2014: The Election That Changed India (2 page)

The 2014 election was, in the end, about the ‘
chhappan
inch
kee chhaati
’ machismo of the politician from Vadnagar in Gujarat. To quote right-wing columnist Swapan Dasgupta: ‘For some he was a modern-day Chhatrapati Shivaji who would finally make Hindus come into their own; to others he was the poor boy next door who
had made it big in the ugly and cruel world of Delhi, and to still yet others he was the great liberator of the economy from sloth and socialist incompetence. What united these divergent strands was the belief that his victory would usher in the proverbial happy days.’

Indeed, Modi’s biggest success was that he made the mandate about himself and the high growth rate he had achieved in Gujarat, about rising incomes and the ‘Gujarat model’ of governance, a model whose grey edges remained surprisingly unchallenged till nearly the very end of the election campaign. He represented, in a sense, the ‘audacity of hope’—a charismatic orator, a state chief minister who was spinning a dream for a positive future at a time when the country was burdened with negativism. Leaders emerge in a context—at a time of an economy in turmoil and a political class riddled with corruption, Modi was, as one senior Congress politician conceded, ‘the right man at the right time with the right rhetoric’.

In the process, he was able to discard his own spotted legacy and that of his party. The 2002 post-Godhra riots and the fact that more than a thousand people died under his watch were simply not an issue in 2014 because Modi was able to artfully change the terms of the political discourse to a more ‘inclusive’ vision premised on effective governance. Or maybe that’s how a majority of Indians preferred to see him—not as an ideologue of religious nationalism but as a tough, no-nonsense administrator.

Hindutva politics can never be disconnected from the Sangh Parivar’s ethos and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) is part of Modi’s DNA, but there was a conscious attempt to keep any overtly religious appeal on the backburner. The RSS did fully throw itself into the campaign and their cadres were the BJP’s last-mile warriors, especially in the crucial battleground of Uttar Pradesh. But this election wasn’t going to be about building a Ram mandir in Ayodhya, unlike the 1991 and 1996 elections where the BJP made its first serious bid for power. It wasn’t about a core ideological agenda that pushed for a uniform civil code or Article 370. Nor was this election going to be decided by communal polarization, unlike Modi’s first win as Gujarat chief minister in 2002. That
election was fought in the backdrop of riots and Modi’s claim to be a Hindu Hriday Samrat (Emperor of Hindu Hearts). This election was fought in the context of an India itching for change and Modi being its principal agent of transformation.

Yes, the BJP did get a substantial Hindu vote, especially in UP and Bihar (see chapter 5 and appendix 2), but this can be best described as the result of ‘identity plus’ politics. The party had a core Hindutva vote, but to win a national election, it needed a wider base. In a sense, Modi did a Tony Blair. Like the former British prime minister made a struggling Labour party more ‘electable’ by discarding its ideological dogmas and creating ‘New Labour’, Modi, too, reinvented the BJP. This was almost a new, freshly minted BJP—market-friendly, not pushing swadeshi economics. Governance, not religious politics, became its distinctive appeal for those Indians who remained sceptical of the Bajrang Dal–VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) foot soldiers. Of the seventy seats where voter turnout increased by 15 per cent or more, the BJP and its allies won a staggering sixty-seven. Modi’s other great success was in understanding the changing demographics of India—a younger, aspirational society that is easily the most upwardly mobile in the world. Modi likes to see the core of this new India as a ‘neo-middle class’ society which is tiring of state-sponsored welfarism and simply wants market-driven growth As a
Wall Street Journal
article points out, ‘Modi tapped into the frustration of a generation of Indians who climbed out of poverty in the past decade, but who have been prevented from joining the middle classes by slowing growth and a lack of employment.’

Modi has presented himself as India’s first post-liberalization politician (I refer to this in some detail in chapter 8), someone who has sought to combine a certain cultural rootedness with the vaulting desire of millions of Indians to get onto the superhighway to prosperity. He tapped into this yearning for
parivartan
(change), especially by offering himself as a muscular leader in contrast to the weak leadership of Manmohan Singh and the dynastical legacy of Rahul Gandhi. He was aggressive and communicative—qualities that go down well with young Indians in particular. How often did one
hear on the campaign trail a young voter saying he would vote for Modi because ‘at last, we will have a prime minister who talks!’ Of the 810 million electorate, first-time voters in the eighteen to twenty-three age group were around 120 million, or almost 15 per cent. The CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)-Lokniti national election study suggests that 42 per cent in this age group wanted Modi as prime minister, with just 16 per cent preferring Rahul. The BJP got twice as many votes as the Congress did amongst first-time voters—an estimated 36 per cent versus 17 per cent (see appendix 2). In a cynical India tiring of its politicians, Modi offered a priceless four-letter word to a young and restless India—HOPE.

Rahul was twenty years younger than Modi, blessed with the most enduring family surname in Indian politics. He was well intentioned but that is never enough for an India living by the ‘
Dil Maange More
’ slogan. Through the campaign, he appeared to speak the language of an older India—of handouts, of entitlements, even vote banks. At times, you almost felt a reversal of roles—it was Modi who would harp on rapid development, it was Rahul who would focus on issues tending to spread fear and insecurity amongst the minorities.

While Modi spoke of the twenty-first century belonging to India, Rahul would often talk of the past—of the sacrifices, for example, which his family had made. He did not offer a vision for the future. Even his ‘Bharat versus India’ divide appeared to suggest a stagnant nation that lived in two separate universes. His listless, almost dull, campaign never had a chance against the vigorous energy that Modi exuded. Not surprisingly, it was among India’s first-time voters that the Rahul–Modi gap was widest. The role models of a new India aren’t dynasts but self-made achievers.

Of course, it wasn’t ever going to be easy for Rahul. He had to bear the baggage of the ten years’ rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The Sonia–Manmohan diarchy had promised much initially, but an uneasy ruling coalition was bound to implode eventually. A unique power-sharing arrangement between a bureaucrat prime minister and a status quo-ist Congress president rapidly degenerated into sloth, corruption and, above all else, untamed inflation. The
Indian voter can be rather tolerant of corruption, but what they are notoriously unforgiving of is rising prices. In every election tracker we’ve done, price rise has always been the top concern for the electorate. Almost five years of slow growth and high inflation is a recipe for political suicide. In the end, it was ‘the economy, stupid’—which meant that for many voters it became a case of ‘anyone but Congress’. P. Chidambaram, former finance minister, put it aptly when he told me post-election, ‘The economy destroyed us in the 2014 elections. Had we got growth back on track and inflation under control, everything else might have been forgotten.’

And yet, no election is determined overnight by a single issue or even by one towering individual. This book is, therefore, about much more than just Modi and Rahul. Like a multi-starrer, it contains many characters who played a role in the eventual shaping of the verdict. I have tried to locate some of them in the wider context of the constantly evolving Indian political landscape.

Elections are not a one-day match. While the final act may have been played out on 16 May when the results were announced, the build-up began much before, in fact quite a few years before D-Day. And it is by tracing those roots that we can make sense of the present. I do firmly believe, for example, that the Congress-led UPA lost the 2014 elections in 2011 itself, the year corruption caused a volcanic eruption in public anger. After that, the party and the government were like a comatose patient on slow drip—the end was preordained. Similarly, the rise of Modi wasn’t instant magic—it was the outcome of a deliberate, well-crafted campaign that evolved over several years. Indeed, my central premise is that when the UPA’s decline began four years ago, Modi had already begun planning for his daring Delhi bid. It was a long, single-minded journey to the top, not an overnight coup.

This book, I must warn you, isn’t written by a political scientist or a psephologist. I belong to the more humble tribe of news reporters—every time I look in the mirror, I see a sleeves-rolled-up reporter first, only then a preachy editor or jacket-and-tie anchor. As pen-pushers or sound-bite warriors, we perhaps lack the conceptual
base of academics or the number-crunching skills of pollsters. But what journalism does provide is the best seat in the house—you can meet, observe, understand all kinds of people you report on. Your sources share stories and anecdotes that years later can actually be spun into a long narrative. This book is built on the edifice which twenty-six years of journalism have so kindly provided—the chance to report the politics of this remarkable country where no two days (at times, no two hours!) are ever the same.

I am no soothsayer, even though journalists and editors like to believe they can give you a glimpse into the future. If you had asked me when I first met Narendra Modi in 1990 whether he’d be the fifteenth prime minister of India, my answer would have been firmly in the negative. If you ask me today whether Rahul can make a comeback, I’d again be hard-pressed to give an answer in the affirmative. No one can predict the future with any certainty, and especially not for India and Indian elections—this is the enduring fascination of this country.

Democracy is also the ultimate leveller. One of the great joys of anchoring live television shows on counting day is just to watch the crestfallen faces of mighty politicians who had taken the electorate for granted. I remember deriving almost sadistic pleasure on meeting Narasimha Rao after his loss in 1996. The prime minister who would treat television journalists with contempt had just got his comeuppance from the Indian voter—his pout was now even more pronounced.

The first election that I have a distinct memory of was the 1976 US presidential elections. As an eleven-year-old, I sat all day in the USIS building in Mumbai watching the results unfold in another continent. I had wanted Jimmy Carter to win that one over Gerald Ford—don’t ask me why, maybe I just like peanuts! When Carter was declared the winner, I let off a scream of delight. That same feeling of exhilaration has accompanied every Indian election I have had the good fortune to report on since 1989. From Pehelwan Chacha in Varanasi to the fisherwoman in Sassoon Dock, it’s that tingling excitement that only the festive spirit of an Indian election can bring
to life. It’s that great Indian story in all its rainbow colours that I have tried to capture in this book—the story of the 2014 elections, a mandate which has the potential of changing India and its politics forever.

Counting day in a television studio. A bit like a T20
match. Fast, furious, the excitement both real and contrived. The 16th of May 2014 was no different.
It was the grand finale of the longest and most high-decibel campaign in Indian electoral
history—this was the final of the Indian Political League, the biggest show in the democratic
world. In the studio, we were preparing for a long day with packets of chips and orange juice to
stay energized. But even before we could settle our nerves, or go for a ‘strategic
break’, it was all over.

By 9.30 a.m., it was certain that Narendra Modi
would be India’s fourteenth prime minister. In our studios, Swapan Dasgupta, right-wing
columnist and a proud Modi supporter, was cheering. ‘It’s a defining moment in Indian
history,’ he exulted. His sparring partner, the distinguished historian Ramachandra Guha, who
disliked Modi and Rahul Gandhi in equal measure, had a firm riposte. ‘I think Modi should send
a thank you card to Rahul for helping him become prime minister of India!’

As we analysed the scale of the win, my mind went
back to the moment when I believe it all began. The 20th of December 2012 saw another T20 match,
another counting day. The results of the Gujarat
and Himachal Pradesh
assembly elections were streaming in that morning. Himachal was an also-ran. Gandhinagar was where
the action was. By noon, we had the breaking news—Narendra Modi had scored a hat-trick in
Gujarat. The margin was a bit lower than many had predicted, but with 116 seats in a 182-member
assembly, Modi was once again the self-styled ‘sher’ of Gujarat.

That evening, Modi addressed a large gathering of
the party faithful in Ahmedabad’s JP Chowk. ‘If there has been a mistake somewhere, if I
have erred somewhere, I seek an apology from you, the six crore Gujaratis,’ said the Gujarat
chief minister. ‘Gujarat is a role model for elections,’ he added. ‘The entire
election was fought here on the plank of development. Gujarat has endorsed the plank of development.
This victory is not the victory of Narendra Modi but of the six crore Gujaratis and those Indians
who aspire for prosperity and development. This is a victory of all those who wish the
country’s good.’

This was clearly no routine victory speech. Showing
a characteristic alertness to the political moment, it was delivered in Hindi and not Gujarati,
designed for a national audience way beyond Gujarat. In the frenzied crowds, posters had sprung up:
‘Modi chief minister 2012; prime minister 2014’. One Modi supporter even went to the
extent of claiming ‘Modi is India, India is Modi’, reminiscent of Congress slogans for
Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. As the ‘PM, PM’ chant echoed amidst the crowd throughout the
speech, Modi obligingly said, ‘If you want me to go to Delhi, I shall go there for a day on 27
December.’

In our studios that day too, Swapan Dasgupta was
elated. It wasn’t just a self-congratulatory ‘I told you so’ reaction—most
exit polls had predicted a Modi win. He was convinced that Modi was now poised to take the great
leap to the national capital. ‘This is the beginning, we will now see a clear attempt to
redefine Mr Modi’s role in national politics’, was his verdict. Modi’s triumph
carried the edge of a victory over the ‘left liberals’, a muffling of those critical
voices which seemed to have dominated the mainstream. India’s right-wing voices were waiting
to burst through the banks and sweep
aside the so-called
‘secularists’ who in their view had monopolized the discourse on Modi. Swapan seemed not
just excited at Modi’s victory but inordinately pleased at being able to cock a snook at his
ideological opponents.

Others in the studio panel were a little more
sceptical. After all, Modi wasn’t the first chief minister to score a hat-trick of wins.
Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik, Sheila Dikshit in Delhi and, of course, the redoubtable Jyoti Basu in
Bengal had shown it was possible. Was Modi, then, sui generis? Was there something in the
saffron-hued Ahmedabad air that evening which suggested this was a watershed moment in Indian
politics?

Later that night, as the dust settled and the
television talking heads made their exit, I telephoned Mr Modi’s residence in Gandhinagar to
congratulate him. A little after midnight, he returned the call. ‘Congratulations on your
victory,’ I said. His response was in Hindi.
‘Dhanyawaad, bhaiya!’
I
asked him whether his decision to deliver a victory speech in Hindi was the clearest sign yet that
he wanted to make a pitch for prime minister.
‘Rajdeep, jab aap reporter editor ban sakte
ho, toh kya chief minister, pradhan mantri nahi ban sakte kya?’
(If a reporter like you
can become an editor, why can’t a chief minister become a prime minister.) Stated with his
trademark gift of quick-witted repartee, there was my answer.

The first time I met Narendra Damodardas Modi, I
was a young reporter with the
Times of India
in Mumbai. The year was 1990 and I had been in
the profession for less than two years. My hair had not greyed nor had Modi’s. He was wearing
a loose, well-starched kurta–pyjama and greeted us warmly. Almost instantly, he became
Narendrabhai for all the journalists.

The occasion was the Ram rath yatra of L.K. Advani
from Somnath to Ayodhya. I had been assigned to cover one leg of the yatra as it wound its way from
Gujarat into Maharashtra. Actually,
I was the secondary reporter, tasked with
looking for some ‘colour’ stories around the main event. I joined the yatra in Surat as
it moved across south Gujarat and then into Maharashtra. For me, it was a big opportunity to gain a
ringside view of a major national political event, away from the local Mumbai politics beat.

It was a big occasion for Narendra Modi too. He was
then the BJP’s organizing secretary in Gujarat, the RSS’s point person for the state,
looking to carve an identity for himself well beyond being just another pracharak. If the rath yatra
provided me an opportunity for a front-page byline, it gave Modi a chance to take a step up the
political ladder. His role was to ensure the yatra’s smooth passage through Gujarat and create
an atmosphere and a momentum on which the BJP could capitalize in the rest of the country.

Gujarat at the time was poised to become, as
subsequent events would confirm, a ‘laboratory’ for political Hindutva. The BJP had just
made an impressive showing in the assembly elections that year, winning sixty-seven seats and
forging a coalition government with Chimanbhai Patel’s Janata Dal (Gujarat). The alliance
didn’t last long as Patel merged his party with the Congress, but it was clear that the BJP
was the party of the future with a solid cadre and a strong popular appeal across the state.

Under Advani’s leadership, the BJP had
abandoned the ‘Gandhian socialism’ plank for a more direct appeal to religious
nationalism. The idea of a Ram temple in Ayodhya was central to this new line of thinking. From just
two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984, the party had won eighty-five in 1989. There was a fresh energy
in its ranks, with an emerging group of young leaders giving the party a sense of dynamism missing
from an earlier generation. Modi, along with the likes of Pramod Mahajan and Sushma Swaraj, was part
of this Generation Next of the BJP.

As a Mumbai journalist, I had got to know Mahajan
first. He had a debonair flamboyance that marked him out amidst the BJP’s conservative and
rather nondescript cadre. He may have got his early inspiration from the RSS but appeared to have
little time for its austere lifestyle. He was the first politician I knew who wore
Ray-Ban, who never hid his affiliations to big business houses and who openly
enjoyed his drink. One of my unforgettable journalistic memories is of sitting in a rooftop suite of
Mumbai’s Oberoi hotel with Bal Thackeray smoking a pipe while Mahajan drank chilled beer. To
think that the pipe-sucking Thackeray and the beer-swilling Mahajan were the architects of the
original ‘conservative’ Hindutva alliance indicates sharply how ideological Hindutva was
in fact tailor-made for hard political strategy.

Mahajan was every journalist’s friend. He was
always ready with a quote, a news break and an anecdote. He was also, in a sense, the BJP’s
original event manager. The 1990 rath yatra, in fact, was his brainchild and he was made the
national coordinator of the event.

Modi was in charge of the Gujarat leg, and was to
accompany the procession from Somnath to Mumbai. Which is how and where we met. My early memories of
him are hazy, perhaps diluted by the larger-than-life image he acquired in later years. But I do
remember three aspects of his persona then which might have provided a glimpse into the future. The
first was his eye for detail. Every evening, journalists covering the yatra would receive a printed
sheet with the exact programme for the next day. There was a certain precision to the planning and
organization of the entire event which stood out. Modi would personally ensure that the media was
provided every facility to cover the yatra. Fax machines were made available at every place along
the yatra route, with the BJP local office bearing all expenses. Modi even occasionally suggested
the storyline and what could be highlighted! Micromanagement was an obvious skill, one he would use
to great effect in later years.

The second aspect was his attire. Without having
acquired the designer kurtas or the well-coiffured look of later years, he was always immaculately
dressed and well groomed. He may have lacked Mahajan’s self-confidence, but Modi’s
crisply starched and ironed kurtas marked him out from the other RSS–BJP
karyakarta
s
(workers) who sported a more crumpled look. Rumour had it that he spent at least half an hour a day
before the mirror, a habit that suggests early traces of narcissism.

The third lasting impression
came from Modi’s eyes. Sang Kenny Rogers in his hit song ‘The Gambler’:
‘
Son, I’ve made a life from readin’ people’s faces, knowin’ what
the cards were by the way they held their eyes.
’ In my experience, those with wide
twinkling eyes tend to play the game of life gently, perhaps lacking the killer instinct. Modi in
those early days smiled and laughed a lot, but his eyes at times glared almost
unblinkingly—stern, cold and distant. They were the eyes of someone playing for the highest
possible stakes in the gamble of life. His smile could embrace you, the eyes would intimidate.

The dominant image of that period, though, was the
yatra itself. It wasn’t just another roadshow—this was religion on wheels that was
transformed into a political juggernaut. Religion and politics had created a heady cocktail. Mahajan
and Modi were the impresarios, Advani was the mascot, but the real stars were the Hindutva
demagogues Sadhvi Rithambhara and Uma Bharti. I shall never forget their speeches during the yatra,
seeking Hindu mobilization and loaded with hate and invective against the minorities. Feverish
chants of ‘
Jo Hindu heet ki baat karega wahi desh pe raj karega
’ (Those who
speak of benefits to Hindus, they alone will rule the country) would be accompanied by powerful
oratory calling for avenging historical injustices.

Uma Bharti, a natural, instinctive politician and
mass leader, appeared to me breezily bipolar. At night-time rallies, she would deliver vitriolic and
highly communally charged speeches, and the very next morning, she would lovingly ask me about my
family and offer to make me
nimbu pani
(she is a terrific cook, I might add). Years later,
when Modi was sworn in as prime minister, Uma Bharti was made a minister and Sadhvi Rithambhara was
a special invitee—the wheel appeared to have come full circle for these stormy petrels. As I
watched first as a reporter in his twenties, through the decades to an editor in his late forties,
the Hindutva movement rose up from street-side clamour and charged-up rath yatras to claim its place
finally at the national high table, with these indefatigable
agitators always
at hand to lend their shoulder to the slowly rolling saffron wheel as it turned corner after
corner.