For the first time in the past 30 years, voters brought in a Government with a complete majority. The 2014 lok Sabha Election reset many political equations that had until recently seemed to be cast in stone, and it has done so with such a large flourish that the country’s political landscape has acquired a new hue. Never before, except on a couple of instances since Independence, has the change been so dramatic, so transformative
In the beginning of 2014, there was a discredited and tattered Government of Manmohan Singh. It was so discredited and in such tatters that it was eagerly waiting to be put out of its agony. People across the country were in an accommodating mood, not wanting the regime to undergo the pain any further. In mid-2014, the wish was granted, and Manmohan Singh and his band of zero-loss theorists and chaiwallah-insulters and the like were shown the door. The departure was as smooth as the movement of a vehicle on a strip of Autobahn, with the Government’s headman melting into the sidelines as meekly as he had served for 10 long years. Other members of his team scattered across the country, valiantly struggling to remain relevant and in the public eye, even if it entails mouthing inane stuff to mark their presence on prime time television.
The end of 2014 has been as different from the beginning as nightlife in Paris can be from that of Tehran. From a Government which barely stirred, there was now one which breathed loud and clear, and at times breathed fire. Instead of an ever-posturing Prime Minister who could barely keep himself erect in front of the dynasty, there was a Prime Minister who saw people in the eye; one who didn’t bow to a power-centre but was himself the power-centre. In short, finally, the Prime Minister of India looked and behaved like one.
True, the politics of 2014 was about personalities, and one person by the name of Narendra Modi had no problem with that. It was in fact the solution he and his Bharatiya Janata Party had been looking for. The tug-of-war, at first sight, seemed uneven: Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi at one end and Modi at the other. And, whenever Rahul Gandhi’s grip loosened (which happened all too often), there was Priyanka Vadra to provide the backup. Four against one, bahut na insafi hai! But the crowd loved it, and it cheered and jeered all through the contest. Those who paused to listen to the voices knew where all this was leading to. The man who was cheered the most dragged the rope to his end; the rest collapsed like heaps of rubble after an earthquake.
But 2014 was not just about electing a new Government; that would have been routine. The exercise happens once every five years (at times more than once) in a democratic India which has an insatiable appetite for electoral battles. Now the lok Sabha poll, then an Assembly election or two, and again some more Assemblies, and, then again a clutch of byelections — the ritual goes on. like in the Hindu Cycle of Universe, there is no beginning and no end here. Everything is in a state of constant flux. In mid-May though, something different happened — like the sighting of a rare owl or the discovery of a hitherto unknown mummy by Egyptologists. For the first time in the last 30 years, voters brought in a Government with a complete majority. The last time the phenomenon had occurred was in 1984 when Rajiv Gandhi, riding high on the sympathy wave generated by Indira Gandhi’s assassination, led the Congress to an unprecedented majority in Parliament. There was no assassination in 2014, but many reputations had died, and fittingly so, from Manmohan Singh’s stable. The more the casualties mounted, the stronger the BJP became.
The 2014 lok Sabha Election, therefore, was a watershed. Dismayed by prevarications, disgusted by indecisiveness, upset over pusillanimity, angered by corruption and fed up of the dual power-centre machinations, the voters kicked the Congress so hard that the party has still to find its feet. As it looked around and tried to summon the strength to wipe off the dust, it realised it had company. Just three regional parties (the Trinamool Congress, the AIADMK and the Biju Janata Dal), from the many which dot the country’s political landscape like millions of stars in a clear sky, survived the onslaught. All others, including the leftists and casteists such as the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal were lying alongside, dazzled by the lightening that had struck them. last heard, they were trying to seek solace in their numbers.
This led to the shift in the balance of power (both numerical and political) between the regional outfits and national parties. But while the BJP’s sweeping victory ensured that it gained from the relocation, the Congress lost out. It ally, the National Conference, fought the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly Elections on its own; so did another partner, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, in Jharkhand. The Nationalist Congress Party broke off before the Assembly poll and is now opposed to the Congress in Maharashtra. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK went on its own long ago, while the Trinamool Congress left the UPA fold years earlier, seeing the writing on the wall.
By contrast, the BJP turned the tables on the Shiv Sena, for long the dominant partner in Maharashtra, and its numbers ensured that it did not have to plead for support from the likes of J Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee. Interestingly, both these leaders, especially the latter, are facing the heat from a resurgent ruling part at the Centre. These are crucial developments having the potential to recast Indian politics in the coming years in a radical way.
The year 2014 became a Waterloo for the wannabes also. The Aam Aadmi Party, which showed the folly (its supporters gave it the more respectful term, ‘courage’) of contesting across the country in some 400 seats, lost its deposit in 98 per cent of constituencies it fought in. The country’s biggest aam aadmi, Arvind Kejriwal, lost to Modi by a miserably high margin from Varanasi, while its other high-profile candidates did no better elsewhere. The debacle, along with Kejriwal’s inane decision earlier in the year to quit the Delhi chief ministership, has hollowed out the party so much that it is unlikely to repeat its 2013-end high in Delhi in the coming State elections. Kejriwal claims he has learned his lesson. Unfortunately for him, so have the voters.
The 2014 lok Sabha poll reset many political equations that had until recently seemed to be cast in stone, and it has done so with such a large flourish that the country’s political landscape has acquired a new hue. Never before, except on a couple of instances since Independence, has the change been so dramatic, so transformative. The country’s second-largest party by votes is 240 seats or so behind the leader; regional parties, which called the shots in an alliance with a national party having a pan-India presence, have been cut to size; machines of governance, long rusting through non-use, abuse or misuse, have begun to move with a purpose. The nation finally has a leader, but no Opposition leader. Whether this is good or bad, take your pick, but don’t quarrel with the voters, because this is what they had wanted.
The country’s newly-emerged, overarching political profile has triggered panic and set off alarm bells in quarters besides political that had flourished in the ‘secularist’-inactive-inept regime Manmohan Singh supposedly led. They have begun to warn of ‘authoritarian’ streaks in the Prime Minister; ‘totalitarian’ regime of the BJP; ‘majoritarian’ slant in policymaking. They appear to forget that all of these fears had been raised and placed before the public in the run-up to the 2014 elections. The people had rubbished them. Yet, like an excited ferret, these worthy men and women continue to perform the weasel war dance by emitting cries of imaginary dangers looming on the horizon.
The dramatic changes in 2014 provided avenues to more than just the triumphant politicians. Not just the change in May but the expectation of that change, along with all that went wrong in the last five years of the UPA rule, worked as if in tandem to unleash on the people — both reading and TV-viewing — a slew of books which provided scintillating accounts of the Greek tragedy that the Manmohan Singh regime had become and the advent of Narendra Modi on the centre-stage. Publishers and authors should be eternally grateful. Former Coal Secretary PC Parakh’s book revealed a supine Manmohan Singh who didn’t have the courage to clean up the Coal Ministry; K Natwar Singh’s book exposed a devious-minded Sonia Gandhi; Sanjaya Baru’s book presented a spineless Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh; Vinod Rai’s book laid bare the truth on the 2G Spectrum scam. Towards the year-end, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, not a known friend of Modi’s, twisted the knife further by writing in his book on the 2014 elections that Rahul Gandhi had been a complete failure.
And this is not all; publishers and authors never had it so good. A spate of more books, this time singularly devoted on Modi, written by admirers and not-so-much of admirers lined the bookstores and were lapped up by people certain of at least one thing: That the protagonist was on to something big and, therefore, readable. If sheer business drove publishers, the prospect of instant recognition encouraged the authors to quickly shape up their products. Of course, there were no books on Rahul Gandhi; he had already been written off as a loser about whom nobody wanted to read.
Adulation apart, history, even recent, is replete with instances of how mighty Governments have fallen within a few years of their coronation, electorally and in the esteem of the people. Indira Gandhi lost it all within four years of the 1971 high; Morarji Desai ended up as a pathetic figure after a sweeping mandate in favour of his Janata Party regime in 1977; and Rajiv Gandhi frittered away the people’s massive mandate of 1984. Modi cannot and should not forget these cases. The enormous goodwill he and his Government enjoy for now can evaporate like water in the scorching sun, and before he realises it. Small-looking negative developments can have an accumulative devastating impact. Effective public relations management can only delay a catastrophe, not avoid it.
The Government has begun well with its emphasis on more governance and less Government, but that is less than half the battle won. The Prime Minister seems to be heeding the words of American economist and author Milton Friedman: “If you put the federal Government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.” The desert at least has an oasis; the state of disrepair which the UPA regime left for the BJP-led NDA to fix can hardly boast of such bright spots. That makes this Government’s task even more challenging. It also makes it interesting.
Man of the moment
You may not need Dan Brown’s Robert langdon to decode Narendra Modi’s leadership, but the exercise is becoming something of a challenge for political commentators. The black-or-white template had never served the cause in the past, though the one-dimensional image Modi’s critics had drawn up of the leader helped them in their contrived act. But now that he has been Prime Minister for six months, new facets of his leadership have emerged, and the imagists are struggling to fit them in the canvas, with a brush stroke here and a line dash there. The full picture is of course incomplete, and will remain so for a long time, or at least till the end of his tenure four-and-a-half years from now. Meanwhile, nearly everyone who has a voice has been freely using terms such as ‘effective’, ‘inspirational’, ‘transformative’, ‘redefining’ or ‘revolutionary’ to describe Modi’s leadership. Others have called his approach ‘totalitarian’ or ‘authoritarian’, even ‘dictatorial’ and ‘fascist’. But both groups will agree on one fact: Narendra Damodardas Modi epitomises India’s biggest political development of 2014.
To an extent, Modi must take the blame for the chaos he has triggered amidst political analysts. If only he had stuck to the script these people had on him, they would not be tearing their hair in frustration. They love labels, but they can’t seem to decide on one they can make stick for long enough. At times they feel they have pinned his leadership down to a terminology, but then realise hours later that he has gone ahead and done something antithetical. His taking over the complete ownership of foreign policy is seen as authoritarian and belittlement of his External Affairs Minister, but then his remarkable diplomatic breakthroughs have silenced critics who grudgingly admit to his success. Besides, the world over, strong Presidents and PMs have controlled foreign policy. The ‘global citizen’ that he was, Jawaharlal Nehru had a firm grip on foreign affairs; he remote-controlled everything including the steering of the Kashmir issue in the UN through a junior Minister, Gopalaswami Ayyangar.
Similarly, Modi’s opponents have ridiculed him as a purveyor of false dreams, but his outreach to the masses through the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan, the Jan Dhan Yojana and the Mann ki Baat radio talk demonstrated his uncanny ability to connect with the masses and make them believe he cares and can deliver. The tight leash he has maintained on his Ministers is viewed as dictatorial, but this has resulted in a level of performance-accountability unprecedented in many years.
Disoriented with what they are faced with, many analysts fall back on the staple bits of Modi’s past — all of which for them conveniently coalesces into the 2002 incident. look at that (the past), they say, to understand this (the present). And then picture the future! But, besides being an exercise of desperation, it also does nothing to address the issue at hand: Has Modi’s leadership not evolved for the better in the last decade or so, and especially so in the last six months as PMIJ And, if it has, why should there be hesitation to acknowledge the good that has come out of it — just as there must be no pulling punches if negatives emergeIJ Unconditional gushes are as unhealthy to a democracy as visceral condemnation.
True leadership, good or bad, is a complex phenomenon. The only thing worse than a bad leadership is the absence of any leadership. Modi can at least not be placed in the latter category. Thus, the only thing left to be discussed is whether his leadership has been on the whole good or bad or exemplary or disastrous. The answers to that will naturally depend on the person being the recipient of the question. His admirers will not see anything dark and his opponents will not find anything illuminating. let us then rely on academic-author Archie Brown’s excellent study of leadership in his book, The Myth of the Strong leader, published a few months ago. The irony of seeking answers in this book is that the author has done no case study of an Indian leader; he has only in passing mentioned Mahatma Gandhi as an “inspirational” leader. Even so, his analysis of what constitutes positive and malignant leadership and the many hues of such leaderships is as relevant to the Modi context as it is to the others who have received the author’s attention. We can quarrel with Brown as to how he could have failed to include fascinating leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Indira Gandhi (Modi arrived too late to catch the book’s deadline) in his study, but here is not the place to do so.
Modi has been often compared to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan because he shares their faith in the free market economy and the power of private enterprise to bring about expansive reforms in economic and social sectors. He has been placed beside them also because he is seen as similarly strong-headed. But there is another leader he may have to emulate in domestic reforms, as he goes along — Tony Blair. Brown writes that if Blair’s party disagreed with their PM’s views, it had to give way. He quotes Blair as saying, “I didn’t chose to have rows with the party; I chose to reform. But if the reform was resisted, then you couldn’t avoid the row.” Blair was a leader of conviction, and from available indications, Modi may well walk along a similar path in a similar situation.
An English newspaper used the term ‘transformative’ in a recent editorial to describe Modi’s foreign policy drive. While it is true that the PM has surprised everyone by his sure-footedness on foreign affairs and his frantic global outreach in just six months into office, his efforts in this direction may not meet the exacting standards of ‘transformative’ leadership that Brown has enumerated in his book. In the chapter, ‘Transformational Political leadership’, he offers the definition: “One who plays a decisive role in introducing systemic change, whether of the political or economic system of his or her country or (more rarely) of the international system.” His list of transformational leaders includes Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela.
But where Modi’s style fits in well is Brown’s definition of what he calls “redefining leaders”. The author says that redefining leaders “challenge previous assumptions, who redefine what is thought to be politically possible, and who introduce radical policy change”. Here Modi will find company in Margaret Thatcher, lyndon Johnson and Franklin D Roosevelt. Contrary to what many expected of Modi, he hasn’t sought to make drastic systemic changes but to work to the fullest within the available parameters. But he has found enough space to bring about a perceptional difference: A Government that is working as opposed to the preceding near-dead one. The Make in India campaign is an example of challenging the assumption that India is no longer a place to manufacture in. The radical policy changes are expected in the form of Goods and Services Tax regime; enhanced FDI in various sectors; abolishment of Planning Commission; and overhaul of labour and land acquisition laws. The other assumption Modi has tackled is that the bureaucracy is loath, as if struck by a birth-invalidity, to perform. One of his first tasks as PM was to reach out directly to bureaucrats and assure them they shall not be hounded for taking bona fide decisions, but that there was no choice for them other than to perform.
Will Modi transcend from being a ‘redefining leader’ to a ‘transformational leader’ who can bring about systemic changes in the socio-politico-economic environment in the sustained meaning of the termIJ Or, will he go down the authoritarian path that quite a few strong leaders were tempted to take — either by circumstance or by a need to feed the self-egoIJ All great leaders don’t become ‘transformational political leaders’ for the simple reason that they do not encounter the circumstances which can test their ability to transform, in the sense that the likes of Deng or Mandela did. The worry is not that Modi may not, going by Brown’s definition, become a ‘transformational leader’. In itself, ‘redefining leadership’ is a full-time task which can achieve wonderful results for a nation. The worry is: Will Modi, basking in the process of the changes he heralds, somehow though not deliberately undermine the importance of his ministerial colleaguesIJ After all, this had been the characteristic of strong leaders such as Nehru and Indira Gandhi — and Thatcher, the ‘only man’ in her Cabinet. Modi will dominate, but it is doubtful that he will ride roughshod over his colleagues, some of them senior to him, because that will expose him to distractions he can do without.
Nevertheless, here are some wise words from Brown that apply to every effective leader who has received the people’s whole-hearted mandate to rule: “Within parliamentary democracies there is a tendency to believe that the top leader counts for more than he or she actually does... leaders who believe they have a personal right to dominate decision-making in different areas of policy, and who attempt to exercise such a prerogative, do a disservice both to good governance and to democracy. They deserve not followers, but critics.”
Modi is in a unique position to change all that has been harmful to Indian interests in recent years. He has two ways to do so. The first is that he uses his authority and charisma to trigger those changes through his colleagues, and thus make the latter happy. The second is that he decides to be a one-man army and push through the changes.
For the weak leader, nothing matters, not even the process of decision-making. So, the process is never under threat from such leaders. A strong leader has to be on the lookout for the danger that he/she can subvert the process in the ‘larger interests of the nation’. Modi gained acclaim for the effective manner he administrated a big State before becoming PM, and he did not achieve that by trampling over colleagues, bureaucrats and the system. There appears no reason for now to fear that he’ll change.