4 years of Modi 2.0: Bold and brave
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s penchant for alliteration is well-known. Among his favourites is 2S: Speed and Scale. He is fond of saying that if the previous governments thought speed was a luxury and scale a risk, he as prime minister made “speed the ambition of India and scale its strength”. Modi has demonstrated these qualities in ample measure in almost everything he has achieved in his nine years of office and more so in the four years of his second term.
The most recent example of this is the swank, state-of-the-art, hexagonal new Parliament building that he inaugurated on May 28. The complex came up at a remarkable speed, taking just two and a half years for completion despite Covid restrictions kicking in almost from the start. Then there is the scale. The new building has a seating capacity of 1,272 for both houses of Parliament. That is 60 per cent more than the 790 seats in the original structure, and enough to accommodate any expansion in the number of MPs up to the next century. In terms of grandeur, the new Parliament combines tradition with modernity—the imposing sandstone façade, peacock motifs on its high ceilings, handloom carpets on the floor and the intricately carved wooden décor complement the computer tablets on every seat. In his address at the inaugural ceremony, the PM said, “This is the New India that is setting new goals, forging new paths. There is a new enthusiasm, a new thinking, a new vision, and a new resolution.”
There is also a third S that the PM holds dear—Symbolism. The PM has an impeccable sense of timing in whatever he does. The inauguration of Parliament was on a day Modi completed four years of his second term as prime minister and his ninth year in office. May 28 also marked the 140th birth anniversary of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an ideological touchstone for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that Modi belongs to and its progenitor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The day before was the 59th death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. His supporters saw it as a signal of the BJP bringing the curtain down on the Nehruvian era and heralding the arrival of the Hindutva epoch that Savarkar had propounded and which Modi embodies.
His eloquent inaugural speech in Parliament, though, seemed to echo Nehru’s famed ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech on the intervening night of August 14-15, 1947. “There come some moments in the development journey of every nation that become immortal forever,” he said, “Some dates become indelible signatures of history on the forehead of time.” In many ways, Modi, too, has left his imprint on history for posterity by building, among other things, a spanking new temple of modern India. Indeed, at the end of the fourth year of his second term, he has built a legacy that has broken free from the past, demonstrating in the process a style of leadership that is unique and puts him in a league of his own.
EYE ON THE FUTURE
Examples of this are legion. When bureaucrat-turned-politician Ashwini Vaishnaw took over as the Union minister for railways in addition to two other portfolios in July last year, among the first things he did was to make a two-hour presentation to the prime minister on how to upgrade 50 railway stations across the country. Modi listened to him intently throughout, a quality others who have interacted with the prime minister vouch for too. Unlike other leaders who are satisfied with broad brush-strokes, Modi likes going into the finer detail. And so he asked Vaishnaw incisive questions, like how his proposed changes would make a difference to the life of the saadhaaran manav (common man). And whether it would bring a structural change to the Indian economy and not be merely cosmetic. After making an exhaustive presentation, Vaishnaw was surprised and disappointed that the prime minister did not approve it. Later that night, at 11 pm, Modi called Vaishnaw and told him why: “The designs you presented are good for today, but you must come up with a plan that thinks 50 years ahead. That is the thought process I wanted to share with you.” When Vaishnaw reworked the plan, making it more futuristic, he got the approval he was seeking from the PM.
The same goes for other ministries. Modi is always looking for the long-term vision in any scheme or project his government announces. Bharat Lal, the soft-spoken director-general of the National Centre for Good Governance and someone who has worked with Modi since his days as the Gujarat chief minister, says that nothing he does is ad hoc. As prime minister, he focused on building infrastructure that may have had long gestation periods but which he put on the fast track by providing adequate financial and manpower resources and employing technology to monitor and speed up implementation. As an example, Lal cites the Jal Jeevan Mission that Modi announced on August 15, 2019, shortly after the start of his second term. Its aim was to ensure that every rural household was supplied with 55 litres of water per person a day (per WHO norms) through functional household taps. It was a tall order, as barely 32 million or 16 per cent of the 194 million rural households had tap water supply in 2019. Modi set aside Rs 3.6 lakh crore over five years for the scheme.
Lal, who was its first mission director, used technology, including data analytics, AI and IoT, to monitor its implementation down to each household, building a transparent database and dashboard to track progress. In the past four years, 89 million rural households have been provided with tap water—as on May 31, 2023, some 121 million households or 62 per cent stand covered. It is a stupendous achievement that matches the funding and building of 110 million toilets in individual houses as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, sharply reducing the widespread practice of open defecation and was of immense help especially for women in rural areas.
HIGH ON DIGITISATION
If Rajiv Gandhi brought computers to India during his tenure as prime minister in the 1980s, Modi has taken digitisation to an altogether different and higher level. He upgraded the vast physical digital infrastructure his predecessors Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh had built in their tenures and converted it into a massive force multiplier for governance. Amitabh Kant, the flamboyant and articulate former CEO of NITI Aayog and currently India’s sherpa for the upcoming G20 summit in Delhi, says the digital revolution ushered in by Modi has proved to be a game-changer in the country’s development. Modi oversaw the universalisation of digital identities and pushed for the opening of a phenomenal 400 million Jan Dhan bank accounts for India’s unbanked poor during his first term. From just 17 per cent women who had a bank account when the scheme started, the figure is well over 80 per cent today, a sign of true empowerment. By linking Jan Dhan accounts then with Aadhaar cards as identity proofs and providing mobile connectivity through what Modi christened the JAM trinity, he was able to facilitate speedy digital transfer of money for welfare programmes under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme.
It put an immediate end to the enormous leakage in rural funds and curbed corruption. As Rajiv Gandhi had famously said, for every Re 1 the government set aside for welfare schemes meant for the poor, only 15 paise reached the beneficiary. DBT changed that significantly. “When the Digital India movement started in 2016, we were 123rd in the world in terms of data consumption,” says Kant. “Today, we are number one. In terms of digital transactions, we are doing 11 times more than what the US and Europe combined are doing, and four times more than China. That is the revolution Prime Minister Modi has brought about on the digital front. This is what he meant by minimum government, maximum governance.”
Infrastructure, particularly road construction, too, saw a major push in Modi’s first term. Under his go-getter roads minister Nitin Gadkari, 50,000 km of highways were constructed in the first five years alone compared to 25,718 km during Manmohan Singh’s decade-long prime ministership.
MESSIAH OF THE POOR
It may seem appropriate to treat Modi’s nine-year reign as a continuum, as many of the major programmes he began in his first term fructified in his second. But it is important to segregate the two terms and assess them separately. In the first term, Modi’s style of leadership was akin to Indira Gandhi’s, including taking decisive and far-reaching economic and political decisions that disrupted the status quo even while staying hard-focused on addressing the plight of India’s poor. If Indira Gandhi took the drastic step of resorting to bank nationalisation to alleviate poverty, Narendra Modi pushed for the centralisation of taxes and ushered in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime to rationalise and enhance revenue collection and stimulate economic growth.
Again, like Indira Gandhi declared national emergency in 1975, ostensibly to quell the Opposition, which she claimed was blocking development schemes for the poor, Modi triggered a financial emergency when overnight he enforced the demonetisation of high-value currency notes in November 2016. The draconian measure, he claimed, was necessary to rid India of black money and clean up the corrupt political system. Even as he apologised for the hardships his move caused the poor, especially the endless queues they had to endure to exchange money at the banks, he couched it in patriotic terms, saying the people of India did not mind suffering hardship if it was for a greater good. He also said his intentions were honest, only the implementation was lagging. However, unlike Indira Gandhi, who lost the election in 1977, Modi retained his electoral fortunes.
Both Indira Gandhi, with her Garibi Hatao slogan, and Modi, with his focus on the saadhaaran manav, have cast themselves as messiahs of the poor via their massive welfare schemes. They have also been lauded for their gutsy decisions on the national security front—Indira Gandhi for crafting the victory in the 1971 Bangladesh war and Modi for carrying out surgical strikes after the Uri attacks in 2017 and conducting air strikes deep inside Pakistan after the attack on Pulwama in 2019. The last decision was to turn the tide in favour of Modi again in the 2019 general election, which his party won by a convincing majority. Indira Gandhi had to wait three years before storming back to power in 1980 following her ouster after Emergency.
FIREFIGHTING ON ALL FRONTS
In his second term, Modi would be confronted by a polycrisis of a magnitude that only Nehru possibly had to handle after taking over as India’s first prime minister. Partition had plunged the country into a dire economic crisis following the enormous disruption in the movement of goods and services. Then, he had to unite the warring states that were at the time nothing more than a loose conglomeration of administrative provinces and princely kingdoms. Meanwhile, he had to thwart the Pakistan-directed tribal invasion to capture Kashmir and fashion a non-aligned foreign policy to ensure India kept equal distance from the world’s two superpowers—the US and Soviet Union.
Modi’s troubles came a year into his second term, first in the form of a once-in-a-century pandemic that took millions of lives and triggered unprecedented worldwide economic chaos. Then, even as India and the world were battling Covid-19, China decided to launch major intrusions across the Line of Actual Control. The resultant clash would lead to soldiers getting killed in border conflict for the first time since the 1999 Kargil war. Just as Nehru was blamed for being naive about Chinese intentions in 1962, Modi faced flak for the Indian army’s failure to notice the Chinese intrusions on the LAC till it was too late. Finally, just as Modi sought to bring a modicum of stability and growth in the economy, India and the world were rocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, causing worldwide food and oil shortages and fuelling inflation.
What distinguished Modi 2.0 from 1.0 was his ability to tackle multiple black swan events and steer the country out of the multiple crises they threw the country into. The reason Modi was able to do so was owing to his trait of seeing opportunity in every difficulty rather than difficulty in every opportunity. Dr Pramod Kumar Mishra, the prime minister’s principal secretary, recalls, “The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime event and no country was clear what the best response would be. There were too many uncertainties and unknowns. In addition, there was the war in Ukraine and the border threat from China. We were forced to go beyond the usual pathways and chart our own unique course. It involved taking great risks, as a wrong decision could lead to a major disaster.”
The reticent Mishra, who has worked with Modi when he was Gujarat chief minister, says the prime minister handled the crisis methodically, exhibiting rock-like calm in the midst of major storms. “We analysed the whole situation thoroughly, ensuring that the prime minister had a high degree of clarity as to what India should do,” says Mishra. “As important was the political will of the prime minister to take bold but tough decisions and to use the opportunity to go ahead with major reforms amid the polycrisis and put India back on the growth path.”
BUCKING THE TREND
To deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, Modi took the daring decision to impose a total lockdown and refrain from doling out huge cash relief to help everyone tide over the crisis as leaders in other countries were doing. Battling criticism from several quarters for not providing enough monetary succour to his suffering countrymen, Modi opted instead for targeted stimulus to the deserving while pushing major reform to kickstart the economy. That judgement seems to have been correct in hindsight as the excess liquidity in other economies has pushed up inflation while India has been able to keep it within manageable levels.
To combat Covid and save lives, Modi concentrated on both the development and delivery of vaccines. Not only did it see over 950 million people in India get inoculated against the virus, the supply of Covid vaccines to other needy nations also won him plaudits internationally. Modi also launched the innovative Ayushman Bharat scheme that provides health insurance of up to Rs 5 lakh for below the poverty line families. He also speeded up the PM Awas Yojana to provide over 30 million houses to the rural and urban poor. As Vaishnaw says, “Prime Minister Modi has brought about a fundamental difference in the lives of poor people—permanent change is visible wherever you go in villages, whether in housing, toilets, gas connections, electricity and water—the basic necessities to make their lives more comfortable.”
Modi has also focused on boosting his government’s capital expenditure, taking it from Rs 3.35 lakh crore in 2019-20 to Rs 10 lakh crore in the current budget, or from 1.7 per cent of GDP before the pandemic to 3.3 per cent after it. The focus on infrastructure has been both in terms of speed and scale, whether in the construction of highways, rural roads, railways or renewable energy projects. To improve efficiency, provide better governance and avoid project duplication, Modi in October 2021 launched PM Gati Shakti, a national master plan for multi-modal connectivity that consisted of a digital platform bringing together 16 ministries, including railways and highways. To enhance manufacturing, attract foreign investment and provide jobs, the PM launched a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme in 14 sectors. The foreign direct investment policy was further liberalised—most sectors were opened to 100 per cent FDI under the automatic route. Says Kant, the CEO of NITI Aayog then, “The prime minister is very futuristic in his approach and focused on technology. He is a very hard taskmaster. He always adds value to our presentations. He wants India to be the best in the world in delivery, never second-class.” Before the pandemic, Modi had pared the corporate tax base for existing companies from 30 per cent to 22 per cent, a move that helped the economy reboot post-Covid.
Other economic reforms included opening key sectors like space, atomic energy and defence to more private sector participation and introducing far-reaching reforms to free agriculture of stifling government controls. Modi presented them as part of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan to make India self-reliant, in May 2020, in the thick of the first phase of Covid, setting aside Rs 27.1 lakh crore for it for five years. Says Mishra, “The reforms initiated during Covid as well as the steep increase in capital investment by the government saw India register a GDP growth of 7.2 per cent in 2022-23, making it the fastest-growing major economy in the world, ahead of even China.”
The agriculture sector, though, showed itself closed to the idea of reform. Major protests broke out among farmers in the key foodgrain-producing states of Punjab and Haryana, forcing the Modi government to withdraw its contentious farm laws and apologise for the inconvenience caused. The PM, his aides say, has imbibed valuable lessons from these setbacks and is much more thorough about the implications and downsides of major decisions before going ahead with them. So, when it came to education, the National Education Policy or NEP, 2020, was announced after much debate, and is expected to bring about far-reaching changes in the curriculum. College admissions, too, are set for radical change with the introduction of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) last year to provide students with a more level playing field. Even GST was modified to remove irritants, which saw both compliance and collection shoot up considerably and exceed targets.
On foreign policy, Modi has been both bold and brave. He has fashioned a multi-aligned foreign policy that has enabled India to do business with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine even as it collaborates with the US to deal with Chinese belligerence. On China’s border intrusion, Modi firmly pushed for the restoration of status quo by making military manoeuvres to degrade the Chinese offensive. He also engaged allies, including the US, Japan and Australia, in the mission to contain China by energising the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad.
India’s exports, too, are looking good after the Modi government worked to remove bottlenecks. Merchandise exports crossed the $400 billion mark in FY22, and service exports are seeing a boom too. Two major trade agreements have been signed with Australia and the UAE. The government seems to be following a give-and-take approach. Import duties for Australian wines, among other things, have dropped considerably.
Meanwhile, Modi is leveraging the presidency of the G20 and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation this year to enhance India’s international stature. Internally, his government shut the door firmly on China and Pakistan’s claim that Kashmir was disputed territory by abrogating Article 370 in an audacious move, bifurcating the state into the Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.
THE LAST MILE
In the final months of his second term, says Mishra, the prime minister is focusing on implementation and improving the speed of delivery. He and Mishra are personally monitoring all the major programmes of the government, identifying bottlenecks and pushing hard for outcomes. Modi has adopted the unusual approach of sending out joint secretaries from various ministries to visit states and give on-the-ground feedback and fine-tune programmes accordingly.
However, there are several areas where progress has been slow. Despite announcing major privatisation and disinvestment plans, barring Air India and to some extent, LIC, the government missed 30 per cent of its disinvestment target last year and is still to retreat from a large number of areas. In job-creating sectors such as textiles, tourism and skill development, there have been inexplicable lags in performance. One of the major engines of growth, exports, is showing signs of stagnation; FDI, too, worryingly contracted by as much as 22 per cent or a fifth in 2022-23. The Opposition criticises Modi for being arrogant and authoritarian and accuses him of unleashing central investigation agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation with trumped-up charges to neutralise opponents. Modi has to stay the course on reforms if his party is to win a full majority in the 2024 general election and he is to become prime minister for the third consecutive term—a feat only Nehru has accomplished thus far.
Meanwhile, Modi’s style of leadership has become the subject of study in management circles. At the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Ekkirala S. Srinivas, professor of organisational behaviour and HR Management, and an expert on leadership, points out that Modi’s success lies in his extraordinary ability to establish a direct connect with people across different segments of society, speak in their language and highlight their issues. So when he goes to Varanasi, his constituency, for instance, he makes it a point to invoke Ganga maiyya, saying he is there at her behest, and when he lands up in Madanapalli in Andhra Pradesh soon after, he addresses the issues of tomato farmers there. He does not require the media or other intermediaries to strike a chord with the voter; he uses Mann Ki Baat as a major vehicle. “Modi appeals to their identity in a very rare, unique and powerful way,” says Srinivas. “If you touch identity and invoke pride, you evoke powerful emotions as he does.”
THE TRANSFORMER
Union minister Piyush Goyal, who has worked closely with Modi, also attributes his success to “the extraordinary empathy the prime minister has with the common man and the fact that despite reaching the pinnacle of success, he has never forgotten his humble past”. The affable Goyal, an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, says what strikes him about Modi is his single-minded focus on the job at hand and complete lack of interest in taking vacations, having fun or shooting the breeze. Goyal once asked Modi whether he enjoyed eating food. His reply? “I eat to live, not live to eat.” The minister finds in Modi an almost yogic quality of remaining totally in the moment, engaging intensely and not getting distracted by the thousands of other tasks he may have to attend to. What has been disconcerting for Goyal on many occasions is the prime minister’s almost photographic memory. You will never find him with pen and paper at meetings, yet there have been several occasions when Goyal has made a 50-slide presentation and Modi has asked him to go back to a particular slide and explain why it is out of sync with the overall theme. In cabinet meetings, rather than hold forth himself, Modi relies on the group dynamic and encourages ministers to speak their mind while ensuring the discussions remain inclusive and participative to enable him to reach a considered decision. When it comes to follow-up and accountability, Modi is CEO-like in monitoring tasks and ensuring adherence to timelines.
Srinivas places Modi in the league of transformational leaders who are characterised more by charisma and exceptional articulation. His way of framing the narrative involves talking of the larger vision and using his personal example of probity and humble beginnings, which never fails to evoke admiration among the masses. “Modi enjoys a heroic charismatic image with an instant connect,” he concludes. Even if he errs, he is able to convince people that his intentions are well-meaning and everything he does is for the greater good and not for personal advancement. What Srinivas would caution against is what he terms “the dark side of charisma that can afflict the best of leaders”. With celebrity status, he warns, can come insecurity. “The ego intrudes and demands unquestioned loyalty as well as an arrogance that ends up as an ‘I know best’ attitude. Every leader needs to be aware of this and not fall into that trap,” he says. Modi, Srinivas believes, should be aware of these and constantly fine-tune his actions to retain the trust of the nation. More so as a third term beckons and he appears to be in pole position to win it. If he does win a third term, it will give him the opportunity to stand on the same pedestal as Nehru who, despite his flaws, is the statesman every political leader aspires to emulate.
