PMO INDIA
“Touch my vest,” Narendra Modi told a startled Newsweek team interviewing the Indian prime minister in his residence in New Delhi in late March. “Come on, touch it.” Modi challenged Nancy Cooper, Newsweek’s global editor in chief, to guess what the blue jacket was made of. Cooper suggested silk. “It’s recycled plastic bottles,” Modi said, clearly enjoying the reaction of his surprised guests.
The vest and the moment are vintage Modi: innovation, tradition, masterful messaging and, inevitably, some controversy. The vest was made popular by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, whose great-grandson Rahul Gandhi is leading the opposition campaign to prevent Modi from winning a rare third term in elections next week. It became known as the “Nehru Jacket” and was a symbol of newly independent India’s national pride as well as a fashion statement adopted by The Beatles and Sammy Davis Jr. Unlike Nehru, who preferred beiges and grays, Modi wears his modified version of the garment in brilliant hues. Indian retailers began selling “Modi Jackets” to capitalize on the prime minister’s enormous personal popularity. And in 2018, when former South Korean President Moon Jae-in tweeted out his thanks for the prime minister’s gift of perfectly tailored “Modi Vests”—not “Nehru Jackets”—the controversy nearly broke the Indian internet.
I feel negativity has a low shelf life…. On the other hand, positivity is perennial.”
– Narendra Modi
Partly because of these contradictions, Modi has a contentious relationship with the media and gives interviews rarely. India has tumbled on the World Press Freedom Index under Modi. And the prime minister sees himself as a target of hostile coverage by journalists who do not accept that India is both less liberal in ways that are important to the West and much better governed than at any time in its recent history.
Understanding an Indian prime minister has never mattered more. The country Modi leads is increasingly shaping the world we live in. Washington sees India as an important counterweight to China across the developing world. A globe-girdling Indian diaspora, cultivated for decades by Modi, has already reshaped Silicon Valley. Now Indian ideas, innovations and ambitions are poised to do the same in everything from finance and fighting poverty to space exploration. By 2075, the Indian economy is projected to surpass America’s and become the world’s second largest behind China. This also means that India is by far the biggest potential carbon emitter in the world and its choices about the future will likely play an outsized role in defining the destiny of our planet and the species we share it with.
During his 90-minute interview with Newsweek and in written correspondence, Modi tackled these issues and talked of his unbridled optimism about India. “I feel negativity has a low shelf life,” he said. “On the other hand, positivity is perennial.”
Modi says he channels his positive energy into his monthly radio program Mann Ki Baat (Talks from the Heart) that one survey said had 230 million regular listeners. The state radio show is one of the many ways the prime minister appears accessible to ordinary Indians and puts his personal stamp on myriad changes shaping their lives. To Western observers, Modi’s messaging tactics can come across as political theater, the squandering of public resources on the making of one man’s myth. What they miss is the revolutionary impact these tactics have had on people in a hierarchical society shaped by millennia-old caste structures, centuries of colonial exploitation and decades of rule by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty whose charismatic leaders are dismissed by Modi’s followers as members of a Western-educated elite.
Not every message lands the way Modi intends it. A Maan Ki Baat episode notched up the most dislikes ever on the BJP’s YouTube channel after the prime minister dished out advice on dog breeds but dodged a dispute over delayed exams.
Modi says he treats all communication with the Indian people as a two-way street. “A leader should have the ability to connect to the grassroots and get unfiltered feedback,” he said.
A magnetic orator who fills stadiums wherever he goes, Modi is coy about his speaking skills. “I didn’t even know that I am good at communication,” he said. Ask him about listening skills and he swells with pride: “I am god-gifted with this quality.”
Modi, who grew up relatively poor and traveled the country for years as a Hindu community organizer, says he has spent at least one night in each of about 80 percent of India’s 806 administrative districts, roughly equivalent to counties in the United States. “So I have direct connections almost everywhere, which helps me get direct feedback,” he said, driving home the point with a story about a man he met on his travels calling him at 3 a.m. about a rail accident when he was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat so it could be addressed immediately.
Whatever one makes of Modi’s messaging strategy, it appears to be working. Hundreds of millions of Indians are listening to Modi, tuning into his positive message and feel heard by him. India’s urban consumers are the most optimistic in the world, according to an IPSOS survey released in March. The national index score of 72, higher than any of the other 28 economies surveyed, “indicates consumers have confidence in the economy, jobs, personal finances and investments, now and for the future,” IPSOS said.
It is easy to be optimistic about the Indian economy. Asia’s economic miracles have been built around a demographic sweet spot when the working age population reaches the point that dependents—retirees and children—form the smallest share of the population. Japan hit this tipping point in 1964. China in 1994. For India, already the world’s fifth largest economy, the sweet spot of a historically low dependency ratio won’t arrive until 2030 and it will last at least 25 years. This demographic destiny is one of the reasons Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, co-authored a Harvard Business Review article in which he recommended “Inevitable India” as an advertising slogan for the government in New Delhi, a play on the decades-old tourism campaign “Incredible India.”
The narrative-building apparatus around Narendra Modi has made him appear to be an indispensable figure in the inevitability of India.”
Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, echoing a critique of the Modi government economic claims
“The narrative-building apparatus around Narendra Modi has made him appear to be an indispensable figure in the inevitability of India,” Chakravorti told Newsweek, echoing a common critique of the Modi government claims about the economy. But demographics don’t tell the whole story of the economic promise of Modi’s India. In the past decade, Modi has transformed India’s infrastructure, building roads, bridges, ports, airports and digital networks at astonishing speed. A country that was once notorious for potholes, bottlenecks, crumbling terminal buildings and traffic snarls caused by cattle, is now competing with the best on many fronts. India’s ports are more efficient than America’s or Singapore’s with ship turnaround times of less than a day. It will soon boast the world’s third-largest metro network after China and Britain. A Venmo-like Unified Payments Interface connects 300 million users to a system that accounts for nearly half the world’s instant payments.
Modi’s tenure has ratcheted up the productive capacity of the world’s most populous country. Goldman Sachs cites these infrastructure investments in its projections of India’s explosive economic growth over the next half-century when it overtakes the United States. Goldman’s projections show the U.S. economy doubling in size by 2075 and China’s just about tripling. The Indian economy will grow 15-fold. The economic value of these investments understates their impact on the way Indians, like the Chinese and Japanese before them, see themselves. “India is undertaking a vast national project of state-building under Modi,” Ravi Agrawal, editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, wrote this week. “Modi is projecting an image of a more powerful, muscular, prideful nation—and Indians are in thrall to the self-portrait.”
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/2024/04/19/modis-moment-how-narendra-modi-changing-india-world-1888654.html
