Modi's Gujarat

When my father was visiting Boston a few weeks ago, I brought up the topic of Modi and his recent deification by the Indian corporate lobby. I was not surprised to find some sympathies and even admiration for the man in him,being an entrepreneur and an industrialist himself. This naturally led us to a heated debate and the only concession I managed to extract from my father was the following - Modi's much admired efficiency in commissioning SEZs and removing red tapes for corporates with economic interests in the state is not going to extricate him from the moral obligation to commit to a fair trial on the 2002 events where his culpability as the leader of the state is a matter beyond reasonable doubt to any person of moderate intelligence. Even that drained me out of my powers. But as an essay by a sociologist that Deepa Nair mailed to me states:

The career of Narendra Modi is a case study that will intrigue many. He's a politician seeking to redefine himself and Gujarat. He's doing this not in terms of a holistic vision, but a fragmentary one. He has the industrialists on his side because he simplifies rules and regulations for them. He has the religious sects with him because he speaks the hybrid language of history and modernity. He claims the new by antagonizing the old, creating a middle class urban base that dreams of change, tired of the old grammar of party politics and caste equations. No leader is more contemptuous of his own party than Modi.

Continuing,

What defines him is speed: He is in a hurry, so he is intolerant. He hates any form of opposition and his ruthlessness stems from there. Often in India, we confuse the arbitrary and the ruthless with the decisive. Ratan Tata forgot the Tata tradition to opt for Modi's modernity, and created a favourable social contract between two outstanding modernizers. Gujarat is probably the only state where the SEZ and the privatized ports have legitimacy. In the short run, Modi is king. Long live the king of the short run. What of the long run?

It's no surprise that such qualities will immediately find the admiration of industrialists like my father. It is not that their kind is morally shallow or even oblivious but one has to understand that one is often limited by the boundaries of one's own interests and perception. It will, however, be an extremely sad state of affairs if in the futute, political dissent becomes the prerogative of merely the academic elite and the vast ocean of illiterate masses. As the essay puts it better than I could dream of:

As John Maynard Keynes said, we'll all be dead, but memory lives, and the future will ask questions which may not be popular today. Is Gujarat India's China, seeking to substitute Chinese ruthlessness for Indian deliberative democracy? What of justice for marginals and minorities and for all the opposition that paid the price for dissent? Dissent is a precious way of life. If Gujarat were measured in terms of a dissenters' index, it would rank abysmally low. If competence were evaluated in terms of diversity, well-being and value maintenance, we've already lost the battle.

Modi's Gujarat is a future urban nightmare. On ecology, health and welfare, Modi shows little competence. Privatising health is no way to well-being. Creating education as a business is no guarantee of quality. As a master of methodology, Modi is all technique and speed, without vision.