Mani-Talk: Don Quixote Modi and His Sancho Panza, Arun Jaitley

(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.)

I write this from Colombo where I have arrived in the aftermath of an extraordinary election that has seen the largely unanticipated exit of the Strong Man of Sri Lanka, former President Mahinda Rajapakse, a kind of Sinhala version of our own 56-inch wallah, Narendra Modi. The two men share much in common: a public image of decisive leadership; a great oratorical talent; mesmerizing charisma combined with a dismissive attitude to precedent and procedure; a penchant for centralization; an autocratic bent of mind; a passion for building a personality cult; megalomania joined to paranoia; an unwillingness to listen to contrary advice; a predilection to play on societal divides for political advancement (and a preference for throwing shawls around their shoulders as a fashion statement).

Where Modi talks of "development", Rajapakse talked of "infrastructure", both men believing that the invocation of the word would feed the general desire for palpable progress. In Rajapakse's case, there was the actual achievement of the agenda; with Modi, we yet have only words, slogans and one-liners. But the cautionary tale is that if Rajapakse's nation-wide network of excellent roads and railways did not quite impress a non-gullible public, Modi too will discover in good time that a bullet train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad is not going to impress the electorate as "development". Modi will also discover, as Rajapakse has, that favouritism in channeling enormous investment, such as the Chinese-built port and a flashy new international airport to his home-town of Hambantota only stoked resentment elsewhere; even so will the privileging of "Vibrant Gujarat" over other States be perceived as discriminatory mollycoddling. 

Sri Lanka has very impressive social indicators - health and literacy rates are the highest in South Asia and akin to those of fairly high- income countries. Sri Lankans, therefore, expected social progress to accompany economic growth. The emphasis on "infrastructure" meant, however, the relative neglect of the social sectors. This rebounded on Rajapakse at the polls. Modi too is going to find that "development" has little appeal unless it is development at the grass-roots. The way his government is going around throwing environmental regulations to the winds and amending labour laws with the interests of capital alone and not the working class in mind, is bound to result in the alienation of those who are unemployed. Modi's belief in big business private enterprise is going to translate into jobless growth as private enterprise discovers that, through hi-tech labour-saving devices, productivity per unit of capital can be vastly increased with no increase - indeed, a diminution - in the overall wage bill.

What Don Quixote Modi and his Sancho Panza, Arun Jaitley, have done tilting at the windmills of the 2013 Land Acquisition Act, which they supported in the last Parliament, is a striking example of leveraging the real estate mafia at the expense of small landowners and the marginal or landless labour that works these small plots. Rajapakse was confident of his rural base. That has been substantially eroded because the benefits of "infrastructure" did not reach down to the rural garib.  Similarly, the protection that the Land Acquisition Act gives this vast segment of the electorate is being snatched from them by the BJP government. The rural masses are already sharpening their claws in preparation for electoral revenge.

Rajapakse thought he could appease his rural Sinhala voters by keeping ethnic tension simmering while repeatedly calling attention to his military victory over the LTTE. Modi thinks that by keeping the communal pot (and differences with Pakistan) simmering, while repeatedly calling attention to his huge electoral victory, Hindus will see him as the savior even if Muslims turn from him, even as the Sri Lankan minorities - Tamil and Muslim - turned from Rajapakse. Indeed, the Rajapakse regime imitated the Modi regime by turning a blind eye towards a section of Buddhist monks provoking attacks on Muslim mosques. But the secular electorate sees through such games of narrow, divisive self-interest. Hence, Tamils and Muslims came out in huge numbers to join the large numbers of Sinhalas who wanted an end to ethnic tensions and the beginnings of a true dialogue on reconciliation.  Modi will come to the same pass since he is instinctively disinclined to rein in his fringe - for the good reason that he himself has risen from that fringe and, at heart, belongs to it.

Modi, like Rajapakse, believes in himself - and only himself. Centralised administration, ruthless authoritarianism and massive self-promotion have the short-term advantage that all the credit goes to the One and Only, while dissent is stifled for fear of exclusion from the inner circle. Apparent success - infrastructure in the one case and MoUs in the other - reinforce and validate the Leader's sense of his indispensability. The future is hidden from vision because no one dare tell the Emperor that he is wearing no clothes. In Rajapkase's case it has been the hilarious story of his much-trusted astrologer who not only enthusiastically endorsed Rajapakse's confidence in his inevitable victory, calling elections two years in advance of the stipulated term, but also advised him on the specific minute - 1.04 pm on 20 November 2014 - as also the particular direction in which he should look as he signed the papers calling the election. Now that Rajapakse has suffered a crushing defeat, the astrologer (who has lost the keys to his official car and has been kicked out of his government bungalow) cries that even Nostradamus was not always correct, and he actually knew Rajapakse faced inevitable defeat but dared not tell him so for fear that he too would be thrown in jail for warning of defeat as his predecessor astrologer had been for wrongly forecasting that a previous election would be lost!

Prof. Archie Brown, emeritus professor of the University of Oxford's The Myth of the Strong Man has been making waves in academic circles since its publication a few months after Modi came to power.  Prof Brown argues that true leaders are "inspirational leaders" who do not require public office to make for revolutionary change. "It would be hard to think," he says, "of a more politically significant example of an inspirational leader than Mahatma Gandhi, though he never held governmental office." Challenging "the widespread belief that strong leaders - meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process - are the most successful and admirable," Brown shows that it is "the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact." It is a lesson that Rajapakse failed to learn. It is a lesson that Modi is constitutionally incapable of learning. It led to Rajapakse's downfall. It will lead to Modi's downfall.

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