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Cometh the Man?
The
Economist, which has been piercingly critical of Politician
Modi, Chief Minister Modi, Candidate
Modi, seems to have changed its tack when it comes to appraising Prime Minister
Modi. Barely a day after the Indian’s leader’s gala inauguration as the
nation’s fifteenth prime minister, the ashes of opprobrium heaped on him for
his role in the Gujarat 2002 riots, seemed suddenly to have turned into
snowflakes of praise. India’s unofficial First Lady, the redoubtable Soniaji who had once described Modi as a “maut ka saudaagar” (purveyor of death)
bowed to him with a gracious smile as he entered the Presidential forecourt to
be sworn in.
And so did The
Economist. In articles entitled “Modi’s Mission,” and “India’s Strongman,”
liberally studded with subheads screaming, “cometh the hour, cometh the man,”
and “Narendra the great mender,” “from
lackey to leader,” and “one rule for all,” the voice of NATO to which
presidents and prime ministers and their cabinets pay heed and ignore at their
own political peril its purportedly
super-rational and finely calibrated approach to news and commentary, did a
somersault that must have flummoxed even the usually placid Modi.
The para that was my eyeball-grabber, that must have
similarly affected Modi as well his advisors and world leaders reads: “Now for
the first time, India has a strong government whose priority is growth.
Narendra Modi who leads the BJP, has won a tremendous victory on the strength of
promising to make India’s economy work. Although we did not endorse him,
because we believe he has not atoned sufficiently for the massacre of Muslims
that took place in Gujarat while he was chief minister, we wish him every
success: an Indian growth miracle would be a great thing, not just for India but for the world.” (my italics).
Well, it seems that after a Rip Van Winklean
politico-economic slumber India is once again saying, hullo, world! To change
metaphors in midstream, the yawning
Manmohan Singh is giving way to a roaring Modi. His campaign style and rhetoric
was more than ample demonstration of this. While Modi fulminated with verve,
his opponents mooed guffishly in return. Not because they were incapable morons
but because they rode the cart horses of
caste and despondency and negativism while Modi galloped on a steed
symbolizing speed, and the optimistic dream of a people hungry for reform.
So Modi hedged no bets. He made a break for it. And
the dividends are obvious. Modi campaigned on a development plank and his
administration will reflect that direction. A news agency which analyzed 68 speeches on his website noted that he used
the word “development” 534 times,
“Hindu” not even once, “Gujarat” 1300 times, and “rural” many more times than
“urban,” which roughly translates into his philosophy of busting loose from
stagflation, falling growth rate, and generating growth through accelerating
infrastructural expansion to help rural employment by using the Gujarat
Administrative Model (GAM) of “red carpet and no red tape.”
The same growth paradigm will apply to Modi’s
foreign policy. And that’s what the world saw during the ceremonial oath
taking. Today’s world continues to look at foreign relations as a situation of
no-permanent-friends-only-permanent-interests. Unfortunately for India, the
last decade has shown India without any real friends and groping to find what
her real interests are or where they lie.
During the Nehru era, India found friends and
interests because Nehru had the guts and gumption to assume charge as the
natural leader of the emerging post-colonial countries. It was the sheer
strength of his vision and his ability to articulate it that drew stalwarts
like Tito, Nasser, Sukarno, Kenyatta, Selassie, Shah Pehlavi, King Hussein
flocking to his side under the Bandung flag or diplomatic slogans laced with
Panch Sheela phrases.
And what did India have then? A zero economy with
pie-in-the-sky public sector projects, almost total rural illiteracy, soaring
infant mortality, periodic regional famines, no indigenous technology, a
hand-me-down, creaky military system. Yet it was the strength of his ideas that
Nehru used to build his leadership as a champion of non-alignment and defy all
American or Soviet blandishments to
become a party to any system of international military alliances that would mean slavery.
Fast forward. The 1990’s dawn. The 1991 reforms
release entrepreneurial energy. With a growth rate later touching 10 percent,
nuclear energy production, a viable space program, huge savings and investments, institutional
investors pouring in, the capital markets flush, IT and ITEs and Indian
brainpower becoming global buzzwords, India suddenly finds new friends and new interests.
India-China economic rivalry to emerge as the world’s fastest growing mega
economies made page one headlines. Then,
again, a descent into the abyss. India’s GDP per capita was similar to China’s
three decades back. As The Economist
points out, India’s GDP is less than a quarter of the size: “The increase in
China’s average annual GDP per head from $300 to $6,750 over that period has
brought unimaginable prosperity to hundreds of millions of people.”
And that is a lesson that has never been lost on
Modi. He knows that India can do it. He has seen India do that in spurts and
starts and he has seen Gujarat perform brilliantly in various sectors. And he
knows that one of the prime reasons for India’s plunge is that its
administrative leadership and mechanisms are rotten to the core. So he starts
his premiership by demonstrating to the world that India Means Business.
That is why he invites all SAARC heads of state to
his inauguration. And they all attend because they sense something new is in
the air – that Modi also means business. That a nation once demonstrably the
leader of the non-aligned world even while sunk in desperate poverty, a nation
once globally front-paged for a new economic miracle, has voted overwhelmingly
for a leader with the best promise of transformation.
And where better to begin than with foreign policy
that dovetails with his larger economic vision of trade and commerce. Modi recognizes
the potential economic power of regional blocs with geo-political synergy. He
has realized that groups like BIMSTEC, SAARC have remained debating clubs
because bilateral tensions within these clubs have sabotaged economic plans of
common action, free trade zones, and perhaps even common currencies. This
economic weave knits countries closer than just cultural handshakes and mutual
support at the United Nations.
Modi has travelled to Singapore, China, Japan. He
admires their growth models. He openly praises Chinese initiatives, and is in
awe of Japan’s projection of “soft power.” The invitation to SAARC leaders for
his inauguration demonstrated both his geopolitical as well as economic vision
even before he was sworn in.
Politically, he had Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif in a
bind. Had Sharif refused to attend, he would have demonstrated to the world
that he is the captive of fundamentalist and pro-terrorist ISI-backed forces in
Pakistan and cannot be taken seriously by any country, specially the West in
the war against terror or the Af-Pak initiatives. Especially when Afghanistan’s
Karzai was attending. His invitation to
Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa who has been vilified in the West as a human
rights violator after he defeated the terrorist LTTE was to demonstrate to
Europe and the US, that his government’s foreign policy has zero tolerance for
terrorist sympathizers and India will not be held captive to the political or regional group interest such as the Tamil
parties who boycotted the event.
Overall, putting teeth and economic bite into SAARC
and BRICS has been an old Modi dream. He
is aware that India’s most important neighbours—Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Afghanistan are essential to India’s strategic
interests. And the economic benefits of accelerating trade with all these
nations will have a multiplier effect throughout the world. Relationships with
most of these countries had plummeted under the UPA regimes. The SAARC invitations were the first trial
balloon of his leadership and projection of his image to the world especially
China and the US who have competing interest in this region.
A couple of years ago, Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa
lamented: “Al of us used to look up to India as the elder brother, the elder
relative, the largest and economically strongest who would assume leadership and attain
pre-eminence in our region. But most of us are disappointed. There is no clear
policy, no great vision. When there is a vacuum other countries will step in.”
I met him shortly after his one-on-one meeting with
Modi on May 27th, a day after the inauguration and asked him if he
felt the same way. He answered: “I believe India and this region may have a
true leader now.”
A straw in the wind, perhaps, but at least there is
one.
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