India's new self-made prime minister
'Counting the votes of allies, the NDA tally would barely exceed 200 million, or just a quarter of the number of eligible voters. That should give pause to the euphoric new ruling dispensation.'
'It has a fair distance to go yet if it wishes to shed the tag of right-wing Hindu nationalist party in any meaningful way,' says Shreekant Sambrani.
The sweeping victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance it led is remarkable not just for the numbers. Exceptional though they are, the drive of one man alone who made it possible outshines them: Narendra Damodardas Modi who, on May 21, will become India's 15th prime minister, the high office he assiduously sought, but was not expected to win until very recently.
The British historian Ian Mortimer called Henry Bolingbroke, who as Henry IV was the founder of the Lancaster dynasty as the 'self-made' king of England. Henry, a Plantagenet, was not in the line of succession and was thus considered most unlikely to be the king. He is supposed to have used his Plantagenet lineage and elaborate planning to achieve his ambition of being the monarch.
That sequence of events would also appear to fit Mr Modi's remarkable ascent. He had the right pedigree, but his place in the BJP's pecking order was not high enough until 2012, when he won his third term in office as the chief minister of Gujarat.
Even then, he was one among several BJP leaders of the next generation. His prospects of moving to the top were considered blighted because of the 2002 Gujarat riots that occurred under his watch.
Yet ambition burned bright in the breast of the one-time pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Shekhar Gupta, the editor-in-chief of The Indian Express observed in December 2007 that the next general election could see him at the top of the BJP. I had also made a similar comment in my analysis of the state elections. The wisdom then was that this would never come to pass given his record.
Only Mr Modi believed in his manifest destiny. He carefully charted his campaign for the top, much like Henry establishing the legitimacy of his claim through descent. Mr Modi set about showcasing his achievements in Gujarat. He also benefitted from the grave discontent brewing in the country largely on account of the mishandling of the economic situation by the United Progressive Alliance during its second term.
Mr Modi's victory in the 2012 state election stood out against the backdrop of pervasive resentment of incumbent governments. Mr Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh and Dr Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh also defied anti-incumbency, but a year after Mr Modi had done so.
On the eve of the state elections in 2012, I had observed that 'Modi quite clearly nurses national ambitions. He needs a larger constituency with which to bond. That movement must be based on a feeling of antipathy and injustice. He will need to stress a sense of deprivation to appeal to people outside Gujarat' (Modi: Demagogue or democrat? Business Standard, December 18, 2012).
That was indeed the substance of his strategy. He hammered away at the failures of the UPA. As an alternative, he highlighted what has since come to be called the Gujarat model. Critics have tried to find faults and infirmities in the model, but voters all over India have found it appealing.
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Image: 'He had the right pedigree, but his place in the BJP's pecking order was not high enough until 2012, when he won his third term in office as the chief minister of Gujarat.'
( hari krishnamurthy K. HARIHARAN)"think of them as Sand paper.
They Scratch & hurt you,
but in the end you are polished and they are finished. ''
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