MODI DEMYSTIFIED: THE MAKING OF A PRIME MINISTER
Ramesh Menon
Harper Collins India
233 pages; Rs 499
It is a tribute to the commitment of the intelligentsia that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attracted serious attention from important analysts. Ramesh Menon's book is part of that trend, offering a clinical analysis of a leader who, he says, has to be scrutinised especially because he has chosen to establish, in Arun Shourie's words, a "quasi-Presidential form of government" while maintaining the fiction of parliamentary democracy.
Mr Menon presents his study in three sections: Early Years, Brand Modi and Journey to the Top. He begins with a brief history of Gujarat, which is critical to understanding the social and cultural background that shaped Mr Modi's personality and values. As he establishes, "trade matters to Gujaratis," but more to the point, "while Gujarat was rapidly modernising, the old caste and religious differences were being put to use in new ways."
This basic reality of Gujarati society throws a great deal of light on Mr Modi's chief ministership from 2001 to May 19, 2014, including the post-Godhra, anti-Muslim carnage of 2002. It clearly shows that Mr Modi was not only a product of communally divided society, he practised communalism because he believed in this ideology.
The five chapters of Section I, which trace Mr Modi's rise from tea vendor to Gujarat's charismatic political leader, underline this point. "Growing up, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] was Modi's Family," Mr Menon writes, and at the impressionable age of eight, he joined an RSS shakha and after completing the third Officer's Training Camp held under the direct supervision of the RSS supremo, he was deputed to the Bharatiya Janata Party. After the Godhra riots, Menon writes, Modi "emerged as a towering figure in Gujarat. His body language and lexicon changed and he was more than sure that he would ride victorious in the state elections held in 2002".
His administrative style was also influenced by the RSS. "Another side of him is that of an autocratic administrator who got bureaucrats and police officers in Gujarat to obey, decimated the opposition and silenced critics." This central issue of Mr Modi's style of governance cannot be answered without integrally linking the iron authoritarianism of the RSS, where trainees are conditioned to accept the commandments of leaders without question. Having mandated Mr Modi to implement the Hindu Rashtra, the RSS has imbued Mr Modi with the same spirit of autocracy shading into ruthlessness.
Nowhere was this more strongly in evidence than in the post-Godhra riots, described in Chapter 3. As Mr Modi told his British biographer Andy Marino, "I feel sad about what happened but no guilt. And no court has come even close to establishing it." Then, his rivals were systematically eliminated, one of them (Haren Pandya) literally so after being shot dead. Add fake encounters, and the systematic stalling of the appointment of a Lok Ayukta till he got someone of his choice and Mr Modi's style is the opposite of Mahatma Gandhi. Where Gandhi considered means as sacrosanct as the end, for Mr Modi, "only the end matters, means can be fair or foul".
Section II critically focuses on the Modi Model of Development and, after marshalling facts from all sides of debate, Mr Menon sums up "Gujarat was always prosperous; it is just that Modi gave it a push". Mr Modi made every effort to attract big investors to Gujarat and he did not succeed till he dramatised the exercise with the Vibrant Gujarat summits in 2009 and 2011. His big break came in October 2008 when Ratan Tata relocated his pet Nano project to Gujarat after his problems in Bengal. But Mr Menon contends that the Modi Model is essentially "fake". "Take away two energy giants like Reliance and Essar, many other states have done much better in the area of economic growth, including Human Developmental Goals, where Modi has miserably failed," he says.
Chapters 8 to 13 on the making of the prime minister provide many insights about Mr Modi's public relations skills in projecting himself as a "doer, the lone developer and the lone achiever" in the politics of nation-building. A French academic, Maurice Duverger, observed: "Modern political parties are absolutely different than the previous ones because of 'organization'." Mr Modi had the full party "organisation" behind him during the elections and he deftly used the available tools of propaganda to his advantage. Instead of the party, it was Mr Modi on display from Kashmir to Kohima and Amritsar to Arunachal Pradesh. Where are Mr Modi's competitors in politics? Chapter 12, "Competition, or the Lack Thereof", is a must read to understand how Mr Modi has decimated inner party, intra-party roles and imagined rivals.
The author has not drawn any conclusions from his rich narrative, leaving the "facts" to "speak for themselves". Mr Menon, your study clearly shows that India is being led by a prime minister who does not fit into the reality and substance of parliamentary democracy based on checks and balances and accountability of government. In France of the 1860s, Louis Bonaparte (later Napolean III, and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) established "Bonapartism," which stood for strong, centralised, populist rule. Will Mr Modi emulate this nineteenth century monarch? Wait and see.
