Prime Minister Narendra Modi Is India’s Deng Xiaoping And Has Been Thus Inspired From The 1980s

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been Chief Minister in Gujarat from soon after the dawn of the millennium in 2001. He was installed in the hot seat by the BJP party leadership including Prime Minister AB Vajpayee and Home Minister LK Advani, after a spell of some years in New Delhi as an assistant, an RSS Pracharak, and sometimes, an arresting TV commentator.

Of course, Narendra Modi has been an RSS Pracharak, winding his way through the dusty roads of Gujarat, and even in many places abroad, while on tour with his modest jhola, since before the Emergency, and at least the 1980s.

His ideas on development formed in those early years when not in power. He was not just spiritually inspired by Swami Vivekananda and others, but often wondered why a country with the calibre of its great men through the ages and recent times was not progressing as much as might have been hoped. Speeches he made in the eighties at RSS gatherings, that have survived, have made this clear.

In Gujarat, he was at the helm for fifteen years continuously, leading a majority BJP government.  During these years, he pulled close ideologically to the Deng Xiaoping model of development, its immense talent at manufacturing in China, which he sought to replicate in Gujarat. He was also drawn to the discipline and aesthetics of Japan. He met his friend and like-minded leader Shinzo Abe, during these years at the helm in Gujarat. There were regular Gujarat based development jamborees to which many foreign entities came.

Of course, some of his efforts were stymied and marred because he was perceived as a major threat by the UPA government.  Chief Minister Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah were constantly put under pressure by the Centre, branded as Hindu communalists, and everything possible was done to tarnish their reputation. This even stretched to requesting foreign governments, including the US, to not even grant Modi a visit visa!

Modi’s innings in Gujarat did get off to a stormy start with the infamous Godhra riots in Ahmedabad in 2002. However, the people of Gujarat stood by his leadership, as they still do as prime minister, and gave him an uninterrupted three terms. Modi transformed Gujarat, his home state, into one of the most prosperous and developed states of the Indian Union in this time. There were no more communal riots in Gujarat after Godhra at all, and they have not returned even after Modi personally moved to New Delhi as prime minister in 2014, with Amit Shah in tow.

Modi’s imprint on the administration of Gujarat was so deep, and his continued nurture of the state so attentive, that the BJP has retained the state without interruption in the eight years since, winning yet another five-year term recently.

Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s great emphasis on modernisation and infrastructural development continues at great speed. He seems singularly determined to transform India into a developed state, certainly in the top three of all major economies, but also into a major pilar of a multipolar world that is emerging in geopolitics.

Deng Xiaoping could only come back into contention after the end of the Mao Zedong era, and used 30 years of double-digit growth and exports to the US and the West to propel China into the No.2 slot. That Xi Jinping, now in his third-term in power, is increasingly trying to bring back the Mao era, replete with disastrous economic notions and hard imperialistic tendencies, does not bode well for the CCP, and the future of China under its leadership. It could even bring Communism in China down before very long.

This current state of affairs in China, including the resentments worldwide caused by the Covid pandemic perceived to have originated in, and still perpetuated by China, is seen as an economic opportunity by Modi’s India.

The BJP has always sought to steer a path between Socialism embraced by the earlier dispensation, and Capitalism, as in the private sector. A Welfare Statism, aimed at the bottom of the pyramid, has been in place in the Central Government, but alongside huge expenditure on infrastructure, to encourage entrepreneurship and manufacturing.

Now, the time has finally come to see manufacturing growing to claim more than 30 per cent of the economy, or more, up from about 25% now. This is expected to manifest via multiple fields, including electronics, automobiles, the digital revolution, space, the blue economy, alternative energy, defence manufacturing, semiconductors. A page, if you like, out of the Gujarat development book, that saw a higher growth rate for over a decade than the national average, with greater productivity, and indeed that of Deng Xiaoping’s keep your head down but work hard economics.  

As a democracy, introducing the GST regime, the bankruptcy law, demonetisation to reduce the influence of the cash economy, widespread digitisation of the financial and credit systems, amongst other initiatives such as the administration of the richest cricket club in the world- the BCCI, and even the ICC for a spell, have also contributed immensely.

Privatisation has been a bumpy road so far, though unloading Air India to an eager Tata has been a stellar accomplishment, because the government just ran it into the ground with ongoing and massive losses.

Modi had no occasion to try privatisation in Gujarat. It is, overall, much simpler to run one’s home state. At the Centre, to find buyers willing to pay fair value for badly-managed government assets is problematic, both politically and economically. Asset strippers are readily available, but not nurturing entrepreneurs, willing to take on largely unproductive government employees, and superannuated assets, besides the land and buildings.

However, the three Gujarati stalwarts, Ambani, Adani, and Tata, have been of the greatest assistance in moving into high investment infrastructure areas such as ports, airports, power, as well as in acquiring struggling businesses. Others, such as L&T, Mahindra, and Tata again, are now prominent in defence manufacturing too.

While India is broadly in favour of globalisation and free trade, the Modi government has placed national self-interest stage centre in the mix. It wants reciprocity and mutual advantage, or it tends to lean towards aatmanirbharta.

In a sense, both the tendencies of the RSS/BJP economic thought that favour globalisation on the one hand, and protectionism on the other, are being served via the prism of national self-interest.

Other thorns such as the failure of the Farm Laws in the face of stout opposition from vested interests; when to go in for genetically modified seeds for bumper crops at a cost; labour reform, and land acquisition difficulties, keep Modi’s India shackled to its feudal/socialist past to a significant degree. And this despite two majority governments at the Centre, that might become three in 2024.  

In reaction, the Opposition becomes more rigid in its cling to obsolete socialist dogma, but mainly because it does not want to be obliterated altogether.

All in all, a 7% odd growth in nominal GDP rates year-on-year, expected for the next ten at least, suggests the mixture of policies adopted by the BJP government with no hard-line ideological moorings works quite well. It is not only the fastest rate of growth in any major economy in the world, but is proving consistent in the post Covid scenario.

Modi’s own instincts to take over the world’s manufacturing and supply chains from China, including the raw materials and components, have to work alongside our democracy and historical baggage. However, India is not threatening in the perception of foreign investors. It is stable, and has the largest intelligent and young work-force in the world. Most understand the global lingua franca English, and can be readily skilled.  

Circumstances and contours are different from when China was inducted into the Western geopolitical matrix in the 1970s. Mao Zedong and Nixon may have agreed to cooperate, partially to bring the Soviet Union down, but it was Deng Xiaoping, domestically exiled under Mao, who could bring the promise to flower and fruit.

Likewise, a man of destiny in the shape and form of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not only making a reality of his early vision, but opening the gates wide to the Amritkaal he often speaks of, this time, for the country.  

(1,372 words)

January 10^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee