Does Narendra Modi Deserve A Second Chance?

Driven by the ambition to leave behind an enduring legacy, Narendra Modi launched a raft of schemes as prime minister. Some worked well while others floundered. Will he now be rewarded for his vision or punished for his miscalculations?

- Raj Chengappa

Every Indian leader who occupied the spartan corner office in the prime minister’s wing in Delhi’s South Block after Jawaharlal Nehru, has looked to emulate him. Even Narendra Modi, though he may be loath to admit it in public. Modi’s ideological moorings in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have seen him spout venom against India’s first prime minister and trash his achievements. Yet, more than Indira Gandhi, it is Nehru’s exalted status as the builder of modern India that every prime minister after him, including Modi, aspires to surpass. Do a Google search using the words ‘Nehru’ and ‘books’. Apart from the list of 50-odd books that he authored, including compilations of his speeches, it will throw up a thousand books written about him and his legacy. Such has been Nehru’s prominence in the Indian mindspace.

As Modi completes five years as prime minister next month and seeks a mandate for a second term, he is clearly looking to establish a legacy of Nehruvian stature— the making of a Second Republic. At the release of the BJP manifesto for the 2019 election, Modi didn’t confine himself to listing out what his government and party would do up to 2024. Instead, he surprised everyone by setting goals far ahead—to 2047, when India completes a hundred years of Independence. He alluded to a vision of India as a developed country that would be a premier power in the world. Modi then placed the work that his government had done so far and now promises to do in the next five years if re-elected as part of a process of achieving such a lofty vision. (If Modi follows his party’s principle of leaders retiring at 75 years of age, he will have to do so in 2025 and will be out of the reckoning for breaking the record held by Nehru and Indira Gandhi of having the longest tenures as prime minister).