In Narendra Modi’s first 100 days, Amit Shah has become India’s most powerful man

File photo of Amit Shah | PTI

Over the last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled a cross-border pipeline between India and Nepal, bid farewell to his former principal secretary Nripendra Misra – who is believed to have led the over-zealous implementation of the swadeshi agenda in the finance ministry – sat down with women who segregate plastic from waste and fed a cow at the Pashu Arogya Mela in Mathura just before he inaugurated a big project to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease in animals.

See more

मथुरा में पशु आरोग्य मेले के कुछ पल।

‘मुंहपका’ से मुक्ति के लिए 51 करोड़ गाय-भैंस, भेड़-बकरी और सुअरों को साल में दो बार टीके लगाए जाएंगे।

जिन पशुओं का टीकाकरण हो जाएगा, उनको ‘पशु आधार’ यानि ‘यूनिक आईडी’ देकर कानों में टैग लगाया जाएगा। स्वास्थ्य कार्ड भी जारी किया जाएगा। pic.twitter.com/2Sq42vZpRr

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 11, 2019

This video, which has been viewed nearly 3 lakh times so far, gave way to a speech in which Modi chastised all Indians for being ashamed of ‘Om’, a sacred word for believing Hindus, as well as the cow. “They get an electric shock,” Modi said, when they hear these two words.

No word on economy

But Modi maintained a resolute silence on any ideas he and his cabinet ministers may have on fixing the economy. And since bovine analogies are in, Modi can tell us how India can pull itself up by the horns, revive the “animal spirit” that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once spoke about, and above all push for a bull run – so as to end the stagnancy of 5 per cent GDP growth, the worst in six years.

In fact, there was no move to speak to Manmohan Singh either – if there is anyone of consequence in India today on the economic front, it is him. Modi may have read in the newspapers about Singh’s 5-point plan on turning growth around, but no call has gone from the PMO to the good doctor.

Instead, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has blamed India’s millennials for contributing to the auto slump by preferring Uber and Ola taxi rides to buying cars. And Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, while addressing a Board of Trade meeting in Delhi Thursday, sent Twitter into a frenzy when he pointed out that “Maths never helped Einstein discover gravity”.

Things got so bad on social media that Goyal had to issue a clarification Thursday evening, saying he had, of course, been misquoted.

This, then, is an example of Modi’s bench strength as he celebrates his first 100 days in power in his second tenure. The odd thing is that while Modi is such a great communicator himself, most of his ministers either don’t want to talk to the press – evidently, ministries have lists of favourable journalists through whom they put out positive stories – or when they do, like Piyush Goyal, it is to say, disparagingly, ‘Don’t listen to TV, the media…’.

Rise of Home Minister Amit Shah

It is also clear that the most powerful person to have emerged in Modi’s first 100 days is Home Minister Amit Shah. He is the one who led from the front in Parliament when he announced the revocation of both Articles 370 and 35A. He has been emphatic about ramming through the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that will give citizenship to all the “Hindu refugees” on the NRC’s exclusion list of 19 lakh people. Last week, addressing the 68^th plenary session of the North Eastern Council in Guwahati, Shah announced that “our government respects Article 371 and will not alter it in any way”.

Shah knows that he cannot play around with the northeast if the BJP wants to retain power in that region. With Muslim-majority Kashmir, on the other hand, the BJP’s stakes were so low that it pulled the rug from under the PDP’s coalition government last year and has since worked towards implementing its nationalist agenda there.

Modi was fully on board, of course, on Kashmir and other projects like the UAPA Bill and criminalising instant triple talaq. But what is significant in these 100 days is the manner in which Shah has come into his own. There is the deference to Modi because everyone knows only he can win India. Amit Shah will always walk one step behind the PM. But Shah, it is becoming increasingly clear, seems next in line.

Not a temporary provision

Interestingly, Shah sought to differentiate between Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and Article 371, which gives several states in the northeast the full power to incorporate special tribal laws and provisions into their daily life.

Article 370 was a “temporary” provision, while Article 371 is a “special” provision in the Constitution, Shah said, as he addressed the North-East Democratic Alliance this week in Guwahati, adding, “Yeh northeast ka adhikar hai, ise koi nahin chheen sakta (This is a right of the northeast that no one can take away)”.

But it’s not clear if Shah’s aggressive tone on the NRC and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is being echoed by Modi, who also has to deal with the international reactions to the goings-on in Kashmir and Assam. “I will not allow even one infiltrator either in Assam or in the rest of the country,” Shah said at the North Eastern Council meeting Sunday. Hours later in Geneva, UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet mentioned that her office was concerned not just about Kashmir but also about the NRC in Assam.

Is Shah opening too many fronts for Modi? Should the PM tell his Home Minister to tone down his rhetoric and allow him to fix the economy on priority?

The moment of truth is upon Modi. Over the next few days, we will see what he chooses.