AS a new year dawns, the most important question facing the country is how much the Modi government will do in the coming 12 months. The answers are important because the last seven months have been both promising and disappointing. Promising because of a new energy in government. And disappointing, not because Narendra Modi has failed to bring back all that black money and deposit Rs 15 lakh in every Indian’s bank account – only certified idiots would have believed that wild assertion – but because the high hopes that Modi had raised have been belied in more substantial ways.

That the country would come down to earth with a minor bump was guaranteed, because voters do indulge periodically in a collective suspension of disbelief, but this by its nature does not last (think of Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party). The point is that hopes are still high, so the question is whether people will be further disappointed in the new year, or whether Modi will deliver – perhaps not wholly but at least in substantial measure.

To attempt some answers, and to understand Modi’s way to dealing with issues, we must start with the assumption that the child is the father of man. More specifically, Modi as chief minister has given us pointers to Modi as prime minister, and will continue to do so. It helps therefore that his track record in Gujarat has been widely debated and analyzed, though the post-Godhra riots remain a subject on which there is no scope for middle ground. The Nanavati Commission’s clean chit and the Supreme Court’s investigation team’s absolution are superfluous for his supporters, and they will not convince critics who believe that the truth has not been recorded. Since debate is virtually infructuous, in that neither side is going to convince the other, and since no charges have been framed against Narendra Modi, one must put the issue aside for the moment, and look at the rest of Modi’s record of the subsequent 12 years.

Predictably, the man himself has talked up his record as chief minister; he is after all a master at portraying statistics in the best light possible. The spin is unnecessary because the truth is mostly positive, though more nuanced. The state did well in the decade and more when Modi was the boss, and in some ways it did better than its own previous (already commendable) record. But the standout performance was in agriculture, and this owed a great deal to the arrival of Narmada waters following the completion of the Sardar Sarovar dam, and the widespread adoption of Bt cotton. On most counts, the state was basically one in a set of half a dozen well performing states; it was not in a category of one. His record as a chief minister is a plus for Modi, but not as much of a plus as either he or the drumbeat of his noisy acolytes would make it out to be.

That record owed a great deal to Modi’s personality: confident, a good organizer, articulate, result oriented, and with mastery over facts and numbers, he also has the ability to think along uncharted lines – whether laying out solar panels on top of canals or installing a parallel electricity distribution network for providing subsidized electricity to farmers. Unusually for an Indian politician, he also thinks scale. Amitabh Kant, when he was in charge of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor project, met the chief ministers of states through whose territory the ‘corridor’ would run; Modi was the only one who wanted Kant to think of Dholera town on the Gujarat coast on bigger and grander lines than Kant had conceived it; the other chief ministers, when Kant met them, merely fretted about the problems of land acquisition.

 

As prime minister, the change of scale and a penchant for showpiece projects is evident in the goals that Modi has set and the projects he favours. No, not just that the Statue of Unity must be the tallest in the world, or that the country must have showpiece bullet trains (it would be of far greater benefit to the majority of rail passengers, and much cheaper and therefore affordable, to upgrade the average speed of mail and express trains from 70 km to 100 km per hour). There is more logic to opening 75 million new bank accounts in next to no time. Galvanized bank chairmen met the target well ahead of the Republic Day deadline, and the target has been upped to 100 million. There is also the scaling up of the 2022 target for installing solar power generation capacity, from 20,000 mw to an astonishing five times that figure, undaunted by the fact that the current base is just 3,000 mw.

Sometimes, though, these impressive targets mean less than you might think – as was the case with the Vibrant Gujarat announcements on investments committed by businessmen. The Jan Dhan programme, for instance, will not automatically put Rs 5,000 into every new bank account, as was announced, and the insurance package to go with the account is still being worked out. But it is wrong to write off the initiative just because the bulk of the new accounts have no bank balance and no transactions. The import of the new accounts will become clear when they enable cash transfers (as an alternative to supplying subsidized goods), as and when Aadhaar numbers have been issued to everyone.

 

Narendra Modi is a showman – critics call him an ‘event manager’. His Vibrant Gujarat events promised more than they delivered, but became a useful talking point. His equally grandly conceived Gandhinagar International Financial Tec-City (Gift), as something that would be bigger than Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla complex, has got nowhere yet. The showmanship has now extended itself to his prime ministership. Inviting the leaders of neighbouring countries to his swearing-in was immediately interpreted as a master stroke (the media is not short of faithful megaphones), but serious diplomacy is hard work and the bonhomie with Pakistan did not last long.

More successful have been the outsize gatherings of non-resident Indians at Manhattan and in Sydney. They have been a way of saying ‘thank you’ to the overseas faithful, but they were also meant to send messages to people back home and to his host governments abroad. Among President Obama’s first words to Modi when they met were that the Madison Square Garden event was ‘quite a show’.

Such public rallies are clearly meant, and designed, to build personal political momentum – as the Sadbhavna show in Gujarat was designed transparently to build a softer image before Modi shifted his attention to capturing the ‘Delhi sultanate’, as he used to call it. Similarly, he exploited to maximum advantage an invitation to speak to students at the Sri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi (Rahul Gandhi had been invited too, but declined). Later, whether it was on Independence Day when he spoke expansively and extempore, or when on the stump, he has been a master at delivering messages that have been in sync with the popular mood. To voters frustrated by corruption scandals, a non-functioning government and a taciturn and retiring prime minister, he presented himself as a strong leader who stood for change and purposeful action. A BJP party leader who asked Modi what would be the main election issue was told after a pause, ‘I am the issue’. And so he has transformed what was known as a cadre based party with shared leadership into a vehicle for one man’s ambitions.

 

Successful political leaders persuade their supporters to see in them the embodiment of the supporters’ hopes and prejudices. Cannily, though, Modi has not played the Hindutva card. For one thing, he does not need to, because of who he is and the track record that he has. Playing to his party’s political base would have earned him no extra votes across the country. So no tasteless barbs, like terming refugee camps in Gujarat ‘baby producing factories’, or taking on the chief election commissioner by making a point of his name. In the land of Patels, Mehtas and Shahs, the careful spelling out of ‘James Michael Lyngdoh’ made it sound alien enough to raise a laugh but also contributed to the narrative of outsiders doing down ‘Gujarat’s pride’. As the prime ministerial aspirant, Modi needed to appeal to a broader mass, and that is what he did by harping on the development theme.

 

This could be a ‘good cop, bad cop’ act – Modi presents himself as a reformed individual while others play the old divisive game. Or it could point to an evolving contradiction between the main objective of a political party (capturing and holding power) and the goals of a revivalist organization like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. On the one hand, Modi has eschewed communal issues in order to focus on development. The BJP in turn shows signs of being socialized – its effort to get political purchase in Jammu and Kashmir has led it to bury its long held position on scrapping the Constitution’s Article 370, which gives the state its special status. Ditto with the issue of a common civil code; since it wants to attract Muslim votes, this too has become an issue on which the party has fallen silent. As for Ramjanmabhoomi (the third of its trinity of core objectives), a temple exists at Ayodhya in place of the mosque; building a grander structure can wait. Right now, the party must capture power wherever it can and consolidate its position as the primary national party.

Such socialization is the norm as political parties reach for power; the DMK ceased long ago to be separatist, and the Communists accepted parliamentary democracy. The difference is that the BJP has to deal with the RSS as its ‘parent’ organization. The Sangh’s cadres have been active, campaigning during the Lok Sabha elections in the name of Hinduism and later using Modi’s umbrella presence to pursue their sectarian agenda, including in the crucial sphere of education. When they have overstepped the line through word or deed, Modi has remained silent. Yet he seems intent on remoulding his image into that of a leader who appeals to all sections. But the contradictions show, for he continues to say, for instance, that 1,200 years of national slavery have finally ended – an interpretation of history that has unavoidable communal colour.

Whatever the genuineness of the transformation between the Modi of Godhra to the Modi of more recent months, it has been a most impressive two year journey from being one of a handful of BJP chief ministers, even if the most controversial, to emerging as the tallest and most powerful politician that the country has seen since Indira Gandhi. He has neutralized and side-lined naysayers in his party, reduced the Congress to a rump and exposed the Gandhi heir as a no-hoper. He now seeks to reach states where the BJP has had no presence – in the process challenging a succession of state parties on unlikely battlegrounds. The only question is when and where will the juggernaut stop.

 

Finally, the Modi style is easier to understand if it is recognized that he is a loner. He has no immediate family in any real sense, and is not known to maintain close ties with his siblings. He has no known friends who drop by for a convivial chat, and he is not given to winning people over by doing them favours, in the manner of your garden variety politician. In closed door meetings, he listens but tends to keep his own counsel. In open forums, he sits impassively for long hours as businessmen and fellow politicians sing his praises – as at the Sadbhavna meetings or Vibrant Gujarat sessions in Gujarat, or at the launch of the ‘Make in India’ campaign in New Delhi, when the chiefs of the Tata-Birla-Ambani empires and sundry others sang paeans to the prime minister for his many virtues. While lapping up such praise, he keeps his distance from independent interlocutors. The media is kept at more than arm’s length, and disparaged repeatedly as ‘news traders’. Communication is one-way, through Twitter.

As is evident in all of this, the chief minister has indeed been the precursor to the prime minister. The same tendencies that were displayed in Gandhinagar have surfaced in New Delhi: the energy, the showmanship, the focus on getting things done, the grand if not grandiose targets, the thrust on getting known for his development record, the one-man band, and image building that runs ahead of actual achievements.

 

How has such a man started off as prime minister? The answer is that it has been a patchy record. He has understood that he needs to undo the damage done by the previous government – the ‘undoing’ list, as Arun Jaitley called it – and thereby rebuild momentum that had been lost. That has meant trying to end the investment famine, removing what are perceived as roadblocks posed by environmental clearances, starting up power stations that are idle for want of fuel, reinventing the highway construction programme in ways that get it going again, and getting Parliament to pass legislation that has long been in the works or pending – a goods and services tax, taking up foreign investment in the insurance sector, and reforming some labour laws, among others. The net result of all this was to be higher economic growth.

Despite some huffing and puffing, there has been little success to show until now. That is an observation, not criticism, because these are not issues that offer themselves to either easy or quick solutions. GDP growth has improved from the 4.5 per cent of the previous two years, and is on track to achieve 5.5 per cent or better. Critics will argue that this is nothing more than the cyclical upswing that was already on the cards, but more could not have been expected in six months. Credit growth will remain slow until the project pipeline gets going, and consumer spending will have to wait for a more sustained growth record and low inflation. The budget was a disappointment, but the fiscal situation is off track primarily because the numbers were unrealistic to begin with. Change on a lot of these fronts is a matter of time, and it is reasonable to expect that 2015 should begin to see the change. One element of uncertainty is the passage of key legislation through the Rajya Sabha, where the government is in a minority.

 

The promising fact is that problematic issues have been dealt with and taken off the table – like the thorny one on gas prices. In world trade negotiations, the government took a firm stand on agricultural subsidies and got its way – in the process showing up the Congress’ Anand Sharma for the defective deal he had signed in Bali in 2013. Beefing up defence preparedness has been a focus area, though the focus on building rather than importing hardware (‘Make in India’) will definitely slow down the pace of acquiring badly needed weaponry – like submarines. Finally, the noticeable new zing in relations with the US, Japan and Australia must be marked up for putting an end to diplomatic drift, and therefore as a personal plus for Modi. But that only helped contribute to the emerging question: why has Modi been hesitant in introducing market oriented reform? As with the hyped-up record in Gujarat, is Modi as prime minister more talk and less action?

It has not mattered so far because Modi has been extraordinarily lucky with oil prices, which have fallen in six months by about 40%. This has helped reduce inflation, free diesel prices, stem the hemorrhaging on petroleum product and fertilizer subsidies, improve the fiscal situation, and either reduce or eliminate the ‘current account’ deficit. This fortuitous circumstance, combined with the cyclical economic upturn and the soaring stock market (which has been buoyed by a surge in global liquidity), has put some wind under Modi’s wings. The momentum from this will continue into most or all of 2015, so Modi has time to begin addressing the structural reforms that will fuel growth beyond the cyclical recovery. It is time that should not be wasted, because most Indian governments have had no more than two years before (to quote Harold Macmillan) ‘events’ began dictating the agenda.

 

The critical element will be the budget at the end of February. Jaitley has said it will outline a reform programme, and it remains to be seen what that means. It is already clear that the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax will have to wait for the budget of 2016. Before that, will the large tax concessions given to favoured sectors be ended, so as to expand the tax base? This could be crucial to reviving investment in physical infrastructure, since the large business houses that have invested heavily in infrastructure sectors are saddled with massive debt on their books and therefore unable to take on fresh commitments, leaving the reviving of investment as a task for the government.

Meanwhile, will the problem of the public sector banks – mismanaged by poorly chosen chief executives, hobbled by poor risk taking ability, and pushed into bad loans by political interference, with the end result being an erosion of capital that limits their ability to grow their business – be tackled front and centre? No economy can grow and prosper without a healthy banking system, and the government owned banks account for 70 per cent and more of all Indian banking.

 

Finally, will the mismanagement and waste that characterize the subsidy programme be replaced with cash payouts that are quicker, simpler and cheaper? The potential savings on the overheads incurred for the food subsidy alone would be Rs 33,000 crore. Other such low hanging fruit wait to be plucked if the subsidy programme can be reformed – the gas subsidy will be halved if subsidized gas for domestic use does not find its way into the commercial market. These and other big questions await answers. It remains to be seen what the Modi-Jaitley team will produce on budget day.

To his credit, meanwhile, the prime minister has kept up a relentless pace. Between summitry abroad, election campaigns in the states, and an array of programme announcements, Modi has found the time to dream up surprises – like responding to the general lack of cleanliness in the country and launching the ‘Swachch Bharat’ programme. But equally, he has launched programmes that promised more than they immediately offered, like Jan Dhan. Also, it is typical of the man who has abolished the Planning Commission that he has not thought systemically: if you clean the streets with brooms, where is the piled-up rubbish to go? The longstanding problem is that India does not properly recycle its solid and liquid waste, that sewage systems empty out into rivers and poison them, and that landfills have reached the scale of large hillocks. While wielding sundry brooms, Modi seems to have spent little or no time thinking about the systemic issue.

Observers have called him a manager-reformer, not a true-blue liberal; someone who goes for efficiency rather than freeing the four factors of production (land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship). He would rather reform the public sector than travel down the privatization route – except where the alternative is closure, or in areas where no organized opposition exists. He treads gingerly along the margins of labour law reform, not wanting to confront trade unions. And he would like to improve government efficiency rather than restructure the government itself, as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan did in their countries three decades ago through a mix of divesting some functions, devolving others to local administration, and reducing the size of government. Thatcher reduced the size of the British government by 40%, and Reagan set the goal of trimming the US government’s size by 5% each year. Modi has set no such objective, though he has talked of minimum governance.

 

As a manager-reformer, he strives for efficiency. So he sends out missives, asking government employees to come to work on time. He spends hours with his civil servants, listening to issues and plans. He wants to reform government processes, so that India’s ranking on the World Bank’s ranking of countries on Ease of Doing Business improves. He believes in the uses of technology for achieving greater efficiency, and constantly harps on harnessing technology for improving government processes. All of these are good and welcome, and it would be great if he can also (to borrow imagery from the 1990s) make an omelette without breaking the egg. Ordinarily, though, that approach would limit the end result.

In the manner that he has addressed the tasks that appeal to him, Modi has demonstrated great faith in himself, less so when it comes to his ministerial colleagues – many (not all) of whom he has reduced to non-entities, as indeed he did with his ministerial colleagues in Gujarat. If there is no resentment brewing deep within the breasts of some of his frustrated ministerial colleagues, they would not be human. Modi has chosen to ignore the latent political risk precisely because he knows that he is now the rainmaker for his party.

 

As it happens, there is no shortage of chief ministers who run their fiefdoms by depending on officials rather than on non-entities who have been made ministerial colleagues, but it has been a different matter at the Centre. On the national stage, at least some ministerial colleagues will be people of substance. Besides, one man’s reach or grasp cannot match the country’s scale – scale that demands collective political will and effort. For a prime minister to try and function in New Delhi the way Jayalalithaa, Chandrababu Naidu and others have done in their states, is to not recognize that change of scale can also change the nature of the beast. The lion is also a cat, but it can’t be domesticated the way you would the domestic breed.

There remains the question for the future: how will Narendra Modi conduct himself when the political tide turns against him – as it must at some stage for all politicians? If it does not happen by 2019, there is near certainty that it will happen by 2024. Amitav Ghosh, while looking at the unusual parallels between Modi’s career and that of the Turkish prime minister, has asked whether Modi in the face of political headwinds will turn authoritarian and quasi-communal in the way that Erdogan has done in Turkey, or as Indira Gandhi did? That is when the country will get the true measure of the man, not when the adoring crowds are still chanting ‘Modi, Modi, Modi…’