A blistering polemic exposes the country’s malaise under Narendra Modi
Almost a decade ago, I travelled to a small town in Gujarat, a state in the west of India, to hear Narendra Modi speak to a rally. It started late in the evening and a crowd had already spread across the vacant lot of land that was the venue. Modi, then the chief minister of the state but with national ambitions, turned up on time, in stark contrast to the vast proportion of south Asian politicians, and proceeded to mesmerise his audience.
Almost all those present were men – small-town travel agents, shopkeepers, minor bureaucrats. There was nothing very grand about them. All dreamed of a different India, one that enjoyed the levels of development of the west and the authoritarian order of China, without sacrificing any of what they saw as its true identity. “We are middle-class people,” one told me, before pointing to a labourer among his friends and saying: “Except him.” Everyone laughed.
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