The relentless rise of the ‘Great Leader’

There was one transformative event in the Indian political scene post the elections of 2019. While the 2014 polls resulted in the formation of a BJP government, the 2019 polls led to the creation of a ‘Modi Sarkar’. The two are distinctly different and those who believe that they are still governed by a political party that adheres to democratic norms are grievously wrong. The party apparatus was used as a ladder to climb up to power and has long been kicked out.

Initial but firm steps toward a ‘Modi Sarkar’ were taken soon after the elections of 2014 when the old guard of the party was unceremoniously kicked upstairs to sinecure posts into a ‘Marg Darshak Mandal’. On August 26, 2014, the party’s newly elected president Amit Shah announced the constitution of a new Parliamentary Board without three of its founding members -- Atal Bihari Vajpayee (he had suffered a stroke in 2009 that affected his speech and mobility and later slipped into a coma), LK Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi (the last two were sitting MPs in Lok Sabha and, interestingly, Joshi had vacated his seat in Benares for Narendra Modi and contested from Kanpur).

Subsequently, some more old guards of the party -- Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Shatrughan Sinha -- left the party and those that remained, like Sushma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh, were sidelined during the last term. Soon, it was made clear to them that they were in the Union Cabinet only because of PM Modi’s grace.

The party was reshaped on different lines. During PM Vajpayee’s tenure, nobody professed personal loyalty to him but were in the government because they had served the party or the nation for long and had some merit to be in the jobs that they were assigned. Now, the rules of engagement were different and they were clear from day one. You are in the government or the party or in the legislature on the sufferance of the ‘Great Leader’ and not because of any intrinsic worth you may have, because nobody got elected on their own popularity but of the Leader alone. That was the narrative and the belief system that soon percolated downwards.

Just as the party was being reshaped, government institutions, including Constitutional bodies, were bent to the political will and suborned. This process affected the RBI, the Election Commission, the CBI, CAG, Indian Statistical Organisation and others. Never before had so many powerful institutions been subverted. And never before has the IAS cadre of one state, Gujarat, acquired so much clout in Delhi as in the last six years. In an RTI reply in August 2019, it was revealed that 370 IAS officers from Gujarat cadre were in the central government above the rank of Joint Secretary. This is the real ‘Gujarat Model’ -- you worked with the then CM, now you will be heading a key post in the Government of India, not only because you know the PM’s style of functioning but also because you know how to get things done for him. Rules and procedures are not to hinder the obedience to orders, that is the key.

This is a deliberate and planned process of hollowing out the State. Hollowing out the State has two aspects. First, destroy the impersonality and objectivity of an ‘institution’ and personalise it and subordinate it to your command. Have your handpicked officers in all key posts. The second, and more devious objective, is to challenge the very purpose for which those institutions are built, such as ‘keeping a check on the Executive’, or ‘serving the interests of all citizens’. You question that fundamental premise ‘how dare you check my authority’ or ‘how dare you serve the interest of all citizens, you are here to serve my interests alone’. This belief is justified by a sense of perceived grievance of a community over a long period, however false it is, as seen in Modi’s remark that “Hindus have suffered slavery for 1,200 years”.

The 2019 election threw up another important and revealing slogan -- ‘Modi hain tho mumkin hain’. Whether it’s hitting back at Pakistan through a ‘surgical strike’ or taming the ‘aggressive minority’ at home, or overcoming terrorism in Kashmir, or Make in India, or taking India to a $5 trillion economy; it’s all possible only with Modi in power, we are told.

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic gave another twist to the projection of the Great Leader’s power. The Leader put his power to test, not once but thrice and found that the entire country obeyed his diktat like one man. Not only did they obey him on the need for the lockdown when it was announced, but they also obeyed his call to clap hands and light lamps. Thanksgiving to the Corona warriors may have truly impelled the people, but the messaging and the ordering of a mass drill for 1.3 billion people served another purpose. The Great Leader demonstrated that he controlled and directed his people like a puppeteer. No Leader had done such a thing in the history of this nation. This is a scary prospect as such power could be unleashed again, and not necessarily for a benign purpose.

Now, as the pandemic curve rises and the economy’s curve falls precariously, the Great Leader has to be shielded from public view and saved from people’s anger. His charisma is too precious to be used often. When you see President Trump on TV every day and if your first reaction is ‘what a jerk’, that’s bad for the Leader, right?

(The writer, a former Cabinet Secretariat official, is presently Visiting Fellow, Observer Research Foundation)