On the face of things, Narendra Modi has failed variously and spectacularly as India’s prime minister. After pledging to create millions of jobs, he has, according to a leaked government report, presided over a dramatic rise in unemployment among young Indians. Vowing to vanquish terrorism, he took most currency notes out of circulation and cracked down hard in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir has since witnessed a sharp spike in militancy and its biggest terrorist attack in years.
Swearing ferocious vengeance against Pakistan, Modi has had to resort to dubious claims about destroyed terrorist camps and hundreds of dead Pakistanis in order to appear a man of his word. Indeed, in an effort to back up claims that India’s economy has grown faster under his leadership than his predecessors’, his government has even imperiled the credibility of India’s official data.
Yet, it seems likely that Modi will return to power next month at the head of a coalition government. What explains his Teflon premiership? Arguably, it’s the same thing that propels other masters of generating slick, seductive and unreal narratives such as US President Donald Trump and Instagram megastar Kylie Jenner.
Certainly, no electoral arithmetic alone can account for Modi’s chemistry with many young Indians. He has cast a spell on them — and it is the nature of that unprecedented enchantment that ought to be examined.
On the day of his election in May 2014, I described him as India’s “canniest artist,” who mesmerized restless youth with fantastical visions of the Indian past and future, as well as his own abilities. It seemed clear even five years ago that Modi’s main stock-in-trade was illusion and that to fault him for his hostility to facts or indifference to rational discourse was beside the point.
Since then, India’s online population has doubled. Smartphones with cheap data plans have appeared in the hands of the poorest of Indians. That’s created one of the biggest markets in the world for apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp, two major sources of disinformation.
This has in turn augmented Modi’s ability to create virtual realities and to persuade a significant number of Indians to inhabit these shiny illusions.
To credit his appeal to his authoritarian ways is not to say much. It should be clear by now that Modi is no aloof autocrat or emotionally underpowered dynast such as Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister to whom he is often and inaccurately compared.
A champion tweeter, he delivers his rousing speeches in fancy dress, embodying a now-commonplace compulsion for political leaders to perform as regularly as the influencers of Instagram and YouTube — to put themselves on permanent display without aesthetic or moral inhibition. In the pseudo-egalitarian spirit that prevails on social media, he still presents himself to his primary audience of ambitious young strugglers as one of them: a self-made, self-optimizing individual.
Unquestionably, his impassioned assertions — whether about his 56-inch chest, his poverty-blighted childhood or his loathing of entitled dynasts — belong to an unabashed and noisily democratic culture of exhibitionism rather than to the cold and forbidding climate of autocracy.
He may have failed to remove the crippling limits on socioeconomic mobility for most Indians. But, he has deftly compensated for the lack of such substantive freedom by facilitating and popularizing highly expressive forms of liberty. These include not only the freedom to play (for instance, to consume videos on smartphones, a fast-growing addiction among the laboring as well as leisure classes in India), but also to communicate far and wide, and, most importantly, to ventilate strong, often hateful, emotions.
It’s hardly surprising then that Modi has sustained his electoral appeal largely through over-hyped “surgical” strikes on Pakistan (eulogized recently in a Bollywood-style music video that has gone viral) and sensationalized reports of mass casualties, or that his fans are never more energized than when attacking beef-eating Muslims, liberals and other allegedly “anti-national” Indians.
If Modi’s economic record matters much less than it should to his supporters, it is because Modi has vastly enriched their private lives of fantasy. A maestro of digital psycho-politics, Modi has succeeded in reconfiguring the psyche of voters even as he has failed to enhance their opportunities in the real world.
To grasp the singular phenomenon he represents, the analytical tools of political science, history, sociology, and psephology no longer seem enough. They have to be supplemented with what we possess only in under-developed form: an anthropology of our digital age.
For Modi is now only superficially like a conventional leader with party, ideology, manifesto and electoral campaign. With his shrewd grasp of the prevailing cyber-culture of aggressive self-optimization and extravagant self-regard, he seems more akin to the current monarchs of social media. His opponents have as much chance of keeping up with him as they do with the Kardashians.
Also read: Modi’s fatal flaw is his shallow understanding of political narrative
Wow! Thanks to The Print for searching the globe for India haters and giving them a platform– a few more eyeballs for our advertisers can’t hurt, can it?
For readers with a not very long memory this author had written a piece in the NYT about the Chittisinghpura massacre of Sikhs in Anantnag dist of Kashmir in year 2000 by Pak based militants — and blamed it on Indian army.
Pankaj Mishra sure knows who butters his toast. For his foreign handlers he can sell his friends and family — forget India.
Mir Jafar and Jai Chand come to mind.
People are talking about Modi mania or Modi magic through intricate reasoning which appears to be convincing, but I have a simple logic. Please consider this: India is a predominantly poor country, and Modi captured poor people’s imagination by making all sorts of promises, selling them big dreams, so he won in 2014. The same, VERY LARGE voter base is disillusioned with Modi today. Because of suffocating compulsions of basic living, across all caste and communal lines, ALL POOR PEOPLE THINK ALIKE. So I believe this: the BJP, despite all of Mr Modi’s shenanigans, will be ROUTED in these elections. By that I mean a sub-100 score.
Let’s assume that Modi will be routed and let’s also assume for a bit that you a well read sensible man. Who would you vote for? Rahul Gandhi, the comedian in chief of the congress party, who only got this job because he is a Gandhi! Or would you vote for Mayawati, who apart from building status of herself has done nothing for the Dalits she is supposed to espouse and her best friend in need, Shri Akhilesh Yadav, who took UP a further 20000 thousand leagues under the sea. Perhaps you are a Mamta fan, who runs the state like a Mafia don. Who Will You Vote For Sir??
Modi may not have achieved what he had promised, yes some decisions were perhaps wrong, but atkeast the intent was correct. Our Shastras say that Action is better than inaction and Modi did take action rightly or wrongly, that both the electorate and history will decide. I for one will give him atkeast 1 more term to complete his unfinished task. After all you and many others perhaps blindly voted for the congress for last many years.
I will vote for ANY of the names you mention, depending on where I am, and in my location who appears to be MOST LIKELY to defeat the BJP.
I never have, and never will, vote for the BJP. For two reasons: I do not subscribe to their BLIND & INTENSE hatred for the Muslims; I do not subscribe to their UNSCIENTIFIC claims of superiority of the ancient Hindu race. In fact as a proud and THINKING Hindu I feel quite embarrassed by such stories and the bad name they bring to the Hindus at large.
To understand this author, one has to see the coverage by Christian Amanpour in Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11 and the attack on Indian Parliament. That was just one classic example of how journalists twist words to suit their agenda. The fact is that there are two categories of politicians: (1) overt – such as Trump, Modi and Nigel Fararge (UK) and (2) covert, but by no means less corrupt, incompetent and power-hungry – such as Sonia Gandhi, who is neither social media savvy nor a sincere public servant. The state of Rae Barriely and Amethi is enough proof that absolute power when unaccompanied with good intent is equally responsible for the current mess in India.
Oh Dear! You must be very uncomfortable! The indigestion, the acid reflux all must be causing a lot pain. You just can’t digest the fact that Modi has actually been a paradigm changer for the good of this country. I am not going to list out the good things he has done simply because you don’t have the eyes to see it, stomach to digest it and the heart to accept it.
You can get away with your a lot of your girbish in New York Times and other such like minded myopic papers and I am sure they give you a good pat on the back for being a good brown face who agrees with them, and maybe even buy you a drink or two from time to time, but here in Bharat you will always be akin to those “Indians” who actually helped the British to rule Bharat.
Difficult for an older person to judge the potency of social media platforms in creating an alternate reality. Not a soap or a reality show. This is a complex country to govern and lead to prosperity. No getting around that.
Incredible, This is as wonderful piece of fictional writing. Pankaj is using his formidable writing craft to paint Modi as a modern day methuselah.Pankaj, You give Modi too much credit and people too less. Modi is better politician than his rivals, more hardworking , focused and committed. That’s the simple truth. But that doesn’t come across as clever. Hence this option piece.
People like you raise questions over credibility of armed forces just to show journalism but in real people like you are not a journalist but a sick minded personality to get recognition. People like you ,have believed pak army over balakon but do not stand with indian air force. Shame on you and your journalism, and please if you do not know how to do this in better way the keep your mouth shut.
You guys write whatever you want to vent your frustration. But Congress is not getting my vote unless the Nehru family and its sycophants are eliminated from the party. I want to see Modi back for another 5 years with absolute majority. It is as simple as that.
Wow thanks for this classic modi hating piece.
मोदी ने हिंदुओं की शान बढाई । मुझे कोई मतलब नहीं विकास से । मतलब है सिर्फ कि मेरा धर्म सुरक्षित रहे । विस्तार करें । ओर मोदी कर रहा है । उमर अब्दुल्ला ने कहा था कि 2024 की तैयारी करो । पर मै कहता हूं कि जब तक मोदी हैं तो कोई तैयारी न करो । अगली बार बल्लुस्तान पर हमला होगा