The Modi Effect : Inside Narendra Modi's Campaign to Transform India

 Is Modi leading a ‘war without bullets’ against working-class people.
 or is he working for "Acche din" and  "sab ka vikas" ?

Modi  is a full-time, 24/7 politician, it is Narendra Modi. He appears to allow nothing to distract him from the task in hand. He is a teetotal, celibate vegetarian. There are no sports, no hobbies, no family ties. He sleeps only four or five hours a night, and never takes a day off or goes on vacation. When he does do something that isn't directly work- related — as with his daily yoga and meditation routines — it is simply to make him more productive and effective for the rest of the day. I wasn't sure if all that was admirable or slightly disturbing. The only way to find out was to meet him.

Table of Contents

The Modi Effect : Inside Narendra Modi's Campaign to Transform India

Section	Section Description	Page Number
1	The Outsider	p. 1
2	Chai Wala	p. 19
3	Chief Minister	p. 35
4	Behind The Mask	p. 51
5	The Big Mo	p. 67
6	The Modi Operandi	p. 83
7	I, Modi	p. 99
8	Iron Man 2	p. 111
9	Tea Break	p. 124
10	iModi	p. 137
11	'Superstar'	p. 149
12	Vote Lotus	p. 163
13	Brand Modi	p. 179
14	Mother Ganges	p. 191
15	The Only Way is UP	p. 201
16	Rally Driver	p. 213
17	GOTV	p. 224
18	India Recast	p. 235
19	From Pariah to PM	p. 244
20	The Indomitable Will	p. 264
	Indian Politics: A Who's Who	p. 269
	Abbreviations	p. 279
	Chronology	p. 283
	Notes	p. 293
	Acknowledgements	p. 321
	Index something the building has in common with Downing Street, are rather rudimentary and reminiscent of the lavatories at school or in a small town museum. On the wall outside the building, the plaque still bore the name of the outgoing prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Nobody had yet got round to changing it. Modi said to me later that he hadn't altered anything else either. The paintings on the walls, the furniture, the rugs were all exactly as Dr Singh had left them. 'Honestly, I do not feel I am the PM even today,' he told me. 'Temperamentally, I am a very detached person and it has become increasingly so over the past years How about now ? Using the suffix 'ji' as a mark of respect, he told me, 'Modiji will be a great leader.' Well that would have come as no surprise to the man then sitting in his reception room just down the corridor. He has no shortage of people to tell him that and he clearly shares the opinion. But the guru's foresight was a lot more precise. Modi would be in power until 2032, with only a short break in opposition. Most of that time he would have an absolute majority in parliament, only once having to work in coalition with other parties. For all I knew, this holy man's meeting with the prime minister had nothing to do with his astrological skills, but his appearance was a useful reminder to me of something I was becoming increasingly aware of about Indian politics. There is only so far you can go in trying to understand it through the prism of westem political norms. Even before I first set eyes on Modi, I knew I would have to strive to take the measure of him according to standards of behaviour and forms of expression that were quite different to what I had been used to elsewhere. What sounds" who was this Holiman ? what I had been used to elsewhere. What sounds boastful or over the top to a western ear, for example, is often perfectly acceptable in an Indian context. We have got used to mistrusting and denigrating almost everything our leaders try to tell us. That level of cynicism bordering on contempt has not yet polluted the Indian political system to the same degree. Leaders are listened to with respect and the informality of British politics — 'call me Tony',  ( call me  Modi ? or  Modiji maharaj ?0and so on — is all but absent here. I'm not sure I succeeded entirely, but in my conversations with what I had been used to elsewhere. What sounds boastful or over the top to a western ear, for example, is often perfectly acceptable in an Indian context. We have got used to mistrusting and denigrating almost everything our leaders try to tell us. That level of cynicism bordering on contempt has not yet polluted the Indian political system to the same degree. Leaders are listened to with respect and the informality of British politics — 'call me Tony', and so on — is all but absent here. I'm not sure I succeeded entirely, but in my conversations with indicated that I should sit in the other identical chair alongside him. I'd been told that he was aware of, and had perhaps even read, my first book, the diary of my time in Downing Street from 1998 to 2001. It seemed a bit unlikely to me, but as a gift I gave him a copy of my second book on British prime ministers and their relationship to the media. He told me he didn't really read books any more, which was a little disheartening, although his staff quickly interjected to point out that he read a lot of articles and other material online. I wasn't to be left with the impression that the prime minister of India wasn't an intellectual. Modi is physically commanding also. He's not particularly tall, around 5 feet 7 inches, or 1.70 metres, but he is broad. He once claimed in an election speech to have a 56-inch chest, although I read elsewhere that this is not strictly true, and that 'fifty-six inches is a very cleverly crafted tool to develop Modi's alpha male image'. I'm inclined to believe that interpretation, as I was soon to be offered a very large outpouring of image-building observations, many of them from the horse's mouth. But it didn't strike me as a great idea to start challenging him on his vital statistics within minutes of meeting him. Modi is always impeccably dressed and takes a lot of trouble over his physical appearance. His grey beard was neatly trimmed and his hair smartly if conventionally cut. He wore one of the long kurta tunics with short sleeves for which he is well-known, white leggings and open-toed sandals. I would discuss his dress sense with him on a later occasion but, right now, he was keen to talk about the book I was hoping to write. Not surprisingly, he had his own opinions about what it ought to contain. 'The global population should know how we smoothly and effectively managed the world's largest election process and also how effectively we have evolved the election process since 1952,' he told me. That was the date of the first post-Independence election, when Jawaharlal Nehru, great grandfather of Modi's opponent in 2014, Rahul Gandhi, won a massive  parliamentary majority and became India's first democratically elected prime minister. Nehru, like his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, was leader of the Indian National Congress, better known just as the Congress party. The man sitting next to me was the first non-Congress politician ever to win an the first non-Congress politician ever to win an absolute majority without needing the support of coalition parties. His Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, had a much smaller majority than Congress had enjoyed at the peak of its popularity. Nevertheless, as David Cameron pointed out to him on the day the results were announced, he had just got more votes than any other politician anywhere in the universe. told his way and his way only. He had clearly anticipated the question, and to his credit he said I could write whatever I liked. 'You can criticise me as much as you want.' Modi has reason to be wary of writers and journalists. Few politicians in India have faced such a barrage of personal attacks as he has done since his very first days as a public figure. If it ever got to him, he is well beyond that now. He didn't always like the questions I asked him during several hours of interviews and he didn't always answer them. But he was generous with his time, unfailingly courteous and appeared content that I should write as fair an assessment of the man and his campaign as I was able to construct. me what I can or cannot write. While I didn't ask Modi about the holy man on that occasion, he clearly does listen to those who claim to be able to see into his future. He later told me the story of meeting another astrologer not long after his first election as chief minister of his home state of Gujarat in 2002. Why, he asked her, had nobody predicted he would get the job? 'She responded by saying that her prediction was that God had the prime minister's position in store for the future. Basically we have a belief in our religion, Maro Bhagya Vidhata, which means I am putting myself at the disposition for what God has in store for me. If this is the case why be afraid? I have never worn a bullet-proof jacket. ' My next visit to Delhi, in August, coincided with Indian Independence Day, my first opportunity to see and hear Modi speak in public. people had told me what an extraordinary orator he was. How he could keep a huge crowd in the grip of his hands through his rhetoric. How his speeches, almost all of which he wrote himself after consulting widely, were delivered without notes but with great precision, weaving the personal and the political, the local and the national, the emotional with the policy content. He spoke in Hindi. It is one strand of his nationalist agenda that Indian languages, pre- eminently Hindi, should be favoured over westem languages, especially English. Once I had persuaded the rather officious security personnel that my young researcher, Gaurav, had as much right to be in the VIP enclosure as I did, I was able to get a running commentary of the speech's highlights. Like the rest of the crowd, we had had to get up early to be there. VIP enclosure as I did, I was able to get a running commentary of the speech's highlights. Like the rest of the crowd, we had had to get up early to be there. Open-air occasions like this often happen at the start of the day before the heat becomes too oppressive. So, as the sun gathered in intensity behind the ramparts of Delhi's historic Red Fort, Narendra Modi took to the podium for his first Independence Day address. Resplendent in a scarlet and green turban and flowing cream robes, he looked out over the tens of thousands of people who had struggled through the early-morning traffic to see him, pausing before he spoke. He knew that just by standing there he was making history. Not only the first PM with an absolute majority not to owe allegiance to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, but also the first man from a lower-caste family born in poverty to lead the nation, and the first to have been born after the country gained its independence. By now world leaders had started to become used to the idea of the pariah turned prime minister. In any case, this speech wasn't meant for them. At least one attempt had been made on Modi's life during the election campaign and his bodyguards had good reason to urge him to speak behind protective screens. He refused. He wanted to speak directly to the people with as little as possible to separate him off. And they had never seen or heard anything like it. For my part, while I've listened to some great political orators, this was something quite different. The Blairs, Thatchers and Clintons all knew how to woo their audiences. The words of Barack Obama will be quoted for generations to come. But none of them ever engaged a crowd with such fervent, visceral passion as Narendra Modi. If success in politics were just about that, Modi would have no equal in the world today. off the script the machine froze, throwing him off his stride. 'This damned thing,' he was heard to mutter, 'l could do better without it.' The teleprompter has never taken off in India, where politicians and the public prefer a bit more passion in their speeches. But on big set-piece occasions, and they don't get any bigger than Independence Day, Indian prime ministers traditionally read from a lengthy text, written with the help of their civil servants and covering all the main issues confronting the government. Not so Narendra Modi. Everything about his address broke with tradition. He spoke with only a handful of notes in front of him in a language shorn of the usual pomp and grandeur of a formal ceremonial occasion. He spoke with only a handful of notes in front of him in a language shom of the usual pomp and grandeur of a formal ceremonial occasion. Where previous prime ministers had talked of India's greatness, he talked of its shame. The nation could send a mission to Mars but it couldn't provide a toilet in every school. Poverty and filthy streets disfigured a country that prided itself on one of the most advanced IT sectors in the world. And above all, the degradation of women, whether through the brutality of countless rapes and sexual assaults, or the inhumanity of female foeticide, brought dishonour on all Indians. Nobody was left in any doubt by the end of his hour- long speech that Narendra Modi was a mould- breaker who meant to do things his own way, a way that was a radical break from the past. 'I am an outsider,' he told them, 'quite isolated from the elite class of this place.' Claiming outsider status is a familiar gambit among political leaders. It is most effective in those places where disillusionment with the status quo is particularly intense. India in 2014 was just such a place. But nobody walks straight into the corridors of power as a complete outsider, however much they might like to pretend they have. Tony Blair and David Cameron went straight in at the top, becoming prime minister in Britain without any previous experience of ministerial office. But they had at least sat in the House of Commons. Modi took on the job without even having been a member of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha. He wasn't exactly an ingénue, however. He was an outsider to Delhi in the sense that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were outsiders to Washington. He'd governed a large state for twelve years and was no stranger to politics. And Modi's record in Gujarat, on India's west coast, was considerably more controversial than those of the former governors of Georgia, Arkansas or Texas.