Narendra Modi - Evolution of a Leader

 

This is NOT about Narendra Modi, even though he is the central character. This is about the evolution of a leader particularly in the BJP and in the NDA/ India in general.

Post the electoral defeat in 2009 the BJP was rudderless, notwithstanding the presence of LK Advani. He was old, tired, defeated and BJP could not find a pan India leader to lead the party in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. They had leaders like Gadkari, Rajnath, Jaitley, Sushma, and however popular none could qualify as an all-India election campaign leader. Popular opinion was it would be a hung parliament. The nation was in a mess, and nobody wanted to clean it given that voter expectations were high, trust low. Kejriwal/ Hazare had mortally wounded the Indian political system. BJP at that point needed a fall guy.  Someone to do the hard work, and if they failed to win, take the blame. If they won, there would be many aspirants to stake a claim to be PM. Parties, barring for those family owned, rarely announced the PM name in advance.

I am not privy to what was discussed, but the result was that Narendra Modi was announced as the PM in advance and this was a decision which even I felt was a sign of desperation. Outside of Gujarat he was unknown, he spoke Hindi brilliantly and never in English. His lack of exposure to Delhi politics, Central administration, Foreign policy, Defence were well known. The shortcomings of a state leader like Deve Gowda, in Delhi is still painfully remembered. Modi was also on the USA blacklist under Obama.  His nomination as PM was almost “suicidal” and betrayed a lack of confidence even within BJP about the outcome of the elections.

As his campaign kicked off, we saw a huge surge of energy and a frenzy that was totally unanticipated. Hung parliament, everybody said, till Modi said Mission 272. It was audacious but only a leader who aims for the sky, can skim the treetops. The PM chair was still up for grabs.

Once BJP was elected by a clear margin, there was no question of anybody opposing him as PM. He had to be accepted as the first amongst equals. If anybody had any ambitions to be PM, they had to bide their time for him to falter.

Over time the number of surprises that Modi threw up were one too many and remarkable. If at one level he displayed high self confidence in foreign policy (we didn’t see bloopers and goof ups or embarrassing stuff), he spoke in Hindi without feeling any “shame”, unheard of in anglicised India.  

His ability to play high stakes poker left his own party, colleagues, opposition, the administration and the citizens breathless. At every stage he raised the stakes, bid high, played Russian roulette and even the global community was gasping for breath. Global leaders who were critical of Modi found themselves holding the wrong end of the stick – as Obama found to his chagrin.

Obama digs deep - to find Modi 

In 2016 he announced demonetisation which any student of economics would have said would be a disaster, but instead he got cheered and not one citizen came on the streets to protest.

He kicked off a high decibel peace offensive with Pakistan, “para” dropped into Pakistan, hugged and charmed them. Everybody knew peace would not happen with Pakistan. Sure enough, it did not and having globally demonstrated his hugs and charm offensive with Pakistan he proceeded to ignore Pakistan to a point they didn’t exist except as an irritating itch. He ordered surgical strikes into Pakistan and then went public with the news officially.

A month before the 2019 elections he ordered a deep inside Pakistan territory air strike in Balakot. This in official definition was waging war. In both cases a dozen things could have gone wrong. One small misstep, which is easy in such operations, especially when one can’t predict the reaction of Pakistan. Modi and BJP would have been history in a jingoistic nation. Pakistan had repeatedly threatened a nuclear strike to any offensive action by India. 

This was followed by the capture of Wing Commander Abhinandan, shot down by Pakistan in a dog fight.  

If Pakistan expected any contrition from Modi, what they got was instant high decibel belligerence, the stakes were being raised unilaterally without any provocation and THAT, was totally unexpected. Immediate release was the non negotiable demand.

Pakistan took the moral high ground and released him within 60 hrs. This was Russian roulette of the highest order in the face of an obviously defensive situation. Modi had raised the stakes so high that anybody who knew about this would have doubted he could come out as a winner. The global community barely had time to draft their official responses. Pakistan was spooked beyond belief, blinked, shut its eye, the nuclear bluff was called and since then Pakistan has swiftly raced downhill.  

Pakistan is Spooked

Opposition leaders and other critics who were comfortable over 72 years of “discussions & talks with Pakistan” asked inane questions but none dared to admit that a high stakes Russian roulette had been played and Modi had won. 

Call it luck if you will, since an element of luck is always needed, but you need nerves of steel to play this game. By the time Modi was back as PM in 2019, every global leader was on the backfoot. Unlike the Indian critics, they were more intelligent. They “admired” a man playing Russian roulette and winning (Never confuse admiration with liking !). These incidents raised his global stature high, and people were wary of trying to play games with him. One never knew what rules he might change.

All this raised the leadership bar within BJP so high that all his colleagues had no choice but to fall in line, accept his larger-than-life position and most importantly his undisputed leadership. In Dec’2018 no less than the RSS itself was feeling uncomfortable with Modi - they like everybody had a much lower bar on what a leader should be. They propped up Gadkari, even had a senior functionary Vaidya, criticize Modi, another said that if Modi was not replaced by Gadkari, BJP would lose the 2019 elections. Even Sonia was batting openly for Gadkari.

By Mar 2019, the RSS and everybody in BJP knew that looking for a replacement to Modi would be political suicide. They knew they just did not have the stomach to play these high stakes poker games, stare adversaries in the eye and do so till they blinked. Over the last 10 years Modi has played and won this game more than once. 

Remember, both Gadkari and Jaitley had meekly accepted an apology from Kejriwal, withdrew legal cases when it was very clear that Kejriwal did not have a leg to stand on in the defamation cases filed by them against Kejriwal. For a bunch of brilliant leaders who could not make a self-confessed guilty Kejriwal blink, can anyone think they or the RSS and others, could sustain a "staring" match with  Pakistan and other adversaries, till they blink, in the way Modi has done? Whatever the "truth" he has allowed the popular notion to prevail that India under him has eliminated a large many terrorist leaders living abroad. One doubts if any of his competitors would be comfortable with that "credit" but the citizens cheer.

By May 2019, team BJP knew that Modi had hit six sixers in an over and if they were to be the next batsman, they had no hope of attracting applause unless they could hit more sixers – but then an over has just 6 balls. Health, age, energy, self-preservation, risk aversion, killer instinct, ability to go for the jugular, every one of the colleagues of Modi had accepted within themselves that they just did not have it in themselves to step into minefield's. Collectively they have decided that it is best, just like in the olden days, to leave a Gavaskar to score that century while 10 others gave him support from the non-striker’s end.

2019 which everybody and his uncle and aunty were predicting as a hung parliament, that 2014 was a black swan event, had to eat humble pie. Not one of these had the common sense to analyse the events, decisions, reactions of the Indian public at large, reactions of the global leaders. They refused to accept their stupidity. Modi romped home by miles.

In between Modi also hugged and tried to charm China, knowing that history had shown they could not be trusted. But why demonstrate that one is a hawk? China intruded into Ladakh and if they expected that a Modi govt would come scrambling to the negotiating table, they missed the signals. Instead, he scrambled jets. Those living in the flight path in Bangalore heard a minimum of 2 jets taking off every day for months together, none could be heard landing. He ordered an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation which China least expected. The army officers were given a free hand.

For decades there had been an agreement that in certain areas, both the armies would not carry arms/guns etc. When a senior Indian army officer was killed, in Galwan, not only was there an instant response from the soldiers on the ground, but as per reports the elite Ghatak commandoes trained in close quarter combat were brought in. One sepoy Gurtej Singh of 3 Punjab is reported to have killed 12 enemy soldiers in hand to hand combat. This was a battle in which 1 Maha Vir Chakra and 3 Vir Chakra medals were awarded. Since June 2020 while the Chinese still stay put in the mountains, they haven’t exactly tried any misadventure. India positioned over 200,000 soldiers to face off the Chinese, airfields were built and IAF squadrons deployed.

Honour Point - Online Memorial

These actions were followed by many Chinese apps being banned. Once again, folks sniggered as to what impact this would have, little knowing the power of using various apps for “spying”. China today has the largest informal network of spies set up as genuine business with legal activities. The person/ organisation in question may not even know their “spy” work. His actions had a message, and almost 3 years later, advanced countries with the most sophisticated spy and think tank networks woke up to the exact same risks and started banning some of these apps.

Lastly, he has ensured that his senior team is focussed and given continuity in a particular position, so they imprint their vision and ability. He has led by example with literally 24*7 work. As some ministers have shared and heard from those in the system, there is no such thing as rest. He seems to have set such a scorching pace at work, many have quit his team due to exhaustion.

In short, a person who started off with a great reputation at a state level, a “notorious” reputation elsewhere in India and even globally (based on decades of negative media reports), a total outsider to a system which had veterans and globally acclaimed political leaders, within 5 years, stamped his seal of leadership and in the next 5, has removed that issue as even debatable.

Some of his colleagues may still wish they could become PM, but, senior or powerful, they have now accepted his leadership, superiority and are willing “juniors” who respect him. As the saying goes, most politicians demand respect, but Modi is commanding respect.

I can personally say that having travelled widely across the world for more than 2 decades, till 2017-18, the common people one bumped into abroad at best knew about the Indian curry, elephant, and snake charmers and since 2005 or so the software engineers. Today, especially in the last 6 years, the number of people who invoke the name Modi when they hear the word India is an amazing transformation for a political leader.

The hallmarks of the Modi leadership as observed in hindsight are Demonstrate, Discipline, Deflect, Divide, Decide, Determination, Direction, Deliver, Dedication. Like a pack of monkeys, he keeps his critics busy with a controversial non-issue while he gets on with his job least bothered about what others say.

This attracts and reinforces the opinion that he is dictatorial. But when the overall strategy of those who opposes him is to blindly disagree, they are creating self-fulfilling prophecies. These folks will continue to criticise, complain, display contempt but will not analyse the man dispassionately for his work, leadership, and attitude. They judge him for what they think he is, in their view, rather than for what he actually is and then craft their strategy accordingly – only to go predictably wrong.

When any case study is written about the evolution of a leader, there cannot be a better case than to analyse Narendra Modi. From an RSS/ BJP grassroot worker whose job included setting the chairs in meetings to a respected national leader and held in awe on the global stage is no mean feat. The BJP/ RSS can decry this "personality" cult but have to admit that without this kind of steely resolve, BJP would not have become the political party that it has.