INSTANT judgments are an occupational hazard of journalism – the proverbial ‘first draft of history’ that is inevitably modified and occasionally junked with the passage of time.

The general election of 2014 was marked by a series of instant judgments of the man most people, apart from a tiny clutch of influential intellectuals, believed would emerge the eventual victor. Between September 2013 and the final day of voting on 10 May 2014, there were divergent perceptions of what Narendra Modi stood for. To the committed Hindu vote bank, the leader from Gujarat appeared as a modern-day version of Chhatrapati Shivaji – a man who would right historical wrongs and restore the rightful inheritance of Hindus. To the modern Centre-Right ideologists, he appeared as a desi Margaret Thatcher who would bring out the true economic potential of India by rolling back the frontiers of an inefficient and venal state. To a large section of voters in the backwaters of Middle India, he was the backward caste ‘outsider’ determined to put an end to the politics of privilege and entitlement. And finally, to those relatively unconcerned with the intricacies of politics, he was the only available alternative to a decade of blundering governance by the Congress.

For his detractors, the idea of Modi winning a general election and becoming prime minister initially seemed to a remote possibility. ‘Gujarat isn’t India’ was a truism that was repeated ad nauseum by knowledgable anchors and even more profound editors. Modi, it was declared, was too ‘polarizing’ a politician to be acceptable to a large and culturally diverse country like India. An old essay by Ashis Nandy was resurrected from the files to demonstrate that there was always a definite ‘fascist’ streak in Modi. Then there was the hoary issue of his alleged culpability in the 2002 riots in India – an issue that saw the US gratuitously denying him a visa and pundits pronouncing him a ‘mass murderer’. It was somehow assumed that the BJP, in consultation with the RSS, would somehow disregard the feelings of the party workers and keep the leadership issue unresolved.

When Modi was proclaimed the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in September 2013, the initial reaction of a beleaguered Congress was one of jubilation. Modi, it was assumed, would ensure that the BJP was bereft of regional allies and thereby would lack the numbers to secure a working majority in the Lok Sabha. When these assumptions turned out to be ill-founded and opinion polls began predicting a possible NDA majority, the disheartened sceptics invoked the abstruse issue of a Modi victory being against the very ‘idea of India’ – an intellectual concern that was premised on the belief that there was only a single ‘idea’ of India that broadly corresponded to the Nehruvian consensus.

These different expectations and doubts persisted (and continue to persist) after the BJP’s famous victory on May 16. They were, in fact, sharpened by scholarly interpretations of the mandate. The vote for ‘change’ was the universal explanation. But was this desire for transformation also backed by a ‘conservative revolution’ that had led to Indians extricating themselves from old assumptions of the prevailing consensus? After all, this was truly the only occasion in post-Independence history that the voters had given a clear mandate to a party that had no organic relationship with the Congress and its ideological baggage. Alternatively, was Modi merely expected to ‘fix’ a leaky system through a combination of patchwork and improvisation? Was he expected to be an efficient manager rather than a revolutionary?

 

To aggregate the different impulses that propelled Indians across the land to vote for a ‘strong leader’ such as Modi is a hazardous venture. It is an exercise that, by and large, politicians rarely attempt – preferring to swim along with the tide. Yet, seven months into Modi’s India, is it possible to detect the hazy contours of an India that is still bubbling enthusiastically in anticipation of achche din?

For a start, it would be safe to conclude that the principal preoccupation of the Modi government is economic. This is understandable in view of the fact that it was the young voters between the ages of 18 and 35 who provided the energy and the muscle to the Modi surge. More than anything else the prime minister has to cater to their expectations of better opportunities and a better life.

Nearly everything Modi has prioritized in the initial months of his government seems centred on two objectives: to dramatically improve the ease of doing business in India and to inject the ‘Make in India’ – a euphemism for creating employment and profiting from its multiplier effects – principle into governance. Whether it is his much-publicised and frequent overseas visits, his charm offensive directed at overseas Indians, his Swachch Bharat initiative and even his insistence that babus attend office on time, the thrust is on creating an environment that enables entrepreneurship and productivity.

 

What is interesting is that in attempting to convert India into a powerhouse of economic activity, Modi has chosen the route of extreme pragmatism. Deng Xiaobing was reputed to have remarked that ‘black or white, as long as it catches mice’. On his part, Modi has created a variant of this hard-nosed pragmatism: ‘Rupee, Dollar or Yen, as long as it creates jobs in India.’ He has shied away from doctrinaire impulses such as privatization for its own sake. Indeed, there is disappointment among Modi’s pro-market supporters that he has chosen to empower the bureaucracy and make it more purposeful and focused rather than dilute the powers of the state.

In fact, the first months of the Modi government appear to be devoted almost exclusively to either fixing problems that had been created and left unattended by the outgoing UPA-2 dispensation or pursuing plans that had been devised under the previous regime and left to fester. Apart from the unilateral dissolution of the Planning Commission – a decision more driven by Modi than by his colleagues – there is hardly any other step taken by the government that constitutes a radical rupture from the past.

Anecdotal evidence from within the government suggests a few things. First, the BJP is paying the price for not attaching sufficient importance to nurturing economic expertise within the organization. Second, it would seem that most ministers are unduly dependant on the bureaucracy on reformist ideas. Since the civil service is naturally cautious and intellectually disinclined to rocking the boat, there have been few departures from a well trodden path. Third, it would seem that when it comes to unsettling the status quo, the prime minister is far ahead of his cabinet colleagues. The recent induction of Manohar Parrikar and Suresh Prabhu into economic ministries could perhaps tilt the balance in favour of those who seek faster and more fundamental change.

 

Of course there is a political complication. Lacking anything like a working majority in the Rajya Sabha, the government is disinclined to opt for any headlong confrontation with the Congress and the Left until a more opportune moment. Since the balance of power in the Rajya Sabha will only begin to tilt in favour of the BJP sometime around late-2016, it may be fair to expect that big changes in the economic laws of the country will happen only in the second half of Modi’s present term. Politically, the challenge before the government is to somehow manage the dizzying expectations before the returns from a purposeful management of the economy start flowing in. This is a formidable project since the electorate has shown itself to be temperamentally impatient. If by some misfortune the government loses the momentum midway, it may prove difficult to recover. But then this is a conscious gamble that Modi has taken. He hasn’t sleepwalked his way into a gradualist approach.

One aspect of Modi’s initial approach that has puzzled people, both sympathetic and hostile to him, is the regime’s over-reliance on the bureaucracy. To be fair, the empowerment of the bureaucracy and insulating it from political interference was a hallmark of his stint as chief minister of Gujarat. Modi often boasted in the past that he managed Gujarat’s economic take-off with the same set of babus and without disturbing the pre-eminence of the permanent bureaucracy in the administration. Can this approach be replicated by the Centre?

 

At one level, Modi was a victim of the uneven bench strength of the BJP. It has to be borne in mind that for more than a decade, the BJP was in a state of stagnation. Those who rose to prominence during the Atal Behari Vajpayee government had been initiated into politics during the Jayaprakash Narayan and anti-Emergency movement and, subsequently, the Ayodhya agitation. Since 1998, the BJP has not witnessed the emergence of a new breed of second and third rung leaders, except through the RSS. The 2014 election campaign saw the entry of a large number of the educated middle class into the BJP ecosystem. However, these new entrants are yet to be integrated into leadership roles in the party. Their rise to prominence may change the overall culture of politics but till that happens the BJP is confronted by the grim legacy of nearly ten wasted years.

Under the circumstances, the Modi government had little choice but to repose faith in a bureaucracy that by and large had absorbed a very Congress way of thinking. It is possible that some of Modi’s dizzying sense of urgency may rub of on a few civil servants. In the main, however, it is still an open question as to whether the babus imbibe Moditva or the government is co-opted by babudom. Nominally, Modi prefers less government but the bureaucracy is mentally attuned to enhancing its regime of controls. How are these conflicting approaches going to be reconciled? Some of these problems have already manifested themselves in the workings of Indian diplomacy, long accustomed to reflecting on weighty ‘strategic’ issues and being out of sync with domestic developments. How fast can Modi reorient Indian diplomacy into prioritizing an economic agenda that also involves close cooperation with both the state governments and the private sector?

Change necessarily involves structural adjustments and reorientation. Is the bureaucracy fit for the purpose?

 

Does Modi have a social agenda? Judging by the pronouncements of India’s intellectual class, the Modi government’s main priority is the ‘saffronization’ of education and civic life. The recent furore over Hindu-inspired ‘conversions’ and the importance being attached to Sanskrit at the school level have brought these themes to the forefront. It is being suggested that a culturalist agenda will come to dominate the government’s priorities. This, to my mind, is a fundamental misreading of the government’s core agenda.

Since he assumed charge, Modi has been concerned with preventing the intra-parivar civil war that marked the final two years of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. In a desire to involve all the stakeholders of his successful march to power, the prime minister has accommodated some of the more explicit concerns. But in the main these have been in relatively peripheral areas such as the direction of the Indian Council of Historical Research and the encouragement to the teaching of Sanskrit in schools. He has, for example, not concerned himself with re-staffing a large number of public institutions with people who are ideologically inclined towards the BJP.

However, regardless of how forcefully Modi asserts his unwillingness to allow his growth agenda to be derailed by contentious issues, there are some awkward realities his government has to confront. There is a significant chunk of the BJP that believes the election of their government is the moment to also trigger a mental transformation of India – to ‘pour some cement down the spine of Hindus’, as a BJP leader put it evocatively to me some 21 years ago. In this scheme of things, an assertion of Hindu trium-phalism is an inevitable consequence of electoral victory. A greater sensitivity to ‘Hindu’ concerns – such as the right to run denominational educational institutions – will probably happen in the normal course of things. The equilibrium is, however, disturbed when some fringe activists try to force the pace by taking confrontational short-cuts. Modi does not control the entire gamut of Hindu activism and neither does the RSS. On top of that, there are elements within the RSS that believe that the character of a government and the course of electoral politics is of no concern to the larger cause of Hindutva. It is their assertion of functional autonomy that could complicate matters, especially as it might precipitate counter-mobilization of the minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians.

 

In the days to come, both the Modi government and the BJP will have to arrive at an informal understanding with the forces of Hindu assertion. There will have to be red lines drawn, without which Modi risks being drawn into controversies that are not of his own making.

As a result of Modi’s victory, India is far more receptive to intellectual and cultural currents that hitherto existed outside the dominant Nehruvian framework. But the advance of Centre-Right thinking is not a consequence of affirmative government action. It has flowed from the larger changes in society and the economy. The priorities of the government remain narrow and, hopefully, focused.