Modi is more Indira than Nehru
stellar team of advisors, until most fell out because of the Emergency.
On the flip side, she was dictatorial and driven by power. She finished most of the political talent, older and young within her party -- K. Kamraj to D.K. Barooah as party president underlines this. She was cavalier in her approach to institutions, unleashed awful economic populism, took the peak income tax rate to 97 per cent and turned Nehru’s already gooey idea of mixed economy into a pucca licence-quota raj, nationalising large sectors, from finance to coal to petroleum, and played with the agricultural economy (and burnt her fingers). She also left an unhappy, insecure and resentful neighbourhood.
Take a close look at Modi’s four years now. Check where he looks like Nehru or Indira and where he doesn’t. He certainly looks as personally popular as both at this point in his tenure. He has great global presence and first-name acquaintance with many world leaders. His personal integrity is beyond reproach. In a broader sense, he has the same magisterial sway over pan-national public opinion as the other two. He’s given India a new confidence, Indians have a renewed swagger.
At the same time, his economics is more socialist than Nehru’s, almost as populist as Indira’s. He hasn’t nationalised any sector (although he has failed to denationalise Air India), but he is renationalising much, in a manner of speaking. He is simply getting one public sector company to acquire another, thereby using these as his off-balance sheet milch cows. If the economic statistics do not look good, he isn’t disinclined to have them dressed up. Like both Indira and Nehru, he is deeply statist. He believes nothing is wrong with the government, if you know how to run it: like him. The government, therefore, is becoming bigger, more intrusive.
His chief ministers are hand-picked nobodies, the party is fully dependent on him for votes. His obsession with summiteering rivals Nehru’s but his approach to foreign relations is transactional. It hasn’t worked. Our big-power ties are wobbly. Our neighbourhood is stressed again and we are left with just one friend: Bangladesh.
Further, if UPA bowed to a Left Luddite gallery on GM seeds, he is surrendering to the loony, xenophobic swadeshis of the Right. We aren’t sure he reads very much, or has time for people with intellect and fame in their specific fields. His government is the most talent-averse in our history yet, even having got rid of the few good, professional economists it had. Most problematic: our political discourse has degenerated into non-stop abuse and accordingly, social cohesion is stressed.
Draw a line at the bottom of this balance sheet, add and subtract, assign what weightage you wish to each factor. I leave it to you then to decide whether Modi has drawn the best, or the worst attributes of Nehru and Indira. I must qualify again, the best qualities in a leader do not necessarily win you a re-election. Check out the fate of Vajpayee circa 2004.
By special arrangement with Theprint. The views expressed are personal