TEN YEARS of Narendra Modi’s rule has transformed Gujarat in many ways. But there are also some inherent qualities in the state that have nurtured his rise as a Chinese leader in an Indian democracy.
“One can analyse Modi for hours,” says sociologist Tridip Suhrud, “but we are only going after a symptom. The disease lies within.”
“There are some key reasons why Gujarat has embraced Narendra Modi so strongly and with such little dissent,” agrees Achyut Yagnik. “For one, Gujarat is the most urbanised state in India. There are over 30 cities in the state and almost every 25 km, you will hit a town. This has collapsed the sharp ruralurban divide you get in other parts of India. This is why it’s so much easier to evoke homogenised responses here.”
Other factors he lists are the deep penetration of the Parivar into local structures; the financially strong but socially regressive Gujarati diaspora; and the fact that Gujarat has already been an industrial society for over 150 years.
Of the 10 percent Muslims that make up Gujarati society, a large section are Bohras and Memons — Gujarati traders — who are comfortable partnering with the BJP. There is also the rise of new religious sects like the Swaminarayan, the Swadhyays and Morari Bapu followers, all of who breathe Hindutva.
Suhrud adds other interesting facets of modern-day Gujarat. Part of the homogenisation of Gujarat, he says, has come from the fact that both tribals and Dalits began to be educated during the old Gaekwad regime. With education, their aspirations have changed and can be met by a middle-class hero. Dalits want upward mobility through entrepreneurship and assimilation into the mercantile class. They know this can be achieved only through collaboration not conflict. Business and protest culture never go together.
Finally, the old Gandhian movement and the idea of voluntarism is dead; there’s been a total capitulation of the university and writers to the State; and there is genuine admiration for the seemingly modern language of numbers that Modi speaks.
“There are many aspects of Modi’s governance that have been positive,” says Suhrud, “but the trouble is these positives are inseparable from his authoritarian will for power and intolerance for dissent.”
The final reason both commentators zero in for Modi’s unchallenged reign in Gujarat is the effete disarray of the Congress. “They can’t get an ad right,” says Suhrud, referring to the Republic Day fiasco this year, when the Gujarat Congress took out a full-page ad that included praise for Narendra Modi’s good governance. “And they want to take on a propaganda machine like Modi, who is on perpetual campaign mode!”
But perhaps, the Congress is finally limbering itself into an opposition worthy of a shrewd adversary like Modi. In June 2011, the Congress submitted a 1,000-page memorandum to President Pratibha Patil with evidence of 17 alleged scams by the Modi government. Most of these were related to undue concessions and land given dirt cheap to corporations like the Adanis, Tatas, Bharat Hotels, Larsen and Toubro, Essar and others.
On 4 June this year, the Justice MB Shah Commission, set up to probe these allegations, started to hear the cases. If any of these stick, they will hit at the very basis of Modi’s Brand Gujarat packaging: his reputation for honesty; his grand largesse to corporations; his ability to act quick and unilaterally at his own discretion; his famed single-window clearances. Given the dominant mood against unbridled neo-liberal economic policies elsewhere in the country, Modi might need to start bracing himself for some tough questions.
Earlier, on 12 January this year, Justice VM Sahai of the Gujarat High Court had criticised the Modi government stridently for its “brazen conduct”; “false sense of invincibility” and “spitefulness” in stonewalling the appointment of Justice RA Mehta as the state Lokayukta. He said it had been “absolutely essential” for the Governor to have exercised her discretionary power to appoint the Lokayukta without consulting the chief minister and his council of ministers as “their action and conduct were perilous to our democracy and the rule of law”.
The Modi administration has moved the Supreme Court on the issue. The court verdict will come in July. If Mehta, widely considered an upright man, is appointed, this could spell a fresh challenge for Modi, who as CEO CM, has become used to having no peer oversight mechanism on his decisions.
Two other court orders on 8 February and 15 February 2012, hauling up his government and directing it to compensate 500 religious structures damaged in the riots and 65 Muslim petitioners whose shops had been destroyed, should also remind Modi of the genuine overture to the Muslims that is still pending, beyond the glamoured photo-ops of his Sadbhavana fasts.
Over the past year-and-half, the local Gujarati media, which had been almost completely subservient to him, has suddenly started reporting robustly on Modi. A journalist from a big vernacular daily explains, “At first, people were very taken in, but now everyone’s starting to see through his natak; his drama. That’s what’s making people speak up.”
The absence of family is part of Modi’s appeal for the middle class. It has allowed him to retain an air of austere restraint, despite his reinventions
From the villages of Kutch and Banaskantha, a tribal, cattle- rearing district in north Saurashtra, voices that were earlier approving of Modi, or at least silent, are also starting to speak critically. Sujabhai Roop Singh Rathod, 41, a local journalist with the Sandesh paper and also the local media convenor for the BJP in Banaskantha’s Vav block, is scathing about the water situation in his village. “The water we used to drink earlier from tubewells was clean. The Narmada pipeline water was originally meant for irrigation. That’s why it’s an open canal so that if animals fall into it, it doesn’t matter. But now this water is being piped into our homes as drinking water and we are falling ill.”
Dudaji Rajput, 52, the sarpanch’s husband in Bharadwa village, Banaskantha, is even more dissatisfied. “The drinking water crisis is massive. There is none for the fields too. It’s true Modi has brought development. But does he even know the meaning of the word Sadbhavana? How much has he gone and spent in the name of Sadbhavana?”
Asked about Modi’s recent announcement of Rs 1,800 crore as a package for Banaskantha, he says, “My understanding is that Modi claims the credit for the routine funding that arrives for the district.”
Ramdin Kanor, the sarpanch of Fatehgarh village in Rapar block, Kutch, is equally vocal about his disgust. “Modi keeps talking of the pride of Gujarat — Gujarat’s gaurav. But for the poor, there is no pride, no gaurav. There is no support for the poor. And we have no water.”
In the 2007 election, Modi had sent out an SMS that said, “I am CM, was CM, and will be CM. CM means Common Man!” In a sense, this witty play captures the dilemma of Narendra Modi’s ambition.
Which CM is he? If he really wants to make a go at national politics, this is a question he will have to resolve firmly within himself. This December, it might help if he started with making both letters lower case.
Shoma Chaudhury is Managing Editor, Tehelka.
shoma@tehelka.com
