The Burden Of Being Narendra Modi

Reforms and the prime minister’s popularity are irrevocably joined

Prime Minister Narendra Modi would face greater contentions and obstacles in bringing reforms than his two illustrious reformist predecessors, P. V. Narasimha Rao and A. B. Vajpayee. This especially should be true for Modi’s first term and less so should he get a conjectured second. Self-evident as all this may seem, they compel study and understanding of the underlying dynamic of two decades largely of wasteful politics to prevent repetition. But should Narendra Modi succeed past the trials and tribulations he would lay the foundations for growth and development from where there can be no regression. India is at a crossroads and much is contingent on where Prime Minister Modi heads it.

Undeniably and at base Narasimha Rao was a reluctant reformer. Schooled in socialistic policies of the Indian National Congress and used to the idea of a paternalistic state, he preferred, inter alia, the certainties of the Cold War when he rose to power. Accidentally acceding to the prime ministry upon Rajiv Gandhi’s death, the urgency and implications of a transformed world rudely thrust upon his consciousness. Years of profligate living, socialism and license raj had landed the country in a state of near bankruptcy which made structural economic reforms imperative and inescapable. Needing a persuasive face to engage the West and its financial institutions for safe passage out of the self-inflicted mess, Narasimha Rao turned to I. G. Patel who recommended Manmohan Singh for the finance ministry. The rest of that course of recent history is well familiar to bear iteration.

Except to re-emphasize that Narasimha Rao was reluctant to reform while Modi displays no hesitation of similar nature and magnitude. This is not to blame Narasimha Rao overly and especially because he was a product of an epoch. Anyone else in his position would have lost nerve when the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union threw India adrift in a deeply uncertain and ideologically unmoored world whose implications immediately and directly were felt in resurgent militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab. When it looked for a brief period that the Left ultranationalists would prevail against Boris Yeltsin in the violent unrest of 1993 in de-Sovietized Moscow, Narasimha Rao blundered and backed them, only to recant when the overthrow bid shortly failed. When one year later the Indian National Congress lost the Andhra Pradesh assembly elections, Narasimha Rao proved more decisive and adamant to pull back from reforms, lamenting that they were unsaleable to the electorate. He was trying to return to the old certitudes where none existed. At the very minimum he had illusory cushions of certainties; Narendra Modi is entirely bereft of them.

The important difference between Modi and Narasimha Rao exists in one other respect. Narasimha Rao carried no burden of expectation. He was considered the most innocuous and spent of the three leading contenders for prime ministry after Rajiv’s assassination, the two others being wily mass politicians Arjun Singh and Sharad Pawar, who had been gung-ho chief ministers in their time. Horrified by the assassination, Sonia Gandhi generally left it to party wisdom to choose the prime minister. Narasimha Rao seemed the most harmless like Manmohan Singh in the avatar of prime minister more than a decade later. On the other hand the burden of expectation harshly has weighed on Narendra Modi since at least the middle of the ten disastrous years of United Progressive Alliance rule. The forces that want him to fail are poised in almost fraught balance against the popular sentiment that sees growth and development in his success and darkness without.

The burden of expectation was diminished too for A. B. Vajpayee relative to Narendra Modi and he had the support of the political establishment in his personal success which matches in opposite intensity in regard to the incumbent prime minister. This is not the place to go into the reasons for this state of affairs but it made it comparatively easier for Vajpayee to push reforms as opposed to the daily hurdles faced by Prime Minister Modi. To be sure Vajpayee had his own quota of challenges. Chiefly he was a coalition prime minister with all the associated perils; he had to reach a personal milestone of completing a full term in office as a non-Congress PM. Also, he had indifferent relations with his own party peers and colleagues which had the capacity to undermine his prime ministry.

Nevertheless he did not face the implacable opposition to his rule that Narendra Modi unceasingly confronts. In his situation it was easier for Vajpayee to push reforms. But just as Narasimha Rao did not wholly or even in major proportion represent the Indian National Congress, Vajpayee did not represent the Bharatiya Janata Party, and in his case there was the huge intervening layer loyal to L. K. Advani. So failure to Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee in reforms and other realms did not carry the same connotation and consequences as presently they do to Narendra Modi, the mascot of the ruling party. The Bharatiya Janata Party was voted to power because of Modi and not inversely as polite fiction stresses.

This piece of indubitable fact centres and focuses everything on Narendra Modi. What he chooses as his agenda will ride secure or fall in direct relation to personal success and failure. Since he has chosen to concentrate on reforms, growth and development, these have become the bones of contention to a degree unseen in the terms of Narasimha Rao or Vajpayee. An agenda that indisputably would take the country ahead has become anathema to the political opposition. In that sense it has become make-or-break for reforms.

But because Narendra Modi is a mass politician in a manner Vajpayee and Narasimha Rao were not, he should be able to overcome political opposition in ways unavailable to them. Narendra Modi’s biggest power base is the people. If he should make time to replicate even a quarter number of his election rallies lead with the new theme of reforms for all, he would put the discredited opposition to flight. Politicians in Lutyen’s Delhi live in a bubble where Narendra Modi does not. He has access to independent analysis and opinion and shows an eager willingness to act on their judicious advice. Validly and sensibly thus he has moderated reforms in the grey zone of land acquisition to bring farmers to his side in the long struggle to propel India out of backwardness and poverty. Harder it may be for him than any of his predecessor prime ministers; but he combines political will and stamina for the long haul in unprecedented measure. If anyone can turn around India, it is he.