2014: The Election That Changed India (50 page)

This was a rout. If it was a T20 match, they might have called it off after just the first power play.

Modi, as always, had got up very early that morning. If he was excited, he wasn’t showing it. He was a bit like a CBSE topper who probably knew he was going to get cent per cent but was just waiting for a final confirmation. He did his usual morning meditation and had a very light breakfast before placing himself before the television screens. His team was providing him constant inputs by the minute. He, too, knew in the first two hours that it was all over.

‘India has won!’ his aide tweeted from his account. Even in victory, he hadn’t forgotten the power of constant communication. Or of symbolism. A little after noon, he emerged from his residence and drove to meet his mother, Hiraben. The first television image post-victory was well-thought-out—Modi sitting on a chair being blessed by his mother and surrounded by a few other smiling relatives. Narendra, who had left home as a teenager to become an RSS pracharak, had now returned, if only for a photo op, as the prime minister designate. It had been a truly remarkable journey.

His first public comments after the victory were made at a thanksgiving speech in Vadodara, one of the two seats he had contested from. The margin was a near-record 5.7 lakh votes. In victory, he appeared statesman-like. Immaculately dressed, as always, in a trademark beige and white half kurta, he said, ‘I want to tell all my fellow Indians that in letter and spirit I will take all Indians with me.’ These were not the words of chief minister Modi—this was prime minister Modi talking.

Modi promised he was here to stay. ‘I want to make the twenty-first century India’s century; it will take ten years, not very long.’ As the ever-faithful crowd in their Modi caps cheered him on and screamed, ‘Modi, Modi’, the showman was in full form. ‘Achhe Din,’ he said loudly. The near-hysterical crowd bellowed back, ‘Aa Gaye!’

A little after 8.30 p.m., he had his last public function of the day, and as it turned out, as chief minister too—a speech to another crowd of admirers in Ahmedabad. In 1971, Modi had come to the city to work in the anonymity of his uncle’s small canteen before moving up the political ladder. Now, he was back. This was another homecoming to remember. His tired voice was beginning to crack
but he was determined to have a final word. ‘
Desh chal pada hai, hamein kadam milana hai’
(The country has begun to march ahead, we have to match its steps).

The mood at the Congress headquarters was in sharp contrast. The party had put up small tents with coolers for journalists to protect them from the heat, with special arrangements for food and refreshments. They need not have bothered. By early afternoon, the locale wore a deserted look. Winners love to come on television, losers are good at the disappearing act.

A little after 4 p.m., Sonia and Rahul Gandhi made an appearance before the television cameras outside the party office. Both of them congratulated the new government and accepted responsibility for the defeat. ‘The people’s mandate is against us and I humbly accept the verdict. As Congress president, I take responsibility for it,’ said Sonia. Rahul echoed the sentiment, but the weak, almost goofy, grin on his face looked inappropriate for the occasion. Neither of them referred to Modi by name. That would happen a few days later. Clearly, some of the bitterness of a long campaign hadn’t dissipated.

And yet, watching the images of a victorious Modi saluting the people and a humbled Congress leadership accepting defeat with grace, my mind went back to a meeting I had with the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Jeddah in 2004. Sharif at the time was in exile, living in a rather opulent palace-like structure, having been forced out of the country by General Pervez Musharraf. As we sipped Kashmiri kahwa, Sharif sounded wistful. ‘Rajdeepji, your democracy is truly special. One government comes in, another goes but there is no vendetta or bloodletting. Look at us in Pakistan. I am here in Jeddah, Benazir is shuttling between London and Dubai. Neither of us can return home. You are a lucky country!’ Indeed, we were. It is a terrible cliché, but the truth is that every Indian election is a constant reminder of the genius of our democracy. 2014 was no different.

Evening prime time on counting day is usually reserved for the big newsmakers. A little after 9.30 p.m., we had the biggest newsmaker of the day after Modi—Amit Shah. If Modi was the Man of the Series for having successfully driven an unrelenting presidential-style campaign with his charismatic persona, then the effective election micromanaging by Shah made him a deserved Man of the Match. Without the stunning triumph in UP, the BJP would have probably been forced to look for post-poll coalition partners.

Shah had not watched much TV since the morning. When a journalist visited his rented house in Jangpura in south Delhi at 8.30 a.m., he was just waking up. It was only after 9 a.m., when he was certain of which way the wind was blowing, that he actually switched on the news. Even then, his first preference was for a channel that was showing the UP results.

With every result from UP, Shah felt an increasing sense of relief. He had been predicting as many as sixty seats for the BJP from the state, but the trends showed that the party was set to even cross that mark. His only disappointment was that his friend Jaitley had lost. His first port of call after the numbers were out was to Jaitley’s house. It was the one dampener to what had been a spectacular performance.

I asked Shah how he felt to be projected as the Man of the Match.
‘Rajdeepji, yeh meri jeet nahi hai, yeh har karyakarta ki jeet hai!’
(This is not my win, it is the victory of each worker). Had he anticipated such a big win, I asked.
‘Sach kahen toh hamein bhi anuman nahi tha ki itni badi jeet hogi. Yeh toh vakai mein ek tsunami hi hai!
(Even we did not anticipate the scale of this win, this is truly a tsunami)’, he said, with a smile that was getting bigger by the minute.

We finished our news coverage at around 11 p.m. After a long, gruelling day in the studio, I was ready for an Old Monk with coke. But one more call remained to be made. I telephoned Modi’s residence in Gandhinagar to congratulate him. The operator who picked up the phone said Modiji was in a meeting and would call back. At midnight, I tried my luck one last time. The operator was
apologetic.
‘Sorry, Saheb sowa chali gaya’
(Saheb has gone to sleep).

The boy from Vadnagar with the blazing eyes and burning ambition was going to be the prime minister of India. An RSS swayamsevak was to take over as the country’s chief executive. Long years in politics, the determined building of a massive personality cult in the face of the hard rock of controversy, had resulted in this extraordinary achievement. Narendra Modi deserved a good night’s rest.

Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s
fifteenth prime minister—and the first to be born after Independence—on 26 May 2014,
dressed in a cream kurta and brown sleeveless jacket. The swearing-in ceremony had a typica l Modi
touch. Rather than holding it in the stuffy Durbar Hall which can barely accommodate 500 guests,
Modi chose the grand forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan for the occasion. Rajpath was lit
up—it was a public spectacle played out on live television. The professional event managers in
Team Modi were told to work closely with the Rashtrapati Bhavan to ensure that the ceremony went off
flawlessly. Clearly, the new prime minister wasn’t convinced that the government officials
alone would get it right!

In his moment of ultimate triumph, the guest list
suggested a genuine attempt at appearing inclusive. More than 3000 invites were sent out—I
received one as well, though, sadly, being in the studio, I couldn’t attend. But many of
Modi’s election rivals were present—Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were in attendance, as was
Mulayam Singh Yadav. His former mentor L.K. Advani, too, was there. Only days earlier, an emotional
Modi had wept in Parliament’s central hall while formally accepting his party’s
leadership; Advani had cried as well. It seemed for a fleeting moment like a
tearful reunion of the old and new orders within the BJP parivar.

The election campaign had seen the
Ambani–Adani duo being targeted as beneficiaries of Modi’s largesse—unmindful of
the criticism, both families were there in full strength. Modi hadn’t forgotten his Hindutva
roots—sants and sadhus and even the controversial Sadhvi Rithambhara made a rare public
appearance. The Hindi film industry was represented by Salman Khan who had flown kites with Modi in
Gujarat as part of a PR blitz. And cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar was there in his capacity as
BCCI’s interim president. Modi’s family, though, was not invited—once again
underlining his complex private life that he had kept wrapped away from the public glare.

Modi, as he had done through the election campaign,
had choreographed the swearing-in into a major news event. Just a few days earlier, in a powerful
symbolic gesture, he had invited all the SAARC heads of state, including Pakistan’s Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, for the occasion. It was an unprecedented invite and a diplomatic
coup—India’s new prime minister was making a case on day one itself to position himself
as a statesman and leader of the South Asian region. He had also sent out a subtle message to the
West, especially the United States, which had targeted him in the aftermath of the 2002 riots, that
their stamp of approval was not a priority. The new prime minister would make the neighbourhood his
principal foreign policy thrust. Even when he did later accept an invite to visit Washington, he saw
it as being entirely on his own terms. The US had denied him a visa for years, now they had bent
before him—he felt vindicated.

The SAARC invite caught the ministry of external
affairs (MEA) off guard—they now knew they were dealing with a prime minister who would not be
chained by protocol. The SAARC initiative was a brilliant move, raising Modi’s stature. Even
the anti-Pakistan Shiv Sena was silenced, aware it couldn’t be seen to play spoilsport. The
only hitch was the extreme outdoor heat—Sharif, used to five-star
comfort, could be heard complaining that he would have preferred an air-conditioned
environment.

Modi was sworn in along with forty-five ministers,
twenty-four with Cabinet rank. The original list, I was told, had been prepared by Modi’s key
point persons, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah, then vetted by the RSS. The final touches, including
portfolio distribution, were done by the prime minister himself. The choices reflected the limited
pool of talent available to him but also Modi’s domineering style of functioning. Jaitley,
whom he implicitly trusted, was given the heavyweight finance and defence portfolios. Sushma Swaraj,
whom he did not trust, was given MEA only at the last moment as a compromise. Smriti Irani, who was
now seen as a Modi protégé, got the prestigious human resource development (HRD)
portfolio, enough to spark off private criticism from others who felt left out. There was even a
suggestion that Modi had elevated Smriti because he wanted to send out a message to Sushma that she
wasn’t the only woman face of the BJP. Piyush Goyal, who had starred in the campaign, was
given an integrated energy portfolio (coal and power) while Gadkari had to be content with surface
transport. ‘All road contractors from Maharashtra will now be heading to Delhi!’ was the
joke in Delhi’s power corridors on Gadkari’s appointment.

Advani and the old guard were, yet again, not
obliged. The BJP patriarch had been pushing for a constitutional post—‘Make me the Lok
Sabha Speaker’ was his plea. Modi put his foot down—the tears in Parliament’s
central hall were replaced by the chilling pragmatism of power. A decision was taken that no one
above the age of seventy-five years would be given a ministership. ‘We can always make them
governors if they wish,’ Modi told an aide (eventually, Advani and Dr Murli Manohar Joshi were
even removed from the BJP parliamentary board).

The allies were put in their place as well. Ram
Vilas Paswan had been hoping for a ‘wet’ ATM ministry—he was given the relatively
lower profile consumer affairs ministry. ‘Paswan’s past meant that the prime minister
was suspicious of him—he doesn’t want anyone in the government who will affect his clean
image,’ a Cabinet
colleague later told me. The Shiv Sena, too, asked
for more—but it had to be content with the heavy industries ministry. Modi wanted to send out
a clear message that he was the Big Boss—this wasn’t a UPA-II-like government where
allies could decide ministries. And he certainly wasn’t going to be bullied like a timid
Manmohan Singh. The only demand he acceded to was from Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje who
was peeved that no minister from her state was in the original list despite the BJP sweeping the
state; thus, Nihalchand Meghwal was made a minister of state.

Left out of the government was Arun Shourie, one of
the finest minds from the political right, who had openly backed Modi’s prime ministership. A
few days before the Cabinet formation, I had interviewed Shourie and got the distinct sense that he
was preparing for a comeback. He spoke with great passion of how he believed the new government
should function. He had parked himself in the national capital hoping for a call-up. It never came.
Apparently, Shourie’s old enmity with Jaitley had done him in—even in victory, there
were still ghosts of a Hindu Divided Family that haunted the BJP.

Also haunting Modi was his own past as an autocratic
leader who ran a government in a highly secretive manner. He had governed Gujarat as a virtual
one-man show, with an excessively centralized chief minister’s office where bureaucrats were
often more powerful than ministers. New Delhi is not Gandhinagar—just the scale and dimension
of the challenge makes it imperative that the leader empowers the Cabinet and delegates work. But
apart from Jaitley and a few others, Modi wasn’t convinced about the abilities of many of his
Cabinet colleagues. Instead, he wanted to send out a message to the bureaucracy that they would be
his prime assets.

A senior bureaucrat who attended a
secretaries’ meeting with Modi came out most impressed. ‘He said he would fully back us
for any decision we took, and if there was any problem, we should not hesitate to directly contact
him,’ the bureaucrat told me. The choice of bureaucrats in Modi’s PMO reflected his
approach—low-profile and experienced individuals who would never try and
overshadow their boss. Many of them were bureaucrats whom Modi had successfully worked with in
Gujarat. There was no space in the Modi PMO for a Brajesh Mishra-like figure who was seen by some as
the virtual de facto head of government during Vajpayee’s tenure.

While the bureaucrats seem satisfied, the ministers
clearly are not. First, Modi expects them to work long hours. A minister who was relaxing at home at
noon got a sudden wake-up call when a PMO official rang her up and said she was expected to reach
office by 9 a.m. every day. Each ministry was asked to put up a detailed presentation before the
PMO, listing out their tasks in the first year. ‘The days of long lunches for our
mantri
s are over,’ was the buzz in Shastri Bhavan. A certain discipline and
accountability in ministerial functioning can only be welcomed.

Second, Modi is determined to exercise tight control
over the Cabinet system. When Rajnath Singh, the official number two in the government, wanted a
particular IPS officer as his private secretary, the Modi PMO struck down the appointment. The
officer concerned had served in a similar capacity with the Congress’s Salman Khurshid.
‘Rajnath was fuming but couldn’t do anything about it—no one can challenge
Modi,’ a BJP leader later told me.

Third, there is a certain fear factor that Modi has
instilled in his Cabinet colleagues, the fear of the Supreme Leader watching their every move. I had
first-hand experience of it when I had to interview a minister for this book. As I was approaching
the minister’s residence, I got a call from one of his aides. ‘Please, can you come from
the back entrance?’ When I met the minister, he insisted that we not speak in his main hall
but in the garden behind the residence. ‘You never know which room is bugged nowadays!’
the minister warned.

Another story, possibly apocryphal, is that when
Prakash Javadekar, information and broadcasting and environment minister in the Modi government, was
on his way to the airport, he got a call from the PMO. ‘Sir, you are wearing jeans for an
official trip—you need to be dressed formally,’ he was warned. Javadekar, who reportedly
rushed back to change, denied the story when I asked him about it.

Like the ministers, the
media, too, finds itself constrained. In Gujarat, Modi had preferred routine information department
handouts to any extended interaction with journalists. Now, he has brought the philosophy of keeping
the media at arm’s-length to Delhi. No high-profile media adviser has been appointed, but
Modi’s long-serving assistant Jagdish Thakkar is in charge of sending out official press
releases in a clerical fashion. As they did throughout the general elections, Modi’s Twitter
team puts out news updates and photographs with clockwork precision. Ministers have been explicitly
told not to speak out of turn or appear on television debates, and instead focus on one-way social
media engagement on a strict ‘need to know’ basis. ‘In UPA-II, we could call up
any minister at any time and they would respond. Now, everyone wants to be very discreet,’ a
senior reporter tracking the government told me. The more liberal and transparent UPA-II media
set-up had led to a near-anarchic situation where ministers would often speak out in conflicting
voices. By tightly controlling the information and restricting media access, Modi, it seems, wants
to recapture the executive space that the Manmohan Singh government might have ceded to
agenda-setting prime-time television, but the fear remains that a limited news can also promote a
more opaque governance. The belief is: less news = less chaos. But let’s also not forget: more
opacity = less freedom.

He’s even stopped the tradition of having a
large contingent of journalists accompanying the prime minister on foreign visits. I had enjoyed
travelling with Vajpayee on quite a few occasions. Yes, the air travel was a bit of a
luxury—you were plied with plenty of free booze and chocolates, all, of course, at the tax
payer’s expense. Air India would put its best foot forward on the prime minister’s
plane—the hospitality was matchless. I must confess to having seen a few of my fellow
journalists do almost everything but report on these trips. One of them had to be literally pulled
away once from a night club in Paris in a drunken stupor before the police was called in.

But for serious, professional journalists the long
flights also gave us a chance to interact with key government officials and
build relationships in an informal setting. It gave us an insight into a prime minister’s
functioning beyond the forbidding corridors of South Block. Vajpayee once even advised us on which
were the best places to eat in New York! Modi, though, is not a bon vivant—the pracharak in
him has little time for discovering the many charms of New York. ‘Why do we need to oblige the
media?’ was the cryptic question he posed to an official who tried to make a pitch for the
journalists. Perhaps Modi has a point—it is time to end the junket culture that bedevils a
section of the Indian media.

It’s not just the media—the judiciary
has also been put on notice. By fast-tracking the National Judicial Commission Bill that seeks to
restore the primacy of the executive over judicial appointments, Modi is attempting to redraw the
balance of power between the judiciary and the executive. The danger is in throwing the baby out
with the bathwater—in recasting the relationship is the political class attempting to subvert
judicial independence? The memories of the dictatorial Indira years in the 1970s haven’t
entirely dimmed.

In a sense, Modi is perhaps closest to Indira Gandhi
in his personality-driven leadership style, an imperious attitude that ensures that institutions
remain subservient to the individual (even Teachers’ Day has been sought to be harnessed to
the cult of Modi). His run-in with Congress-appointed governors is a good example. Precedent does
suggest that political appointees are expected to resign when a new government emerges. But the
manner in which Modi has gone about it suggests a certain contempt for the governor’s office.
At least two governors—including former Gujarat governor Kamla Beniwal with whom Modi was
engaged in a running battle in Gandhinagar—were packed off to Mizoram, leaving the chief
minister of that state to complain that Aizawl had become a ‘dumping ground’ for
inconvenient constitutional authorities.