Three years on, a work in progress
obstinate streak in Modi that has proved a big deterrence against political pressures for ‘accommodation’. In making the capital’s lobbying industry redundant, resisting the temptation to be part of the cosy social life of Lutyens’ Delhi, refusing to be swayed by media storms and in being inflexible in his insistence on rectitude, Modi has presented a distinctive style of leadership. Critics have pilloried him for an authoritarian streak but imperiousness born of exercising moral choices has always yielded returns. The argumentative public life notwithstanding, the Indian voter has an abiding fascination for strong-willed leaders.
At the same time the Modi government isn’t ideologically dogmatic in its strategies of governance. Modi has defied neat categorisation and this has been the source of much misunderstanding of both the man and his regime. As the basic parameters of his governance suggests, he has blended different impulses. He has combined a topdown approach with grassroots political mobilisation, lofty idealism with electoral expediency, statism with market impulses, self-help with state welfare and swadeshi with the global. Far from being a transient phenomenon — as many imagined he would be — he has completely altered the political landscape in a short span of three years. His governance is still a work in progress and it will take a longer time frame to comprehend its full impact.
As a senior BJP leader once told me: “Modi is not there to manage India; he is there to change it.” In fact, he is doing both.