(Harish Khareis a senior journalist, commentator and a research scholar)"You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose." This wonderfully succinct formulation of the age-old democratic dilemma is attributed to an unusually charming and intelligent American politician, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York. And it comes to mind as Narendra Modi takes over as Prime Minister of India. In his case, he was all vinegary during his campaign and was designedly so; now he will be required to be all honey.
And, the transition will not be easy. Nor natural.
Part of Narendra Modi's presumably mesmerizing appeal to the voters was that he is the exact opposite of everything that Manmohan Singh was these last ten years. Manmohan Singh was soft-spoken, thoughtful, decent, considerate, consensus-seeker and a man without political weight independent of his office. Manmohan Singh was perceived to have made a weak prime minister.
Narendra Modi has arrived at the highest seat of power in India by being partisan, aggressive and contentious and a very effective demagogue. All these qualities are assets in a campaigner, out there crisscrossing the country, rustling up dust and hopes and dreams. These very qualities are hardly the most helpful or handy attributes in a prime minister of India. And, unless the new prime minister chooses to have counselors around him who would keep tutoring him in uses of nuance, sobriety and seriousness, he may find his honeymoon period drastically curtailed.
In the post-May 16 euphoria the commentariat has been unrestrained in its declarations of the dawn of a new era. The Modi Era has begun, we are told. Perhaps this trafficking in hope and expectations is par for the course after a change of government in New Delhi.
The new prime minister is about to stumble over a rather nasty fact of life: governing India is a little different than lording over a state. It was a one-man show in Gujarat. But that is the familiar format in most states. As chief minister of Gujarat Modi was as complete a master of his house as, say, J Jayalalithaa is in Tamil Nadu, or Mamata Banerjee is in West Bengal or Navin Patnaik in Odisha. Modi is about to discover that he may not have all that elbow room for arbitrariness and personal caprice in New Delhi as he did in Gandhinagar.
That it took the new prime minister-elect more than a week to take the oath of office and put his ministerial team together suggests either a lack of self-assurance or that he could not have his way all the way.
The experienced "Delhi crowd", masters of intrigue and compromise, made its presence felt. The man who is being serenaded as the Outsider is being sought to be hemmed in by ordinariness.
The new cabinet does not contain a single face that can be described as inspiring choice. Perhaps the only exception being the selection of Nirmala Sitharaman as minister for Commerce.
But the absence of a full-time defense minister is most telling. And inexcusable. This becomes all the more glaring as Mr. Modi has helped more than 282 of the BJP candidates to make it to the Lok Sabha. Plus, there is all that bench-strength in the Rajya Sabha. Yet the prime minister is unable to appoint a Raksha Mantri.
Welcome to writing new prose.
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