The big picture

When I was commissioned by The Friday Times to write a piece on whether, a year on, Indian youth continue to look up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I thought it should end in one sentence: after nothing, Modi is their next best hope. Period.

The punch-line demands elaboration.

India has suffered a leadership crisis since the political inactivity of one of the most loved, or rather respected, politicians of our times – Atal Bihari Vajpayee. When he spoke, he roared, lion-like, but minus the hollow, rhetorical, ‘fatty’ muscle that we see contemporary politicians flex. His roar had the solidity of reading, research, experience, erudition and, of course, articulation. And he was a genuine people’s politician. He was large-hearted, he was well-travelled, he had his finger on the public pulse and his mind on how to hike up India’s position globally – not by mere projection, but by showing to the world India was a billion-strong nation of achievers by way of his personal accomplishments rather than mere showmanship.

In his retirement from public life, India is suffering from a real leadership crisis. But this has continued for some time now. So where are we headed post-Vajpayee?

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government made way for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime in 2004, thereby ending Vajpayee’s political life. In came the secretive, elusive Manmohan Singh, who had earned a standing ovation from India’s economy as well as its people as finance minister in P. V. Narasimha Rao’s government, but failed to impress as Prime Minister. This, he continued to do for a full ten years.

In its first term, the UPA government appeared to do not too badly for the economy (India’s economic growth rate was a little under 7 percent), national security, civilian and strategic affairs (the historic Indo-US civil nuclear deal was signed). It introduced what seemed to be the revolutionary idea of guaranteeing a minimum 100 days of employment to the rural unemployed by assigning them tasks in agriculture or infrastructure development. This was under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, wherein a daily wage of INR 135 was guaranteed to anyone with a national identity card and no other source of income. Then came the elections, which the UPA won again. Henceforth, they simply became drunk on power. Decline.

Politically, youth is as easy to attract as it is to alienate

The long and short of it is that the effective leadership has been upset with India’s surging youth brigade for years. During the 2014 elections, we thought that, had consecutive corruption charges not been slapped on Congress, the party might have won a third term and its leader-in-the-making, Rahul Gandhi, might have been anointed Prime Minister. But wishful thinking remains, well, wishful. Instead, the Congress had corruption charges oozing from every pore and was unable to make Rahul even its prime ministerial candidate, leave alone Prime Minister of India. And this is a brief history of India’s contemporary leadership crisis – paving the way for the opposition party, the BJP.

And in strode Modi, riding on a wave of three economically successful terms in his home state of Gujarat. His first term’s performance was blotted by the regrettable communal riots of 2002, but he managed to mask this with masterly economic and industrial performance for the 60 million Gujaratis who are known to understand the language of money and business better than anything and anyone else. And, as he continued to win elections, people slowly forgot the riots.

So, on one hand we had a party that did a fair bit for the country – and quite a lot for the family that ‘owns’ the party – but without making much noise about it either. On the other hand, we had a party that had no ‘family’, but a giant who did a fair bit for his state as chief minister and remembered to tell everyone what he had done. Do you think making a choice was difficult for an India where more than half the population is under 35 – an age group that talks career?

Youth is as easy to attract as it is to alienate. And Modi had tabs on them early on – something that the Congress missed doing. A small example: being as tech-savvy as Modi is, he had the BJP’s technical arm create mobile apps for the election months before voting day. The sleepy Congress, on the other hand, hasn’t anything similar to show even now. Modi connected with the country’s youth on social media, sent out personalised greetings on New Year’s and Holi – the two big festive occasions between his anointment as BJP’s PM candidate and voting day. The Congress remained completely missing in action. It is interesting to note that, while the Congress was led by a 40-something Rahul, it failed to appeal to the young, while the BJP’s 60-plus Modi clicked… and how.

Modi would do well to remember that India's youth is not just big, but getting bigger

Now, dear reader, tell me: on whom should the youth of India have put their money – someone whose party had raked in the moolah and spread no hope, or someone who announced he had given Gujarat a world-class infrastructure as a result of which industry was booming, employment was being generated and foreign investment flowing in?

The answer is clear.

Modi may not have yet proved to be the messiah that India’s surging youth brigade thought he would be, but when there is a vast mound (read: landfill) of political garbage to be cleaned up before a modern sanitation system can be laid down, it will take a long while for clean air and water to flow through and nourish the political ecosystem. Modi has a long way to go before he can actually prove he was the right choice for those who voted him into power. There are two broad parameters of how he is believed to be doing some things right: one, foreign policy and, two, his natural instinct for business. These parameters make for interesting conversation with young people. I sat with a cuppa in two college canteens to chat with the college kids. The conversation was robust and I kept refilling the cup.

‘See how well Modi is projecting India to the world. He is making jaunt after jaunt to various continents and is drawing large crowds. His Madison Square Garden speech looked like a popular baseball match in the US. At least the world is sitting up and taking note of India now,’ said Irum Khan, a second-year MBBS student at the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences. ‘But Irum,’ I rebutted, ‘and pardon me for communally profiling you – I’m only trying to put things in context. As a Muslim, weren’t you hurt by the 2002 riots in Modi’s Gujarat?’ Irum smiled while stirring her masala chai and settled it once and for all: ‘Ruchika ji, you are a Hindu from a Sikh-dominant Punjab, which saw the worst state-backed military operation inside your most sacred site, the Golden Temple. Did you cling to your society’s contempt for the Congress for 30 years? They ruled India nonetheless. Rajiv Gandhi brought computers to India. See where we are in the field of information technology today.’ At 32, with ten years of journalistic experience under my belt, I couldn’t counter this 22-year-old college student’s argument.

When that feeling of victimhood begins to wash away from a marginalised people, nations become strong. Irum’s sense of self-confidence and detachment from a nightmare is indicative of how the bloodiest blots on people and entities can be washed away when they realise the confidence people have in them – and hence the responsibility and accountability that comes in tow. It’s either perform or perish. And Modi doesn’t understand the latter.

Next, a visit to St Stephen’s College – known for its monstrously demanding admission criteria (they want students with at least a 98 percent grade in Class 10; the rest, please lay off). I had arranged to share the college canteen’s famous cutlets with Priya Venkatesh, Ashutosh Mehra and Manpreet Singh. A bright, energetic trio in their final year of an economics (Hons) degree, they told me they had read what Ratan Tata, the grandpa of India’s industry today, had said about Modi in April. Girls are known to do their homework well, so Priya had brought the news clipping with her to show me. Tata was quoted as telling a gathering: ‘All of us should understand that it’s a new government, and we need not get disillusioned and dissatisfied with [it] so fast... There’s a great deal of hope in the inspirational leadership of Modi. He is still in the early stages of defining what he hopes to deliver [to] a new India. The implementation hasn’t really taken form this year. But we still have to give him the opportunity to implement what he has promised.’

Indians are an impatient lot. We sit in denial and wait for disasters to happen. But when the cup overflows, we run helter-skelter and demand a clean-up immediately. We want things to go from worst to best in a jiffy, but life isn’t Walt Disney Studio.

People say Modi is doing most things well… if not all. It seems there is an urgency to share with the world India’s foreign policy. Modi visited 18 countries in his first year in office. Critics made all kinds of jokes and we all had fun. But here’s the counter-argument: why were we so sluggish on this till 2014? Why did we not feel the need to tell the world that we were here to talk business? The activity – some will say ‘hyperactivity’ – in the Foreign Office is a message that we are no longer going to sit still. When a PM goes abroad or receives visiting dignitaries, s/he essentially signs business deals. And we certainly don’t mind that. In October, after a long gap of 31 years (Indira Gandhi hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1984), India will host the India-Africa Summit, the largest conclave of foreign heads of government and heads of state since then. Why was such a grand event made to wait so long? This is a question I once asked – and Modi did too – of a very senior officer in the Foreign Office. How will India accomplish its mission of becoming a global superpower if we don’t think big and work big?

Big events, big visits mean big business; big projects bring job generation. And I know for a fact that Modi likes to do things in a big way. He is welcome to do so, provided he fulfils the big promises he made to his big electorate when he obtained the big mandate. And he would do well to remember that India’s youth is not just big, but getting bigger.