'India could indeed become a superpower if it set itself some clear goals'

by Tavleen Singh
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Even before Narendra Modi arrived for his session at last week's India Today conclave, there was a buzz of excitement about his presence. Opinion in this gathering of liberal opinion makers was heavily weighted against him. The journalists were all implacably hostile and spent their time preparing questions on the violence that swept through Gujarat in February 2002 and that continues to haunt him wherever he goes. The drawing room intellectuals in the audience were prepared to have a more open mind on the Chief Minister of India's fastest growing state, but admitted that there was something about him that continued to give them the creeps.

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All in all, there was a hornets' nest awaiting him and this is why the speed with which he disarmed the stings was so impressive. The Aaj Tak anchor, Ajay Kumar, who introduced him made no effort to conceal his hostility and although he admitted that Gujarat was making remarkable economic gains under Modi, tempered this praise by adding that the chief minister was a 'cunning and clever' politician. The implication was clear: no matter how impressive this man may seem, remember what he did after Godhra. Modi ignored the implication and began his address with this question.

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India, a superpower

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'Can our country become one of the world's superpowers?' He answered the question himself by saying that his experience in Gujarat had led him to believe that India could indeed become one of the world's most powerful countries if it set itself some clear goals. He said the 'Gujarat model' was proof that the cynical, defeated mood that prevailed in the country about our political leaders and governance in general was wrong. 'In Gujarat we have shown that those same government offices, those same government officials and those same old laws and regulations can be used to bring about development and change.'

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By the time he got to pointing out that the 21st century was widely acknowledged as Asia's century and that the race was between China and India he had everybody's attention. He then listed what he considered India's three advantages over China.

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Democracy, youth power, and a judicial system that worked. It was on these three strengths, he said, that India needed to build. In the rest of his speech he explained what he had done in Gujarat to bring about the changes that even his worst critics admit have happened. His secret, he admitted, was that he had emulated another famous Gujarati politician, Mahatma Gandhi, by copying how the Mahatma had enlisted the masses into the movement for India's freedom. There had been other leaders before him who had made their contribution to the cause of freedom but they had failed to build a mass movement. In Gujarat all the changes that have happened since Modi became chief minister ten years ago were made possible because he made ordinary people participate in them through campaigns to gain popular support. He called it his 'jan andalon' method which he said he used for every change from rural healthcare to agricultural productivity.

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When he finished speaking the drawing room liberals in my vicinity whispered among themselves about how wonderful it would be if Modi became prime minister. The questions were, as usual, about the violence he had presided over but they failed to deflect from the general sense of hope and optimism that Modi had succeeded in creating. Everyone I spoke to agreed that what India needed was a leader like Modi. What made this opinion even more pervasive was that Modi made such a vibrant contrast to the lackluster performance we had witnessed earlier from the Prime Minister. He addressed the first session of the conclave and said nothing new. In the monotone we have become accustomed to he gave us a catalogue of his government's 'achievements'. The Right to Information law, the Right to Education act, the rural employment guarantee scheme, the rural health mission…the list was long. When questioned about failures to deal with corruption, child malnutrition and black money he gave a series of bland answers and banalities.

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SRK and Modi

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In a conclave glittering with stars, the two that shone brightest on the first day of the conclave were Shahrukh Khan, for obvious reasons, and Modi, for making people believe in the possibility that there could one day be real change in politics and governance in India. If we had taken a referendum that morning I am prepared to bet that more than 80% of the audience would have voted in favour of a man they usually love to loathe.

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Now for a few words about the India Today conclave. As someone who regularly attends this sort of conclave and who has for more than fifteen years gone every year to the greatest of them all in Davos, I have to say that last week's conclave was the best I have attended in years. Aroon Purie has modeled his conclave on the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos but so have many others. In Delhi there is a surfeit of Davos imitators and most of them are so dull that after the first couple of sessions most people start to flee. At the India Today conclave the sessions were so good that it was hard to miss any.

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What made the sessions riveting was that almost none of them were politically correct. So in a session on whether religion had destabilized the sub-continent, Subramaniam Swamy was allowed to express the view that there had been no religious problems in India until Islam and Christianity came along and demanded that everyone accept that their religion was the only way to God. He was allowed even to state that if Islam stopped declaring itself to be God's last message, half the sub-continent's religious problems would sort themselves out. In a session on Kashmir, the secessionist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, was allowed to state his well known view that India had no right to Kashmir and that it belonged to Pakistan. He may have been booed afterwards but he was allowed to make his point. But, among the stars who glittered at the conclave, and there were many, I have to admit without any concession to political correctness, that Narendra Modi shone brighter than all the others. Even those who came prepared to hate him left with a very different view. This is because he spoke, not of his personal 'achievements' but about the country India could become if we work towards a higher goal.