Modi's next test is not revisiting history but governing the future

The news cycle this week has been overwhelmed by discussions over Narendra Modi surpassing Jawaharlal Nehru as the longest-serving continuously elected Prime Minister of India. There’s been much comparison between Mr Modi and Nehru and who did more for India. So far so good, and move on to the future.

 

Because he isn’t done yet. He’s got three years in this tenure and for sure he will be contesting in 2029 and who knows, in 2034 as well. 

After all, Donald Trump has talked in the past about a third term despite his constitutional limitations, and he will turn 80 this week. Further, a hot mic caught Vladimir Putin telling Xi Jinping at a military parade in Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II on September 3, 2025, that with today’s medical advances, one could rule till 150. 

Let’s not lose our way, however. It’s a perfectly reasonable presumption that Mr Modi will be around for a significant enough time for us to reflect on the challenges that lie ahead. I will list five. 

The first is obviously that he must shake off the past. These comparisons with Nehru, Indira, or any others should end. Mr Modi was 14 when Nehru died and I wasn’t yet seven. Henceforth, Mr Modi is to be defined by his own epoch and not one that visited India so far back. 

For the longest continuously serving elected Prime Minister, the comparisons, henceforth, should be with what he did in his first 12 years. That’s the only benchmark to benefit India, and him. If he wants to build a lasting legacy, it can’t be as the greatest “anti-Nehru” in India’s political history. It will have to be a legacy in his own name. 

For that, he has to now stop leaning back on the past, whether to celebrate today’s achievements or explain away present-day setbacks. The current/capital account crisis, the weakening rupee today can no longer be explained away by asking, “Have you forgotten how bad such crises were in 1991 or 2013?” Or, as Mukesh sang in Prem Dhawan’s words in the 1960 Sunil Dutt starrer Hum Hindustani: “Chhodo kal ki baatein, kal ki baat purani… (chuck the past, write a new story)”. Can Modi and the BJP move on and forward now? This is Mr Modi’s first challenge as he passes the 4,399-day record. 

Like any Prime Minister serving such a long tenure, Mr Modi has had his share of crises. Three of them were global: Covid, Ukraine, and the West Asia wars. His second challenge is drawn from the third. How does such a powerful leader endure the rest of Donald Trump? 

So far he has handled it with equanimity. Mr Modi has taken the cue from the Europeans and other US treaty allies to stay calm and not respond to any provocation. 

The transactional aspect will become stronger and India can manage that. As the West Asian war shows, India has already picked its side: Israel, the US, and the UAE. It will never say so, but the actions speak for themselves. A first-cut trade deal will come at some point, the business relationship and trade will go on with the active help of India’s corporate leaders. Generally, now you can be sure Mr Modi will not take the bait, whatever Mr Trump’s provocations or his critics’ taunts. But bigger crises could — more likely would — arise at some point of time. 

After all that the Pakistanis have done for Mr Trump, they are not going to be satisfied with merely these dollops of praise for their field marshal. The prize they want is a mention of Kashmir, however vaguely, even in a Truth Social post. The field marshal’s economy is a mess and western front on fire. He needs redemption. 

Munir will see this as reopening the Kashmir issue and turning the clock back on August 5, 2019. How will Mr Modi respond to that challenge? The time to game that response is now. This will need strategic patience for about two and a half years. 

To justify, and even to be able to afford strategic patience, you need tactical (read military) power. If Mr Modi looks back on his 12 years and forgets Nehru and 1962 for a bit, he’d acknowledge that he didn’t quite spend enough on defence. Even what money was available wasn’t fully spent because of chronic plaques in the acquisition pipeline. Many still survive. 

Much reform is on the way, especially the opening up to the private sector, but the results will take time. Until then, there must be a sense of urgency for when Munir might decide to unleash the demons again. This needs a six-month, two-year, and a five-year plan. Already, some reform is stuck with inter-service rivalries often played out on X. It will be tragic if we pushed ourselves into analysis-paralysis. 

The bedrock of all strategic and tactical strength is the economy. For too long now, India has comforted itself by claiming to be the fastest-growing large economy. That’s not enough for a population this large at per capita income ranking between 144 and 149. India deserves to do better. 

The Prime Minister has to bring back his own promises of minimum government and also the categorical statement he made in the wake of the pandemic, that since the government has no business to be in business, it will get out of all areas except some strategic ones. The opposite has happened across these years. Multiple new PSUs have been set up and even the lowest of the low-hanging fruit like the IDBI sale has been waiting. 

When in crisis, this government has shown the ability to reverse its own missteps. We see this with the flurry of FTAs, withdrawal of taxes on foreign investments in bonds, and now the talk of a new, liberal BIT (bilateral investment treaty) after earlier ones had been burnt up. 

A government learning from a crisis and showing willingness to change its own policies so dramatically is actually a good sign. But India needs a lot more of this. On mining, hydrocarbon exploration, urbanisation, even simple things like housetop solar. That even Pakistan is way ahead of us in that one area, should bring the impetus to the scheme the Prime Minister announced in February 2024 (PM Surya Ghar Yojana). Combined with Hindutva, this growth rate — shall we call it the Hindutva Rate of Growth — may still win you elections. But it will amount to an Indian under-performance. This fourth challenge, then, is to really shrink the government’s role in businesses. 

The fifth and last challenge on this list must be political. The Modi-Shah combination has so far demonstrated remarkable smarts in starting out with a minority (240 in Lok Sabha) and yet succeeding in turning India into more or less a single-party system. But things do not remain static in politics. 

Much of this power has been built on the shoulders of new allies, or by breaking the many other smaller parties. At some point, some ally will strain at the leash, a chief minister might create a significant mess given some of the “talent” the party has anointed in state capitals. And, while nobody in the BJP would speak the “S” word, at some point, as 2029 approaches, murmurs of a primary of sorts in the party will inevitably begin. There are at least four claimants for 2034, who’d still be in their fifties or early sixties. Given the state of the Opposition today, Mr Modi’s political challenges will rise from within the BJP. Challenge not to his authority. That nobody would dare. It might just be impatience on the part of some for their future. 

These are the five biggest challenges for Mr Modi looking ahead. And remember, it all started with forgetting the past.

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