T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Lessons from the first year

Mr Modi seems to have confused the centralisation of power with centralisation of administration

When they retire, one of the questions asked of persons who have led teams in sports, business, defence, media, governments etc is what lessons they have learnt from the experience. You get a variety of answers but a common theme is that if you want a job done do it yourself.

But that comes at the end of their stints. What about in the interim? What answer would one get at the end of one, two, three or four years?

For example, what would M S Dhoni have said in 2008, 2009, 2010 and so on? What would P Chidambaram have said at the end of each year which he completed as finance minister? What would Manmohan Singh have said at the end of each year he completed as prime minister? These worthies have never been asked that particular question and it is too late now.

But since Narendra Modi has just completed one year, it might be useful ask him: "Narendrabhai, ek varsh ma tame shoon seekh sikhiya?" (What lessons have you learnt in one year?)

His supporters will probably say he has learnt everything there is to know about being prime minister. This sort of thing is generally true of the supporters of most political leaders - Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee, Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi et al. They make their leaders omniscient and knowledge-proof. This was not true of the BJP till now but Mr Modi seems to need it to be so. Constant adulation is the mantra.

His critics, however, will probably say he has forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. Look at how he is running the central government, they will say, as if it is a state government. The guy has no idea of the difference in scale and complexity.

The actual answer is perhaps that he has learnt mostly the wrong lessons. This happens to leaders in all fields but more often in government which tends to isolate and insulate people in high office.

Wrong lessons
As leadership tenures go, politics differs from the rest because it gives fixed and long tenures to winners, of four or five years. So the inferences a prime minister or President draws in the first 12 months are crucial to the rest of his or her term.

Some go into over-drive. Others just go into neutral gear and coast downwards with occasional bursts of bravado to restore their spirits. Their focus becomes themselves rather than policy. Some of this is already in evidence in the case of Mr Modi. The exceptions to this were PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Meanwhile, one very obvious wrong lesson Mr Modi has learnt is that overt populism, a la Kejriwal, pays. The resounding defeat in the Delhi election has brought about this change. So for him development doesn't seem to mean growth any longer; it means distribution.

A second lesson seems to be the one people learn at the end of their innings: if you want it done do it yourself. The PMO now wants to do everything itself and in consequence very little seems to be getting done. Mr Modi appears to have confused the centralisation of power with the centralisation of administration.

A third lesson could be that although he is the prime minister, there are severe limits to his power. All prime ministers discover this but in Mr Modi's case the realisation may have come as a severe shock. Such limits would not have been there as chief minister where the only limits he faced were political - that too not local, but from Delhi.

Different prime ministers respond differently to this realisation that their power has narrow limits and it will be interesting to see how Mr Modi responds. Not listening to good advice seems very much to be on the cards. His natural obstinacy may come even more to the fore now.

A fourth lesson - not learnt now but certainly reinforced from before - is probably that everyone is conspiring against him. I am sure he thinks that it is not just the Opposition but also sections of the BJP that are conspiring to do something to him, though heaven knows what. To the extent that politics is generally about conspiring, albeit benignly, this is natural. But Mr Modi perhaps has a heightened sense of persecution from his dozen years as chief minister.

A fifth lesson might be in foreign policy. He has been acting like an India salesman, which is all very well. But in the end everyone is looking for a good deal and Mr Modi is probably getting very frustrated that he is being able offer only little bits to all, rather than a whole lot to a few. This would be in complete contrast to his experience as chief minister, which was the other way round.

But there are four more years to go and Mr Modi is a highly intelligent man. He can, if he wants, take corrective action and fulfil his promise to the voters - change the way things are done in India, not run it the way it has always been run since July 1969.