New Book On Modi Free Of Usual Adulations And Exaggerations

The Architect of the New BJP. Ajay Singh. Penguin ebury Press. 2024. Pages 288. Price Rs 412.

1. What is wrong with me?

2. What is wrong with the world?

These are two questions that we grapple mostly with in life in various forms. The serious self-improvement folks, say like Rahul Dravid, focus disproportionately on #1.

There is a bunch of people that are obsessed mostly with #2. Many left-liberals that are gobsmacked every few months by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) victories in elections in various states belong to this category (Gotcha!). Problems always seem to be external.

Left-liberals seem to have a hive-mind. Because of information echo-chambers, and cultish behaviour of friends, it is increasingly becoming difficult for them to weigh opposing points-of-view with gravitas. Pursuit of truth that matches with what they see in the world as lived reality has become 'tollsome'. Therefore, knowledge as a via media to soothe the soul, has perhaps become hard to access for them.

To fellow citizens of such persuasion (and others too), I recommend the book, The Architect of the New BJP, on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is written in a simple and gentle tone by Ajay Singh, an old-school journalist. It is shorn of the panegyrics and exaggerations that have come to characterise most of the recent books on the Prime Minister.

K Annamalai, president of the BJP's Tamil Nadu unit, released the Tamil version of the book. The translation into Tamil has been done by Rangachari.

Annamalai said, "Thiru Ajay Singh avl, who has observed our beloved PM Thiru Narendra Modi avl from proximity for about 27 years from 1995 to 2022, has aesthetically enunciated unknown dimensions of our Hon PM through this book."

Personal lessons I took from the book can be summarised as follows:

1. Life time of doing one thing, constant learning and becoming better

2. Extraordinary work ethic and self-discipline

3. Importance of training in organisations

4. Being a symbol of aspirations

5. God is in the details

6. Continuous expansion of stakeholders — excluded communities, women etc,

7. Meticulous record-keeping

8. Saturation in communication with preacher type repetition

9. Thinking and working at the level of society. Keeping it real. Understanding that politics is just a layer above society.

10. Embrace great complexity. Be steady.

11. Never panic, fight without fear

The last part of the book has some amazing insights on political organisations. My top three quotes from the book are as follows:

— "Party with a strong ideological foundation is likely to depend more on cadres, for the sake of ideological purity. A party with only vaguely defined ideologies and more attuned to a set of broad-based values would prefer to interact with the masses".

— "If the Congress system was conceived by a Western-educated elite and the Communist system was largely imported from the USSR, the BJP was the sole contender for the claim of a wholly Indian, home-grown way of party-building".

— "The leader has three key functions. He is, first, the compromiser of factional disputes. Second, he is the source of prestige to the members of the party. And, third, he is an absolute source for the articulation of values."

Lessons from this book are based on the practical success of a great leader. Much of it is happening before our very eyes. Hence, it makes the lessons easy to assimilate and reinforce. As much as it is a political book, it is a book in leadership and management.

Irrespective of whether one is a fan of Prime Minister Modi or not, one should read it at least for selfish reasons. Everyone can attempt to become better versions of themselves by asking that harsh question — "What is wrong with me?"