Political News: View: Narendra Modi – a political odyssey

It was a characteristically hot summer Ahmedabad afternoon in the end of April 2014. The electric air was charged with anticipation. Campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections had just come to an end, the culmination of the largest celebration of democracy on Earth was days away. I had made a personal trip to Ahmedabad to wish him bonne chance. Cautious optimism is what I expected to see. What I saw was supreme self-confidence, hallmark of a great leader. In my discussions with Modi ji he did not talk about his chances of becoming the PM, but what issues were important to the nation, and what he planned to do as the PM. He knew his time had come.

I had just seen him redefine election campaigning. Data analysis, strategy, micro planning and 24/7 always-on style of campaigning was an entirely new template. Modiji had transformed what was hitherto a vague art into a hard science. Here was a man who believed in serious preparation. To him, luck was what happened when preparation met opportunity. Most people I knew in politics would either do a low-key but do a long, sustained campaign, or a short burst of well-timed, high-voltage explosion. Modiji seemed to have boundless energy – he could run the marathon like he was doing a 100m dash. It was obvious that such a gruelling itinerant campaign was a cathartic experience which actually rejuvenated him.

What I had no idea of then was that he was going to be able to bring all of these attributes we had seen in his campaigning to his administration transforming the usual glacial administration to a vertiginous pace. 2.5 crore vaccinations in a day is just another example of the scorching pace he likes to set.

Modiji’s bottom-up approach to administration is another crucial change. And it is my belief that this is a manifestation of his more than a dozen years as the Chief Minister of India’s most prosperous state. There have been a few before him who were also CMs before becoming the PM – Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Narasimha Rao, VP Singh, and Deve Gowda come to mind, but none of the others had even one full 5-year term as CM that could have shaped their administrative styles. Besides, other than Narasimha Rao who lasted a full term as the PM, all the others lasted between 170 days and 2 years! Modiji’s two decades and counting of public service as Gujarat CM and India’s most charismatic PM will likely never be matched. It is this very understanding of the priorities of a Chief Minister at a personal level that has laid the foundation for the open cooperative federalism that has been the hallmark of this Government. It was within the first year of his first term as PM that the Finance Commission grant to states was raised from 32 to 42 percent. After all, to rephrase a well-known Curzon quote, India may be governed from Delhi, but it is administered from the states.

When he came to and shook Lutyens’ Delhi, his critics were not willing to give him a chance citing his lack of experience in the national theatre coupled with no foreign policy exposure. While he was always fair game for that kind of criticism, he proved his critics wrong and to borrow sports terminology, The GOAT (Greatest of all time) among CMs is now turning out to be The GOAT among PMs.

Over the years I have seen many facets of Modiji’s personality. The dastardly attack in Jhiram Ghati was something that nothing prepares you for. As the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh I received calls from several leaders that day but it was Modiji who was not just amongst the first to call me and offer support – he also shared ideas on crisis management, security and counter attack.

I cannot think of a single occasion when I have called Modiji and my call has not been returned within a few hours. For a man always on the go, with time commitments made weeks in advance, how he manages his time never ceases to amaze me.

For the longest time, when a new scheme was launched, Information, Education and Communication (IEC) was an adjunct attached almost as an afterthought. If you examine any of the programmes launched by the Modi Government, IEC strategy has been embedded into the scheme itself. Many will remember how he made the 105-yr-old Kunwar Bai the mascot for ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ when he touched her feet in a rally in Rajnandgaon. Kunwar Bai had sold her goats to build a toilet in her village in Kotabharri in Dhamtari.

Modiji has been the pivot of 21st century politics in India. It has been a remarkable journey bringing foundational changes in the Indian polity and governance with consummate ease. Thanks to him, politics and governance is now a serious, 24×7 job and not for the faint hearted. He has embraced technology and change with open arms. No wonder the political discourse in India is now binary – pro-Modi and anti-Modi, the latter while noisy are in the micro-minority.


(The author is the National Vice President of the BJP and former Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh.)