[Aakar Patel, a
prominent commentator on Mr. Modi, has described him as a “one-man cabinet.” Writing in The Mint newspaper, Mr. Patel noted
that, as chief minister of Gujarat, Mr. Modi “was at one time personally
holding the portfolios for finance, home, industries, ports, energy, mines and
minerals and administration besides others. Modi said he needed to, because
nobody else was good enough, and that he was delivering.”]
By Vaibhav Vats
 |
Narendra
Modi, prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party,
addressing
an election rally in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, on Monday.
|
NEW DELHI — On Monday, Lal Krishna Advani, the doyen and one of the
founders of India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, spoke at a rally in the
western Indian state of Maharashtra. Mr. Advaniobserved that Narendra Modi, the party’s
prime ministerial candidate and thrice-elected chief minister of Gujarat, was
not “the only one who has scored a hat trick in elections.”
“Shivraj Singh Chouhan
and Raman Singh have also been elected thrice like him,” he said, referring to
the chief ministers of the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh respectively.
The surprise was not
in what Mr. Advani said – his discomfort with Mr. Modi’s rise is well known –
but the fact that he was alone on the dais. No top leader from the Bharatiya
Janata Party, or B.J.P., bothered to join him as he canvassed support for a
local member of Parliament, and even prominent state leaders stayed away.
A few years ago, it
would have been inconceivable for Mr. Advani to be campaigning by himself, but
his isolation reflected how far the tide had shifted from the party’s old guard
and toward Mr. Modi, who has made it increasingly clear to party members who is
in charge.
Mr. Advani’s comments
came a couple of days after Jaswant Singh, another senior leader of the B.J.P.,
was expelled from the party. Mr. Singh’s expulsion appeared inevitable once he
decided to run as an independent candidate after being denied a party ticket in
his home constituency of Barmer in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
A week prior to his
expulsion, Mr. Singh, a former finance and foreign minister, had sobbed publicly in a dramatic television
interview. Particularly hurt that the party ticket in his home constituency had
been given to a defector from the governing Congress Party, Mr. Singh said
there had been “an encroachment on the principles and ideologies of the B.J.P.”
“We have to decide
between the real B.J.P. and the fake B.J.P.,” he said.
The denouement of Mr.
Advani and Mr. Singh were prominent examples of a wider purge within the
B.J.P., set in motion by the growing clout of Mr. Modi.
Soon after Mr. Advani
revolted and insisted that he pick his own parliamentary race, Harin Pathak, a
loyalist of Mr. Advani and a seven-time member of Parliament from Ahmedabad,
the largest city in Mr. Modi’s home state of Gujarat, was denied a ticket.
Murli Manohar Joshi, a
former education minister and the sitting member of Parliament from Varanasi,
was forced to give up his seat for Mr. Modi to contest. Mr. Joshi briefly
expressed reluctance at the prospect but — perhaps shrewdly realizing the power
shift within the party — quickly caved in.
These moves of Mr.
Modi’s power consolidation over the party follow his record in Gujarat, where
he has been chief minister for more than 12 years. In his home state, Mr. Modi
has sidelined the entire senior leadership of the party and effectively
rendered them politically irrelevant. Using his near-unchallenged authority in
the state, Mr. Modi has not allowed any other leader from his own party to gain
prominence.
The historian
Ramachandra Guha, one of India’s leading public intellectuals, wrote in The Telegraph newspaper in Kolkata that
Mr. Modi’s habit of accumulating power was worrying. “As a leader of both party
and government, Modi’s tendency is to centralize and self-aggrandize. These
traits are not entirely becoming in a prospective prime minister of a large and
diverse country.”
“Listening to Modi speak,
one is struck by how first person pronouns predominate — variants of I, me,
myself, mine,” Mr. Guha wrote.
Aakar Patel, a
prominent commentator on Mr. Modi, has described him as a “one-man cabinet.” Writing in The Mint newspaper, Mr. Patel noted
that, as chief minister of Gujarat, Mr. Modi “was at one time personally
holding the portfolios for finance, home, industries, ports, energy, mines and
minerals and administration besides others. Modi said he needed to, because
nobody else was good enough, and that he was delivering.”
Given Mr. Modi’s prior
record, the purge of senior leaders is an ominous sign for the B.J.P.’s
middle-rung leadership. In a political landscape dominated by dynasties and
regional satraps, where the word of the leader becomes law, the B.J.P. remained
one of the few parties with some semblance of inner-party democracy.
However, in an
electoral campaign where Mr. Modi’s presence dwarfs that of his party, Mr. Modi
is cleverly using the B.J.P’s overt dependence on him to eliminate and sideline
all rival power camps within the party. The purge also serves as a message to
other remaining leaders that Mr. Modi will not tolerate any dissent to his
authority.
In his speeches, Mr.
Modi has regularly attacked Rahul Gandhi, the vice president of the Congress
Party and the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, as a “shehzada,” meaning “the
prince.” Mr. Modi has alleged that Mr. Gandhi’s whims and moods often overrode
the due processes of his party and government.
But the purge of the
B.J.P.’s senior leadership is an unmistakable sign that, like the Congress
Party, which Mr. Modi derides and ridicules as undemocratic and sycophantic,
the B.J.P., too, is succumbing to the diktats of its unswerving leader.
[However, India’s performance on indicators measuring tolerance and inclusion was the second-weakest worldwide, trailed only by Iraq. The index partially bases rankings for these factors on Gallup World Poll results for questions about the respect for women and attitudes toward immigrants and homosexuals. Other data on violence against minorities and religious tolerance are also taken into account.]
By Malavika Vyawahare
 |
Courtesy
of Social Progressive Imperative
A
tabular comparison of India and China’s ranks on various
social
indicators
|
NEW DELHI — As the world’s largest democracy heads to the
polls in less than a week, and as politicians vying for a governing coalition
tout their plans for economic and social development, a report
published by an American nonprofit shows that India performs poorly on a range
of social development indicators, ranking 102nd among the 132 countries
surveyed.
India fared worse in
the overall rankings than all the countries in South and Central Asia studied
by the Social Progress Imperative, except Pakistan, which ranked 124th.
Of the so-called BRICS
countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — which
are seen as having the greatest potential for economic dynamism, only India
ranked lower than the 100th position. China was next lowest of the five, in the
90th position, and Brazil was the highest, at 46th.
The Social Progress
Index focuses on development indicators beyond gross domestic product,
including nutrition, water and sanitation, access to health care and education,
and personal rights. The index was the idea of Michael E. Porter, the Harvard
business professor who earlier helped develop the Global Competitiveness
Report, and its methodology took two years
to develop.
For both India and
China, deaths linked to air pollution were flagged in the report as cause for
concern. Though China outperformed India in almost all of the survey’s
indicators, including the provision of basic needs, India was far ahead of
China with regard to personal rights, the report says, including freedom of
speech and assembly.
However, India’s
performance on indicators measuring tolerance and inclusion was the
second-weakest worldwide, trailed only by Iraq. The index partially bases
rankings for these factors on Gallup World Poll results for questions about the
respect for women and attitudes toward immigrants and homosexuals. Other data
on violence against minorities and religious tolerance are also taken into
account.
Recent political
campaigns in India have focused on several high-profile corruption scandals
involving the government and the perceived need to clean up Indian governance.
India fared better in the survey in terms of the perceived level of
public-sector corruption, as compared with countries with similar levels of
G.D.P. per capita, however. The report noted that political rights, like
participation in the electoral process and political pluralism, were strong
points for India.
New Zealand,
Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands and Norway were the top five nations in
the overall Social Progress rankings.