Alliance partners brought in a further 54 seats. The BJP’s 282 seats in 2014 were not only in excess of the 272 required for a majority, but also about 100 seats more than its previous best tally.
In the process, Modi helped the party reverse a steady decline in its share of the vote, from a peak of 25% in the 1998 general elections. The BJP increased its vote share by more than 60%, from the 19% it had in 2009 to 31% in 2014. To all but the politically blind, it was no surprise that he won a handsome mandate. He ran an election campaign in 2014 that broke new ground by intelligently using both technology and social media, and sold his record of achievements in Gujarat to back his promise of change.
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He is a powerful speaker with smart turns of phrase, has an uncanny ability to touch the right buttons in a speech while discrediting or denigrating his opponents with withering sarcasm, and is a trained organiser who knows how to marshal his forces. Modi is, of course, a supremely gifted politician. Though Modi in 2014 campaigned on the basis of a strong economic platform, it soon became clear that his priority was political. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to put that past behind him by promising “sabka saath, sabka vikas” and referring to the Constitution as a “holy book”.
There were subtler messages about the “pink economy” (meat exports), but while Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers at the ground level campaigned with communal messages, Modi with his post-Godhra history did not need to. He would reform centre-state relationships, reform agriculture with “more crop per drop” and take the “Gujarat model” nationwide. Also, he would not (could not) promote a dynasty, he would get government out of business, and put an end to politically-connected bank loans (“phone banking”). He positioned himself brilliantly as a clean politician and a man of action: someone who would deliver “good days” with faster economic growth, generate 10 million jobs a year, and bring back black money from abroad amounting to Rs 15 lakh per voter (which many interpreted as a promise to put that much money in every pocket–something that Modi never said). The leader who presented himself was Modi, who put forward his creditable but typically exaggerated record as chief minister of Gujarat. The country was ready for a change of government and a new leader. The economic boom of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s first term, when growth averaged well over 8%, and when the poverty headcount fell at a never before rate, had long been forgotten. The comprehensive mess in the banking system was not fully known then but was to become evident soon. The backdrop to Modi’s dramatic victory in the 2014 elections, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha for the first time in three decades, was the paralysed Manmohan Singh government caught in a web of scandal, struggling to stabilise an economy reeling from record trade deficits, rampant inflation and slowing growth. How should we look back on what we have lived through, as we consider the outlook for the last quarter of a decade of Modi’s rule? The Modi government is now more than three-quarters of its way through that period. After Narendra Modi first assumed power in 2014, he had asked for 10 years to transform the country.
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