How PM Modi seeks to reposition his brand in his 12th year in office

The hallowed-but-hackneyed Vishwaguru stature has been dented by Trump’s impetuousness. Events in neighbouring countries don’t offer any solace either.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his address to the nation, 21 September | ANI

Let me start with a small quiz. Guess who said the following:

1. “I am the Pratahm Sevak of the people of India.”
2. “If someone wants to bend India with the threat of atom bomb, our country will not bow down.”
3. “It’s our endeavour that whether it’s a cement factory, cloth-making machine, steel plant or fertilizer machine, we make them in our country so that we don’t depend on other countries for long.”
4. “You know our country’s economic situation. We can improve it if we use Swadeshi….Swadeshi doesn’t mean that we don’t want goods from outside; it also means that hum bachat karen (we save).” 

Some of you may be smiling—so easy, isn’t it? Prime Minister Narendra Modi said all these things. Well, yes and no. The first utterance is by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947. The second and third remarks are by Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 and 1965, respectively. And the last one is by Indira Gandhi in 1966. The “hum bachat karen” call by her seemed to find resonance in PM Modi’s “bachat utsav” reference in his address to the nation on Sunday. All of them made these remarks as the prime minister in their Independence Day addresses from the ramparts of the Red Fort.

However, PM Modi also made all these remarks—well, similar ones—from the Red Fort. Many things that past prime ministers have said in their speeches from the Red Fort figure in Modi’s speeches, too. If Nehru called himself the “Pratham Sevak”, Modi called himself the “Pradhan Sevak”. In 1947, Nehru said that for the country to function properly, we should “stop all kinds of jhagda or clashes immediately”. In 2014, Modi urged the people to undertake a 10-year moratorium on communal, caste, and class clashes to see positive results. In his Independence Day address in 1979, Chaudhary Charan Singh quoted MK Gandhi to tell the people that rights follow duties. Modi has been echoing many of his predecessors’ ideas.

Event management or rebranding?

So, what am I driving at here? It’s great to see the continuity of ideas and principles from Nehru to Modi. It is, however, disappointing that PM Modi still has to repeat what Gandhi said during the freedom movement, what Shastri said 60 years ago, and what Indira said a year later in 1966: Make in India, Swadeshi, and self-reliance. The prime minister repeated these ideas for the nth time in 11 years in his address on 21 September. Yet, the Make in India initiatives have dismally failed to increase the manufacturing sector’s share in the GDP since 2013-14.

These words figure more prominently and loudly in leaders’ speeches whenever there is an external crisis. Weeks after the massive strain in India-China ties following the Galwan clashes in June 2020, PM Modi gave a rousing speech on Atmanirbhar Bharat from the Red Fort, giving a clarion call for reducing imports and increasing exports. He unveiled his vision to make India a global manufacturing hub.

Chinese imports have only increased since then. There were similar calls in his Red Fort speech in 2025, too—this time, in the context of US President Donald Trump’s tariff tantrums.

Given this backdrop, PM Modi’s detractors may see his Sunday address as yet another example of event management. It also came shortly after Trump’s H-1B move, which comes as a shocker to the aspirational middle class—Modi’s base. The PM’s call to buy swadeshi goods for India’s prosperity may not go down well with many economists who would argue that killing competition to protect domestic manufacturers amounts to killing efficiency and innovation, and limiting the choices of domestic consumers. The idea should be to enable them to be globally competitive and increase exports, not to become inward-looking.

As eminent agriculture economist Ashok Gulati and Tanay Suntwal pointed out in an article in The Indian Express, China is the largest net importer of agriculture products. The US, the biggest agriculture exporter, is also a net importer of agri-products.

“India should evaluate its comparative advantage and produce what we do best, and import what others can do more efficiently. Politicians who often claim that ‘imports are bad’ ignore the theory that underpins global trade,” they wrote. The same holds true for non-agriculture goods, too.

Economics is not my domain, and so I would rather confine myself to something I dabble in—politics. What has not been appreciated enough is PM Modi’s obvious attempt to rebrand himself as a big-ticket reformer in his third term in office. He is repositioning himself as the leader best suited to steer the ship when a storm seems to be building up. GST reforms and the two informal groups of ministers the PM has set up—under Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh—are about the economy, of course. But it’s a lot about politics, too.

There goes the Vishwaguru plank

A lot of what made Modi a brand is showing signs of fraying. In the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he was ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ or the emperor of Hindu hearts. He may still be one, but it’s not potent enough to swing voters in a big way. Who could have thought that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would fall short of a majority, even after delivering on the Ayodhya Ram temple?

Another attribute of Brand Modi was his strong and decisive leadership, especially in national security matters. It’s still there, but voters seem to want more. See how Operation Sindoor doesn’t seem to be resonating much on the ground. PM Modi still refers to it in meetings, but public response has been muted, at best. Welfare schemes, freebies, and infrastructure projects still get voters’ appreciation. They are, however, looking like par for the course after 11 years.

The hallowed-but-hackneyed Vishwaguru stature has been dented by Trump’s impetuousness. Even if the American president starts listening to reason and changes course, he has done enough damage. And for the Right-wing ecosystem that gave clarion calls for the boycott of Chinese goods after the Doklam standoff in 2017 and the Galwan clashes three years later, the sight of PM Modi sharing light moments with Xi Jinping at the SCO summit in China wouldn’t have been amusing. Events in neighbouring countries haven’t given them any solace either. There goes the Vishwaguru plank.

Modi’s admirers would point to the results of the Assembly elections after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. First of all, in Haryana and Maharashtra, where the BJP did extremely well, it had not sought votes in PM Modi’s name. It did so in Jharkhand, but lost. ‘Modi ki guarantee’ was back as a poll slogan in Delhi, and it certainly worked in the national capital. But complacency is the last thing you can attribute to PM Modi. Nobody knows the pulse of the people better than he. That he chose to address the nation over reforms could be an indication of a larger play. Expect Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh to suggest big-bang reforms. And trust PM Modi to bite the bullet this time. At least, I hope so. Bihar results would be crucial, though.

DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)