AAKAR PATEL
Friend Ram Madhav has written a fine piece on Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaching an important milestone. On June 10, he writes, Modi completed 4,399 days in office un interruptedly as prime minister overtaking Jawaharlal Nehru’s re cord of 4,398 days. The awkward word uninterruptedly is used because Indira Gandhi was in office for almost 6,000 days. No doubt our leader will cross that number in time as well. What is more interesting here is Madhav’s asser tion that ‘Modi, undoubt edly, will be remembered as the most effective and successful prime minis ter of India.’ Madhav is of course a long time as sociate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and might be expected to look on the bright side of this. His reason for writing what he does is that Modi ‘is midway through his third term as the prime minister.
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Yet, his dom inance over the Indian political landscape re mains towering and un challenged. He is certain to break more records as he continues to lead the country for many more years to come.’ Yes, it is true that lon gevity is important and staying on the crease for an extended period is also important to some people. But from the audience’s perspective what is relevant is what is on the scoreboard. Here the problem is that unlike longevity the data on Modi’s performance is unclear. Madhav says among Modi’s achieve ments are that India’s Gross Domestic Product doubled in the last one decade. But the fact is that it has doubled each decade since independ ence; certainly it has every decade since 1960 (which is the period from which we have World Bank data). What else can we see here? Madhav says that ‘in foreign pol icy, Modi scripted a glo rious history.’ How? That we do not know. Look ing around us at what is happening in the world today, it would be diffi cult not to conclude that India is an irrelevant ac tor in the great events and the accusation can be accurately made that India’s policy is often servile, especially to US president Donald Trump. However we need not go there today because our focus is different. The question to ask is this: How will Modi be remembered six decades after he is gone? In the India of 2086, what will people be writing and speaking of Modi as we speak and write of Nehru today, 62 years after his passing? My concern is that we (those of us who are still around then and those who are born here on) may not be referring to Modi at all and he might be as relevant as Deve Gowda or Inder Gu jral or Rajiv Gandhi will be in that era.
One rea son for this is that things and people and events that are current fade very quickly with time. Gavaskar gives way to Tendulkar who gives way to Kohli who gives way to Vaibhav. There is always a shiny new thing on of fer and the relationship that the present gener ation has to the current stars is always more fresh and intense than they have to the things of the past. But if this is true then why has Nehru not fad ed and why are Madhav and those of us who are fans of this prime min ister still exhuming the old Jawaharlal so long after he has gone into the ether? That brings us to the second reason why Neh ru is still with us in spir it. It is because of what he left behind. The first is institutions of every sort – educational, scien tific, cultural and medi cal — that he conceived and built. It is rare in the world, and especial ly rare in our parts, for this achievement.
Compare the legion of things Nehru built with what Modi has conceived and executed. One is hard pressed to come up with any. Perhaps the hapless NITI Aayog (is it still around?) might be one thing Modi gifts to the India of the future, but what else? Hard to say. The second thing Neh ru left behind is, like his institutions, still around us and associated with him: what is called the idea of India. Meaning a pluralist society that has a pathway to modernity. Here we can concede that Modi has made a dif ference and parted ways with the past in a way that may be longer last ing than his non-exist ing institutions. Madhav concludes by writing that ‘it is not just the numbers that distinguish Modi from others. It is the quality of governance, ideological vision and effective development agenda that he brought to the table as the leader of the world’s largest de mocracy that makes him the shining star of Indian politics.’ This India around us that has made him the shining star is one dom inated by laws and pol icies of exclusion and persecution.
Bulldozers, lynchings, special inten sive revisions and so on. And on. Much of it is not new of course but the intensity is new and it is Modi’s gift to India. One is not sure wheth er what we have experi enced will last till 2086. One hopes it does not but then it is irrelevant for me because I will not be around to see it. My guess, which is based on the evidence of what Modi has left behind in the last dozen years, is that if this continues for just another decade or so, let alone another six dec ades, Modi will indeed be remembered but not for the reasons Ram Madhav would like him to be. (Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist)
