India’s Modi fills a void of Congress party’s making
By David Pilling in (Briturd) Financial Times
That a man once seen as unfit for high office {seen by who? Seen by Briturds and their local chamchas ofcourse }and is in the race is testament to the government’s record
Sometimes politics veers from one extreme to another. As Manmohan Singh’s ineffectual second term as prime minister of India staggers to a close, the man who has moved firmly into the spotlight as his possible successor is Narendra Modi, the opposition Bharatiya Janata party’s candidate for national leader.
The two men could hardly be less alike. Mr Singh is known as quiet, ineffective, decent, self-effacing and a political naif. Mr Modi, who has been in charge of the economically successful northwestern state of Gujarat since 2001, is none of those things. A thunderous orator, a man who makes things happen, self-laudatory, authoritarian, morally ambiguous and ruthless, he is now seen by many as the best hope to get India’s stalled economy going again. { here the old briturd elitism and snobbery holding an Amateur to be superior than a Professional is being displayed , one can find many other instances in the rest of the artecal - especially when he describes Modi as a "wallah" - and when he holds modi to be power "hungry" - and "trying too hard"}
The only thing Mr Modi and the hapless – almost tragic
{another snobbish (greek )tragedy reference here}– figure of Mr Singh have in common is their reputation for being personally clean. Vinod K Jose of The Caravan, an Indian magazine, concludes of Mr Modi that he
“appears to prefer power to money”.
Ultimate power has never been closer to his grasp. That Mr Modi is even in the running to become India’s next leader is testament both to his skill at reinventing himself as a politician and to the appalling hash that the Congress-led coalition has made of its second five-year term in office.
As the son of a tea-stall
wallah,
Mr Modi was not exactly marked out as premiership material from birth, something that cannot be said of his probable rival, Rahul Gandhi, the anointed head of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Since the age of eight, when he volunteered his services, Mr Modi has been an active participant in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a rightwing, militant Hindu nationalist group that has been banned three times since India’s independence. It was a former RSS member who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 and the organisation was
closely linked with the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya claimed by Hindus to be the original site of a temple to Rama.{Apart from the blatant hatred to RSS on display , notice how "rightwing militant yindoo nationalist"is used almost like a pejorative repeatedly - yeah we know saar, turdworld is'nt supposed to be Nationalist , it isnt supposed to be associated with politically religious especially those of heathen kind (unlike "Christian democrats" of Merkel), isn't supposed to be "militant" especially to protect our cultural rights or to overthrow those who deny them to us) , all because briturds like you (who still dream yourselves to be our overlords) want us to be so}
The single event that has defined Mr Modi’s career, however, is the
revenge killing of more than 1,200 Muslims{this number is again based from the weird calculation given by Swaminathan Ankileshwara Iyer in his sheila ji jawani artecal - including the missing muslims - doesn't want to mention the Hindu dead and missing though - as then it won't be "unhindered revenge killing" as this briturd wants to portray it as} in Gujarat in 2002, shortly after he became the state’s chief minister. Mr Modi is accused of standing by as mobs of militant Hindus went on a horrible spree of hackings, burnings and rape. He has always vigorously denied those accusations and was later cleared of involvement by the Indian Supreme Court. Still,
Washington has made him persona non grata, consistently denying him visas, though the US too may be preparing to rehabilitate Mr Modi {as if modi requires rehabilitation from briturds or massa} in view of the fact that he could plausibly be running the world’s second most populous nation after general elections that must be held by May.
Mr Modi’s transformation of his image from militant Hindu nationalist to chief-executive-style political pragmatist
has been a remarkable feat of political alchemy{it has to be alchemy because if one terms it an "evolution" or "growth" .... Modi would be getting unnecessary brownie points}. His state has grown faster than the national average, sometimes exceeding 10 per cent a year, though Gujarat has outperformed the rest of the country for decades. Mr Modi has expertly burnished his image for cutting red tape – some say by ignoring the niceties of the political process – in pursuit of direct investment. That reputation was enhanced in 2008 when Tata Motors ditched long-running plans to build its ultra-cheap Nano car in West Bengal and switched to Gujarat. Ford followed suit with a $1bn investment in a state-of-the-art plant.
As a result of these and other successes, corporate India loves Mr Modi. Critics point out that Gujarat’s performance is no better than that of other well-performing states, such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Bihar, and that poverty eradication has proceeded far more slowly than prestige investments. Still, Mr Modi has raised hopes – even among former doubters – that he has what it takes to jolt India from the paralysis into which the Congress-led government has let it slide.
The BJP candidate has filled a political void wholly of Congress’s making. Under Mr Singh, the government has lost all momentum, only contemplating serious economic surgery in recent months when the country stood on the brink of a currency crisis. Growth has practically halved from 10 per cent to 5 per cent. Mr Singh’s administration has been better at redistributing scarce resources to the poor than at generating the wealth to do so. India has fallen into a sterile debate about whether it should prioritise poverty alleviation or wealth creation. In truth, it desperately needs both. Nor has Mr Gandhi, the 43-year-old scion of India’s pre-eminent political dynasty, shown anything approaching leadership or a vision for India. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, head of the centre for policy research in New Delhi, accuses Mr Gandhi of being “missing in action”.
As a result of Congress’s miserable performance, few would bet against the BJP winning the most seats in parliament when elections come around. Given the complex geometry of India’s political system, even that would not guarantee Mr Modi becoming prime minister. Still, a man once widely regarded as unfit for that high office is now in pole position. That speaks volumes of the current administration.
