By any estimation, Narendra Modi has been a spectacular failure as prime minister.
Every single sector of Indian policy – from the economy to domestic stability, to the military – has suffered under his watch, although it is in foreign policy that the fall is most obvious. When Manmohan Singh demitted office, India had enough standing that Modi could invite all SAARC prime ministers to his inauguration. India was not only the pre-eminent country in the region, the other South Asian countries did not mind gathering under its aegis.
Foreign policy failures
A decade of Modi as the prime minister has created a wholly different scenario. To the west, the Maldives glories in an “India out” policy, Pakistan remains Pakistan, unchanged either by Modi dropping in unexpectedly to attend Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter’s wedding, or dropping bombs on some random hillside, and our great hope in Afghanistan is to snuggle up to the Taliban. To the north, India dug a hole for itself with a blockade of Nepal in order to bully it to change its Constitution. It is still trying to dig itself out of that hole. Even further north, the loss of deterrence against China has been so severe that Modi has not publicly uttered the name of China in nearly four years. Apparently swinging in a jhoola with Xi Jinping, and then force-feeding him and his wife Gujarati vegetarian food for three days running was not a diplomatically sound manoeuvre.
To our east, an increasingly authoritarian and corrupt Bangladeshi government loves us for certifying their elections as “free and fair”, but then the Selection Commission of India is happy to do just that. Nonetheless, it is China that has supplied two thirds of Bangladeshi military imports since 2010, and is the preferred investor for its energy sector. Of course, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) engendering a civil war in Manipur, and the always unintelligent Amit Shah wanting to fence the border with Myanmar, the Look East Policy which was supposed to become the Act East Policy, is burning with the rest of the corpses created by communalism.
To the south, we have Sri Lanka, of which the less said is the better. Although, maybe to the south is South India, because the level of fraud that the Union government has committed in squeezing tax from the southern states is promoting talk of secession. And all this without counting the fact that under Modi economic growth has faltered and choked, India has seen the highest rates of unemployment since it started measuring unemployment, and 4.9 million Indians died because Modi bungled the Covid-19 crisis.
Understanding Modi’s popularity
And yet, by all accounts and surveys, Modi is spectacularly popular. People, it seems, are willing to ignore the obvious untruth of his college degree in Entire Political Science, after all he has said so himself in at least one speech and one televised interview with Rajeev Shukla. They approve of his story about running a tea stall on “gutter gas”, and extracting oxygen from the air using wind turbines to “capture the oxygen market”. Even his obsessive love for English acronyms is pardoned.
Part of this popularity may be fraudulent, manufactured through so much money spent on advertisements, that the face of Modi, can be found from everything from grain bags to petrol station. On television, propagandists cosplaying as journalists crow about masterstroke after masterstroke, no doubt in hopes of being stroked by their master. But it is worth asking if it is exactly this, Modi’s manifest unfitness for the office he occupies, which is part of his appeal.
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With a broken primary education system, and an economy where dignified jobs are achieved only through superhuman effort or some form of corruption – either monetary or through caste and clan networks – the vast majority of Indians have few reasons to believe they will achieve anything through honesty and hard work. Even were they able to occupy a position of authority they are, like Modi, likely to find it beyond their capability. Success, therefore, is then no longer a matter of skill, effort, or honest competition. Modi demonstrates for them that someone like him and thereby them, can continue to enjoy the pelf and power of office. They may be thinking that all one needs to do is rig the system, buy or bully any opposition, and simply refuse to answer any questions.
Unfair to blame Modi alone?
In an essay on leadership, the former, criminal, president of the United States, Richard Nixon, wrote that a leader is somebody who has followers. This simple formulation hides a multiplicity of interpretations. You can be a leader of those who desire to be better, do better, and who look to you to inspire and support you in that. Or you can be a leader of those who are haunted by a fear that they are worthless, and look to you to show how even without any grace, capability, or achievement, they can get things through dishonest means.
The tragedy of New India is not just that we have a leader of the second category, but he has hundreds of millions of followers.
Omair Ahmad is an author and journalist.
