Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping, like other contemporaries Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Boris Johnson, etc., are leaders with a nationalistic bent. They view their respective countries as embodiments of either Han Chinese or Hindu civilization, where the center of the world revolves around their nations in the sense that they see them as the center of history.
The dominance of the BJP, however, has surprisingly little do with its economic track record. Modi has succeeded politically despite—not because of—the economy, which is in the midst of a protracted downturn that began on his watch. For his second term, the prime minister has doubled down on the grand economic promises he made in his 2014 campaign and gone still further, setting a goal of turning India into a $5 trillion economy by 2024. But his government has struggled to articulate just how it will bring about India’s economic renewal.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the President of United States of America Donald Trump at a rally in Houston on September 22, 2019. Photo/PIB
US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi exchanged warm words of friendship in Texas at a rare mass rally for a foreign leader. Around 50,000 people gathered for what Mr Trump called a “profoundly historic event” on Sunday in Houston. The “Howdy, Modi!” event was billed as one of the largest ever receptions of a foreign leader in the US.
President Donald Trump is expected to headline his largest rally yet on Sunday when he appears in Houston in an effort to appeal to a growing political force in the United States: Indian Americans. Trump will speak to an expected crowd of 50,000, mostly Indian Americans, who are flocking to the most diverse city in the nation to catch a glimpse of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at what is being touted as the largest event in the U.S. for a leader of foreign country.
With the reappointment of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval for the next five years and his elevation to cabinet rank, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has got a fearsome foursome to handle the entire spectrum of national security and foreign policy. The team comprising of Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the NSA Ajit Doval is something of a security dream-team, actually more team than dream.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi being sworn in for his second five-year term after a stupendous election victory. Photo/PIB
The recent Indian election will be a case study in how to upend the conventional assumption of electoral politics that an incumbent is judged on his record of performance against his own promises. Prime Minister Narendra Modi fulfilled none of his, so why did voters reward him with a landslide victory?
It seems that the BJP’s formula of focusing on national security and identity politics, along with channeling Modi’s clear charisma and oratory powers, overshadowed any competing vision. And in that sense, perhaps the change isn’t just at the top; Indians themselves may have changed. A new generation of younger Indians yearn for a more positive self-definition and image. In the flashy, pro-Hindu, globetrotting Modi, they see a bit of themselves too.
A successful Indian foreign policy, by definition, is one that creates the external circumstances conducive to realizing India’s fundamental aims, namely, protecting its physical security and its decisional autonomy, enlarging its economic prosperity and its technological capabilities, and realising its status claims on the global stage. Attaining these objectives requires New Delhi to engage at three different levels abroad: within the subcontinent and its immediate periphery, the intermediate level of the international system populated by various middle powers, and the core of the system where the great powers reside.
In some ways Mr. Modi has proved more statist than the Gandhis. Before he took power he criticised Congress welfare programs as insulting to the poor, who “do not want things for free” and really want “to work and earn a living.” As prime minister, Mr. Modi doubled down on the same programs, expanding the landmark 2006 act that guaranteed 100 days of pay to all rural workers, whether they worked or not.
Indian liberals fear that a second term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi might prompt a decisive turn against the country’s secular traditions, much as the American left fears that Donald Trump’s return would irreparably harm U.S. democratic institutions. This Modi-as-strongman thesis places India squarely within a global autocratic resurgence, featuring a familiar tableau of leaders from Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.
