was sheer PR theatrics for the TV cameras. (I desist from getting into details for fear of being misunderstood). But the reality remains that the US do not play comradery because they are head over heels in love with India or its political leadership.  The US have its own axes of political and economic interests to  grind.  India is country with an upwardly mobile population of 1.25 billion.  The Indian market is huge in comparison to the markets in any other country in the world. India is also an emerging Military and Space power (in spite of sixty five long years of alleged non-development!) US have its strategic and economic interests to serve in being friendly with  India. Remember that in the aftermath of the announcement of the so called ‘breakthrough’ in the nuclear deal that remained stuck for the last five years, the stock prices of the nuclear power equipment manufacturing companies in the US reportedly vaulted by 20%. The US companies believe that by diluting the liability of the equipment suppliers in the event of nuclear disasters, they would be in a position to sell even their unsafe nuclear plants to India and get away with it.  Thus President Obama was not hugging our Prime Minister because he loved the music of our Vedic Chants.  He hugs  because, ‘the only music the Americans love is the ringing of their cash registers!’

May be, Delhi has shown that  politics of hypocrisy and carefully crafted personality cults may not have a very long life. As the media commented, with Mr Modi, it has always been ‘I’. Vote for me and I will deliver you the paradise. With Mr Kejriwal, it was ‘We’ this time around. Vote for AAP and we will together build an equitable and corruption free Delhi. May be, the people of Delhi found the latter more appealing and convincing. 

Conclusion

I was happy when Sri Modi and his party won the Parliament elections in May 2014. The UPA had messed up things.  The regime was too indecisive and exasperatingly slovenly as it dragged itself listlessly towards its self-annihilating end. (This is not to suggest that the UPA regime as a whole was an utter failure. Much of what Sri Modi flaunts to the world today have come to exist because of the UPA and Congress led regimes.) The UPA defeat looked a good riddance.  And Modiji was the symbol of the hope of Indian aspirations. And there was no reason to doubt his ability to deliver. As the rest of India, I too looked forward to the ‘Achhe Din’

But something drastically changed for the Delhi voters between May 2014 and February 2015 that caused the Modi Magic to wane.  I believe that the critical things that changed for the Delhi voter included  the image of the government that promised ‘subke saath sab ke vikaas’ changing to that of a government that was openly biased towards big business to the detriment of the rest. What changed for the Delhi voter was also the image of Sri Modi as a development icon to a slogan coining and jet-setting ‘rock star’ with designer obsessions.  May be, the Delhi verdict was the reaction of an electorate shocked and saddened by the language of the ‘Sadhwis’ and ‘Maharajs’. May be, it was a message meant to break the studied silence of the Prime Minister in the face of the blatant attempts at religious polarization and the growing attacks against religious institutions. 

May be, the Delhi vote against BJP was a vote in favour of Gandhiji and a vote against his assassin. Among others, it was also, perhaps the voice of the common man seeking delivery on the Parliament election promises. The Delhite perhaps wished to say, ‘We had enough of hyperbole.  We need to see Achhe Din for all and not  just for the big corporates and the Gujarat Police officers accused of extra-judicial killing coming out of imprisonment to be reinstated into their official chairs’. 

Let me be honest to admit that I was also happy with the Delhi Assembly election outcome, that decimated the BJP and eroded the sheen of the Modi Magic. I believe that the crushing defeat would help the party and its leader not to take voters for granted.   I believed that it would be a reminder to all politicians that, “a politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people’s lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.”  (Paul Wellstone).  

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*When the embarrassment of the monogrammed suit refused to die down, a well-tailored fable was presented on the national TV the other day in the form a person claiming that he had gifted the dress to the Prime Minister. (I believe that our Prime Minister is a Public Servant. If so, I wonder whether a Public Servant is entitled to accept a gift worth a million rupees from a private Indian citizen). The drama did not end with it. The suit then went under the auctioneer’s hammer. A diamond merchant from Surat bought it for forty three million odd Indian rupees. Of course, the proceeds would go to some noble public purpose. Everything has been so creatively and thoughtfully engineered to enhance the grace and greatness of the leader. The suit would soon be forgotten. The only problem may be that the image of India’s Prime Minister as a ‘poor’ politician who chose to wear an imported suit worth a million rupees with his own name screaming from its golden pinstripes might not be so easily forgotten. 

 

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