THE Narendra Modi
Narendra Damodardas Modi : (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who is the 14th and current Prime Minister of India, in office since May 2014. He was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, and is the Member of Parliament for Varanasi. Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a Hindu nationalist and member of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Born to a Gujarati family in Vadnagar, Modi helped his father sell tea as a child, and later ran his own stall. He was introduced to the RSS at the age of eight, beginning a long association with the organisation. He left home after graduating from school, partly because of an arranged marriage which he rejected. Modi traveled around India for two years, and visited a number of religious centres. He returned to Gujarat and moved to Ahmedabad in 1969 or 1970. In 1971 he became a full-time worker for the RSS. During the state of emergency imposed across the country in 1975, Modi was forced to go into hiding. The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985, and he held several positions within the party hierarchy until 2001, rising to the rank of general secretary.
Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001, due to Keshubhai Patel's failing health and poor public image following the earthquake in Bhuj. Modi was elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration has been considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots,or otherwise criticised for its handling of it, although a court found no evidence to prosecute Modi.His policies as chief minister, credited with encouraging economic growth, have received praise. His administration has been criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty, and education indices in the state.
Modi led the BJP in the 2014 general election, which gave the party a majority in the Lok Sabha, the first time a single party had achieved this since 1984. Modi himself was elected to parliament from Varanasi. Since taking office, Modi's administration has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy, increased spending on infrastructure, and reduced spending on healthcare and social welfare programmes. Modi has attempted to improve efficiency in the bureaucracy, and centralised power through the abolition of the planning commission. He has begun a high-profile sanitation campaign, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws.
Development projects
As Chief Minister, Modi favoured privatisation and small government, which was at odds with the philosophy of the RSS, usually described as anti-privatisation and anti-globalisation. His policies during his second term have been credited with reducing corruption in the state. He established financial and technology parks in Gujarat and during the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real-estate investment deals worth ₹6.6 trillion were signed.
The governments led by Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of groundwater-conservation projects. By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been built, of which 113,738 were check dams, which helped recharge the aquifers beneath them.Sixty of the 112 tehsils which had depleted the water table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater levels by 2010. As a result, the state's production of genetically modified cotton increased to become the largest in India. The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent from 2001 to 2007.Public irrigation measures in central and southern Gujarat, such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam, were less successful. The Sardar Sarovar project only irrigated 4–6% of the area intended. Nonetheless, from 2001 to 2010 Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97 percent – the highest of any state. However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the 1992–97 INC government was 12.9 percent.In 2008 Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano after a popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal. Several other companies followed the Tata's to Gujarat.
The Modi government finished the process of bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat that its predecessor had almost completed. Modi significantly changed the state's system of power distribution, greatly impacting farmers. Gujarat expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which agricultural electricity was separated from other rural electricity; the agricultural electricity was rationed to fit scheduled irrigation demands, reducing its cost. Although early protests by farmers ended when those who benefited found that their electricity supply had stabilised,according to an assessment study corporations and large farmers benefited from the policy at the expense of small farmers and labourers.
Why
Because nearly three years into his term, he remains the unchallenged Number 1. Because under him, the BJP looks unstoppable, forcing the Opposition to continually play catch-up. Every key move the Modi government makes — from surgical strikes to demonetisation — is done in his name. Under him, the Prime Minister’s Office wields almost absolute power, inviting awe and criticism in equal measure. His relentless campaigning fuelled the party’s sweep in Uttar Pradesh, setting the stage for 2019. His constant communication underlines the power of his politics.
Because nearly three years into his term, he remains the unchallenged Number 1. Because under him, the BJP looks unstoppable, forcing the Opposition to continually play catch-up. Every key move the Modi government makes — from surgical strikes to demonetisation — is done in his name. Under him, the Prime Minister’s Office wields almost absolute power, inviting awe and criticism in equal measure. His relentless campaigning fuelled the party’s sweep in Uttar Pradesh, setting the stage for 2019. His constant communication underlines the power of his politics.
Power Punch
Demonetisation. Its economics may have been suspect but its politics was pure gold. He proved his critics wrong and projected the hugely disruptive note ban as a transformational reform that people must support for the greater good. And they did.
Demonetisation. Its economics may have been suspect but its politics was pure gold. He proved his critics wrong and projected the hugely disruptive note ban as a transformational reform that people must support for the greater good. And they did.
What Next
Halfway into his term, he’s looking beyond 2019. Economy and employment, rising expectations of the young remain his key challenges at home that will also define his place in the world.
Halfway into his term, he’s looking beyond 2019. Economy and employment, rising expectations of the young remain his key challenges at home that will also define his place in the world.
By the way:
THE Narendra Modi loves photography, shoots a lot and always directs photographers even as he poses for them.
Why Narendra Modi is India’s Most Loved and Loathed Politician:
Narendra Modi is on the cover of TIME this week in South Asia, available to subscribers here. Modi is the most polarizing politician in India, rarely gives interviews and is a possible future prime minister, but it bears repeating that putting Modi on the cover is not an endorsement. Researching and eventually interviewing Modi was, however, fascinating, and yielded several surprises.
The road to his office in Gandhinagar, a smooth, featureless four-lane highway, held the first one: Modi ordered the demolition of about 120 small Hindu shrines to make room for it, despite vehement objections from his Hindu nationalist allies. Modi may be portrayed as an ideologue, but he is more complicated than that. “He’s the only leader in the country who would be able to destroy a temple and get away with it, and still be called acceptable in Hindu politics,” says Tridip Suhrud, a social scientist based in Ahmedabad.
Modi’s reaction to my questions about his childhood was also surprising. He didn’t romanticize Vadnagar, the town where he grew up. He had little to say about his “very average family,” whose entire house, he says, could fit into the chief minister’s office. He left home at 17 to join the RSS, so he doesn’t have the polish of those politicians educated in elite institutions, but his English was nearly flawless, and he clearly believes in the power of the individual to educate, improve and reinvent himself. “I have never gone to college,” Modi says. “But books were my best friends.”
Most of the story weighs the two sides of the central paradox of Modi’s rise: for some, he will always be the man who presided over the 2002 anti-Muslim violence, and there are millions who will never forgive him and hope that he will eventually face criminal charges. (Modi has always denied any wrongdoing, and said he did the best that he could to protect the people of his state.) For others, 2002 is a distant memory, and Modi is fully rehabilitated as a paragon of good governance and effective administration. Those may seem like two irreconcilable halves, but spend any time in Gujarat, and both are simultaneously visible.
I first met Virendra Mhaiskar, CEO of the road building company IRB, for example, while researching a story on infrastructure in India. “Mr. Modi is looked upon with different lenses in different parts of the world,” Mhaiskar told me. He recalled submitting a $42 million bid to complete a section of Ahmedabad’s excellent bus rapid-transit system. The entire bidding process was done online — no cups of tea with mid-level bureaucrats, no photo-ops with local politicians. “Even today, I don’t know who the mayor is,” he says.
It’s possible to find similar sentiments even among Muslims. “What happened in Gujarat 10 years back was the darkest phase in the history of Gujarat,” says Mohsin Sheikh, 56, an artist who lives in the Muslim enclave of Sarkhej in Ahmedabad. “I am hopeful that the victims will soon get justice. At the same time, I think that everyone should try to forget what happened a decade back and move on. Gujarat’s development is benefiting not just one community but all the people of Gujarat, irrespective of caste and religion.” That’s the argument that Modi will have to make if he ever wants to win national office: that economic development is more important than court verdicts or compensation, and that he can deliver growth and prosperity for everyone.
With the Congress Party-led coalition facing wide criticism for corruption and ineffectiveness, Modi’s chances look good. But he will also have to overcome opposition within his own party. During a decade as chief minister, he has earned quite a few enemies. “He believes that if you really want to do certain things, you cannot waste time in discussions and compromising,” says Ghanshyam Shah, a political scientist in Ahmedabad. Those who challenged him, including ministers in his own cabinet, were shut out, and Modi refused to allow them to stand for election on BJP tickets. One faction split off into a new party; another group defected to the opposition. By the end of 2006, Modi had effectively replaced the entire political leadership of the state with those loyal to him. “In Gujarat, the BJP became Modi – one voice,” says Shah. “Anyone who had a different voice had no place within the party.” That approach has left Modi alienated within his own party, but he’ll need the BJP machinery to actually run a national campaign. Even if he doesn’t become prime minister, Modi offers a glimpse of what India might be like if it became, as some of its critics wish, a little more like China. He represents a new kind of Indian politician — democratically elected but authoritarian in style and spirit. “The future belongs to him,” says Suhrud. “The future belongs to that kind of politics.”
(Click the marker to know more about the trip)
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