Is Modi past his best?

The Prime Minister’s grip is weakening, evident in BJP State unit squabbles and growing pushback from allies, signalling a shift in power.

At an election rally in Anand, Gujarat, on May 2. | Photo Credit: Amit Dave/REUTERS 

Narendra Modi is not the kind of figure who will quietly sail into the sunset. On September 17, he turned 74, giving him one more year before the informal retirement age he himself set for members of the BJP. During the course of the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, it was passionately reiterated that Modi was exceptional (the leader himself suggested that he was perhaps even non-biological) and that, therefore, the retirement age did not apply to him.

The number, however, hangs in the air. The RSS, which had once pushed the same idea of voluntary retirement for the first generation of BJP leaders, particularly L.K. Advani, is not entirely enamoured of Modi these days and sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat recently made one of his cryptic statements: “No one should consider themselves god….”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first Prime Minister from the BJP, chose to fade away from active politics after the National Demoractic Alliance’s defeat in 2004, but Advani ignored the RSS and stubbornly stayed on. In 2013, the entire Sangh Parivar and the BJP rallied around Modi as the prime ministerial candidate and Advani’s primacy ended.

In those nine years, from 2004 to 2013, Advani was frequently mocked, critiqued, and ignored. Modi is still in power, but he has transited to leading a coalition government. While not as much as Advani, he too is indeed being slighted by the RSS chief occasionally and is increasingly critiqued by both insiders and the commentariat. Since June 4, the day the Lok Sabha election results were announced, Modi has not managed one of those staged moments when he would go on stage and people would watch riveted. If anything, audiences are bored, as illustrated by data that show a decline in viewership for his speeches on YouTube and in listener numbers for his Mann ki Baat.

Modi is fundamentally different from Advani: he has built a personality cult as opposed to building a movement and a party. Advani nurtured many next-generation figures in the BJP and actually propelled Vajpayee as the more acceptable face for a coalition. Modi has diminished all other power centres and built the I, me, myself aura that is proving difficult in a coalition era. That is showing in multiple ways: in having to send the Waqf (Amendment) Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee and in having to withdraw the Broadcast Services (Regulation) Bill and the proposal for lateral entry to the IAS.

The winds of change are being seen in the States as well. As the Centre’s pincer grip has loosened, the BJP has had to deal with divisions within its State units such as in Uttar Pradesh. The upcoming round of Assembly elections is yielding evidence that the BJP has transitioned to an era where the “Absolute Leader” is not so strong and local aspirations can come to the fore despite the Delhi writ. In Haryana, the announcement of candidates for the October 5 election triggered a string of resignations and protests. More chaos followed, this time in election-bound Jammu and Kashmir, where the BJP first announced and then rescinded a list of 44 candidates. In an odd way, these are all signs of health in a democracy. Equally, they illustrate that Modi is perhaps no longer the strongman he once was in the BJP.

Highlights

• Since June 4, the day the Lok Sabha election results were announced, Modi has not managed one of those staged moments when he would go on stage and people would watch riveted.
• The grandiose slogans of “Modi ki Guarantee” and “Modi Hai to Mumkin Hai” have been forgotten like the faded posters of the prime ministerial visage from the much-hyped G20 summit held in Delhi last year.
• The audiences are bored, as illustrated by data that show a decline in viewership for his speeches on YouTube and in listener numbers for his Mann ki Baat.

The grandiose slogans of “Modi ki Guarantee” and “Modi Hai to Mumkin Hai” have been forgotten like the faded posters of the prime ministerial visage from the much-hyped G20 summit held in Delhi last year. Still, what the BJP and Modi do indeed have going for them is the loyalty of a section of the broadcast media. This helps them in narrative creation and gives them the capacity to defame opponents. The 2024 electoral setback for the BJP has not resulted in greater balance in news coverage, but in some instances at least, there is among anchors, many of whom rose in the age of Hindutva and are tethered to the regime, a greater anxiety to support Modi.

Television channels, therefore, focus on the protests after the rape and murder of a doctor in opposition-ruled West Bengal but will not spend any time on the violence and more serious civil war that has gone on for over a year now in BJP-ruled Manipur. Sections of the broadcast media will also ignore the poor safety record of the Railways in the Modi era but will bring focus on the Railways if a BJP-ruled State provides a narrative of deliberate sabotage by alleged Muslims and even coin the phrase “rail jehad”.

The “news” as disseminated by these channels is clearly designed to never focus on the ruling party’s failings and to hysterically magnify anything that may be a lapse or can be made to look like one by an opposition figure. Every word of Rahul Gandhi’s is picked upon, the AAP is irremediably bad, and the Trinamool Congress is currently enemy number one. These are currently the top hates of TV channels in the Hindi belt where the BJP is most rooted. The propaganda wing of the BJP is therefore still operating at full throttle in broadcast media and social media.

The Modi regime in its third term may have compromised on issues such as the Broadcast Bill and might occasionally reach out to the opposition. But there is one issue on which it will not budge: any questioning or examination of the Adani Group, whose rise in fortune has paralleled Modi’s national ascendance. The chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Madhabi Buch, has been mired in controversies that raise serious conflict of interest concerns and even suggest outright corruption, charges that need to be investigated. Yet, asking the SEBI chief to resign is apparently out of the question. SEBI was tasked with examining Gautam Adani’s extraordinary growth in the Modi era by means that would be deemed questionable in other countries, and it found no wrongdoing. The SEBI chief reports to the Finance Minister, who in turn reports to the Prime Minister.

Many years ago, when he was Chief Minister, this columnist was one of the journalists who surrounded Modi during a national executive meet of the BJP. When he was asked some questions, he responded by saying in one instance that “some people now say that Modi creates the clouds and the cloudburst”. The “non-biological” theme therefore was not born in 2024. In 2024, it can be said that as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, there is an ill wind blowing and the monsoon has unleashed a downpour. The new Parliament building and the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, both mega projects associated with Modi, have seen embarrassing water leakage and seepage issues. Worse, a giant statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji inaugurated by him nine months ago in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra collapsed, forcing even the strongman to apologise, obviously in the light of the upcoming election. Sure, the ruling BJP coalition is comfortable in terms of the arithmetic, but the chemistry around the Prime Minister has changed. 

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.