Grading Modi

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

It is summer in India and it is also the time when students receive their grades.  In India, the toppers in school and colleges get a lot of very good coverage (outside of opportunities).  It is also about 3 years into BJP controlled government in India under Modi’s leadership.  It is an opportune time to grade him.

BJP under Modi’s leadership has renewed nationalism and has displayed better ability to deal with internal and external issues.  It has been a clear observation of the press that Modi is not interested in money or personal benefits.  He has no one to leave it to.  Modi’s family has always stayed far away from his political life and personal life (if he has any personal life?).  Outside of his minimum visits with his very elderly mother, Modi really doesn’t have family around him, nor any personal obligations.

Modi has never shown interest in any personal benefits from his office.  While little is kept secret about Modi and his political life either while he was the CM of Gujarat and now as the PM of India.  His actions and his history are obvious and predictable.

Modi has examples of office bearers before him in Shastri, Rao and Vajpayee.  Men who did not belong to the Nehru/Gandhi family.  All men of extraordinary intellect and great devotion to the nation and its people.  They served India with great distinction, character and wisdom.  Although Modi is in a different era, as with these great men the stigma of scandal and graft has stayed away from him as it did with the great men who occupied the same office.  Modi doesn’t need money (it is a fact that he has very little to his name and needs very little), and he doesn’t have a large coterie of hanger’s on and family that invariably ends up doing something to squander the political power.

India with its 1.3 billion people today is very different when Shastri, Rao or Vajpayee were in power.  Modi is in the internet and mobile and instant connectivity world.  Modi is personally aware of the power of the connected world and is also very well versed in using the digital and social media.  His regular program Man Ki Baat reaches out to hundreds of millions of people.

Indian politicians used “Garibi Hataoo” since before the independence from the British in 1947, and today it still is a rallying cry.  Modi is a master in catering to the underprivileged of India, and he has an excellent outreach to the poor as his upbringing as a child identifies with the poor.  His initiatives on cleanliness, toilets in every home, educating the girl child, women empowerment, small business and farmers loans and banking, communications, and the ever-popular eradication of black money are all pushed hard by Modi himself and his party’s volunteers across the nation.  All these initiatives are of importance to the Indians and are a path for nation’s introspection.  They are needed and everyone benefits from them, and they can be done.  Modi started off as a man with public persona of a superman internationally, but his agenda has always remained India first.  At the end of three years, Modi has not deviated from his party’s agenda.  To do everything that caters to everyone in a nation of 1.3 billion people is a super human task, but Modi does focus on a path to national development which is all inclusive and aligns with his party.  Modi does this well.

It is fascinating to see Modi in public both as BJP worker and a nation’s leader.    He is a master in working on his party’s and the nations initiatives.  With constant public and media scrutiny he has not displayed anything different with both his public and private persona.  It remains the same.

India, its people, and the world has had enough time to access Modi as India’s leader and his governance.  One might not agree with his politics but there should be no disagreement with his intentions.  In a nation that has a massive and growing young population, and its geographic diversity, Modi has done well in 3 years.  He keeps driving his initiatives and keeps a brisk schedule in attending to the nation’s needs, and above all he is scam free.

You must give him a distinction.