Why is the US, after India’s electorate of 2014, so maniacally sold out to Modi?
This paper’s editor and my friend, Najam Sethi, asked me this question over the ‘Modi’ weekend. Attempting to arrive at the answer to this question took forever and the exercise drove me crazy.
Najam’s question can’t be answered in one go. I’ll have to build up the argument: just like Modi took nine years to headspring from a perceived persona non grata for the US, to a foreign dignitary who got a hero’s welcome on American soil.
I’m not too generous or perhaps even charitable towards Modi but I have to admit that he has this amazing ability to establish a personal connect with his audience. After three successive and also successful terms as Gujarat’s chief minister, Modi has learnt and mastered the knack of media management. He knows what and how to project before the newshounds. And they lap it all up. Take his decision to speak at New York’s Madison Square Garden, a venue frequented by America’s popular culture icons. Modi and his junior event managers (since he is the big daddy of them all), cleverly chose this venue as a projection to the world that here is the head of India’s government, a country which has been so far been sneered by the developed world inhabited predominantly by White-skinned people for being dirty, unhygenic, backward. And Modi talks to them about his ‘swachhta abhiyan’, a cleanliness drive he has kickstarted ever since he took office in May. Before embarking upon his American journey, he announced that Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, will trigger off the Swachhta Abhiyan, wherein he promised to sweep India clean of muck, while leading from the front, wielding a broom. His cabinet colleagues had already set the wheels of this cleanliness drive in motion in his absence.
[quote]Modi means business, and for India, business has come to mean Modi[/quote]
At the rockstar reception he received at Madison Square Garden, he didn’t shy away from saying that when people ask him: “Modiji, aapka barha vision kya hai Bharat ke liye (Mr Modi, what’s your big vision for India), he replies: “main to chai bechte-bechte yahan tak pahoncha hoon, mera barha vision kya hoga (I sold tea to reach till here, what could be my grand vision)? Now, this is what India’s people want from their leader: commitment (to the causes of the common man), connection (with them through the media) and candour (about his frugal means and less-than-humble background). This gives them hope. It caters perfectly to the ambitious, aspirational middle class Indian in the US who left his/her motherland for better career opportunities in the US, and then, stuck there after finding comfort in its clean and relatively corruption-free lap. And it is this Indian, who has now come to be known as the American NRI, who did Modi’s bidding before and during his high-profile visit that got his thunderous applause.
This American NRI is mostly Gujarati. Or, Punjabi. Sindhi, too. Even South Indian. All communities aggressively right-wing. Business-minded. Money-minting and entrepreneurial. Enterprising and resourceful. Devout. All things Modi.
This is the first argument for my answer to Najam’s question.
The 20,000 people who had gathered at the glittering show at Madison Square Garden, came there to hero-worship a man who represented the new India 2.0. India 1.0 was former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s India which started off with a bang but ended with a whimper. Whimper and Manmohan Singh rhyme so well, no? Modi on the other hand, speaks and how! I feel out of my skin saying that Modi and the lions of Gir in his home state of Gujarat, rhyme well.
Modi’s American dream was very well-planned and calibrated: he spoke at Madison Square Garden wearing his trademark light churidaar-kurta and a bright Nehru jacket. He spoke in Hindi. He thanked the crowd for their support during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Observe closely, this note of thanks was for the BJP’s US chapter which, like the rest of the BJP, worked hard to bring the party to power in New Delhi. But his wisdom to thank all in one voice concealed this division and earned him cumulative cheers.
When US president Barack Obama invited Modi to the White House for dinner, he didn’t eat a single morsel, favouring warm water over the grand spread laid out in his honour. Navratri, nine days of fasting for the Hindus were underway. Such posturing plays a big role in making a popular politician more popular amongst a people who wear their religion on their sleeve. A people who are devout and rich and business-minded love such leaders. And Modi actually deserves kudos for ‘exhibiting’ this resolve at a dinner hosted by the world’s most powerful man. It surely must have hiked him up in Obama’s estimation, even if he didn’t partake of his hospitality.
The next morning, Modi met some of America’s most powerful business heads over breakfast. This, as tweeted by the Indian foreign ministry’s spokesman, was business more than breakfast. By the end of it all, we knew the captains of Fortune 500 companies like Boeing, BlackRock, KKR and Goldman Sachs had held one-on-one meetings with him to discuss business prospects in finer detail. Businessmen of this order were constantly discouraged by the paralytic foreign investment policy structure of the Manmohan Singh-led Congress government prior to Modi’s Big Bang Theory of ‘Make in India’.
Whether or not this big bang theory gets converted into a result-oriented thunderclap, time will tell. But Modi’s proven results during his chief ministership with the bi-annual Vibrant Gujarat summit did get Gujarat substantial foreign investment, primarily from the US. Modi means business, and for India, business has come to mean Modi. He has become the one-stop shop with a single-window to talk business. The red tape has been ordered to be cut out, rather shredded into smithereens. Najam, this is why the American NRI loves him.
In the midst of this brouhaha, we forgot the main event that ensured Modi got a US visa this time: the UNGA. While he made a pitch for the business opportunity that is his India now, he also rebuffed Pakistan’s demand for the Kashmir plebiscite. Talking about terrorism, Modi hinted at Pakistan when he said that some countries were giving refuge to international terrorists and that they consider terrorism to be a tool of their policy. Through this, he again sent out a strong message to the American NRI that he is a strongman and a no-nonsense man.
During his formal bilateral meeting with Obama, Modi made a commitment that the rich and philanthropic make, something that once again made the American NRI feel big, important and rich: he committed India’s help in combating cancer and Ebola. This, coming from a country which not very long ago was suffering from diseases like polio and epidemics like plague. The taker becomes the giver, and everyone loves that.
I just got a joke by text message. Obama to Modi: “Please return to India because if you stay here any longer, you’ll become the president of the United States.”