The unmediated Modi

BY sevanti ninan| IN Opinion | 22/08/2013

 TALKING MEDIA
Sevanti Ninan     

Over the past month or two, the tenor of Narendra Modi’s public pitch for power has changed. His Independence Day speech in Bhuj in Kutch (from where he said could be heard in Pakistan) is in line with the new pitch -- for a party rather than a person. It was heard in Hyderabad earlier this month too, and in Pune in July. As Modi’s speeches get more political, there is less talk of personal achievement, and more attack. 

Not too long ago, Modi wasn’t really selling the Bharatiya Janata Party; he was selling himself, on the strength of his record in Gujarat. Then, there was no praising of any other BJP chief minister. Now he does, not just BJP chief ministers but also potential allies. Both Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh and Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK came in for approving mention in Hyderabad. 

The endless hyperventilating on Modi on English news channels does not even begin to reflect what he stands for as 2014 draws closer. The more prolonged the panel discussion, the less you learn about the minutiae of his sales pitch to people in different parts of the country. But then not everybody who votes either watches the English news channels, or subscribes to the agendas they set.

Between his speeches on YouTube and his tweets there are four streams to the Modi pitch.

One, there has been no other politician in recent memory who has been so clear that he does not need the media to reach the people with an election approaching. Not a single speech is made without a jibe at the English language media. “Normally I stay away from English papers and channels. (It is) Not my responsibility to run their channels,” he said. 

Then there are the barbs, such as the one delivered while making a typical Modi point about what the Planning Commission gives for tigers versus the budget for saving the lion (only found in Gujarat): “Rs 200 crore for saving the tiger—whether NDTV runs on that I do not know.” (The snipe is directed at the Save the Tiger campaign on NDTV.) 

And finally, there are the terse encounters he has had with anchors like Karan Thapar or Arnab Goswami that have been much publicised--his acolytes never fail to put the clips on YouTube. 

When anchors persist in pushing him on 2002, he gets nasty. As he told Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN IBN: “If you abuse Modi you will get a Rajya Sabha seat or a Padma Shree or a Padma Bhushan.” At the same time he goes to conclaves organised by media houses and regales stellar audiences there. 

Two, on campuses and in different fora in other states he is striving to connect, shedding arrogance for persuasiveness. His comfort zones are Gujarat and Hindu culture but he uses connections that he thinks will work.  While in Odisha he tweets that these are the only two states that passionately share rath yatra celebrations. In Tamil Nadu during Pongal celebrations he greets his audience in Tamil. And whereas he usually insists on talking in Hindi to the swishest of Indian audiences or even an international one at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit, he took the trouble to make an entire speech in reasonably fluent English in Chennai. Replete with wisecracks. “In 700 days we built a 1400 km pipeline and the size is such that Karunanidhi ji with his family can travel in his car in that pipe.” 

In Bengal he tells Bengalis how important they are. “Why did the British think it was important to establish themselves here to conquer India? We must understand the takat of this dharti.” And in Hyderabad he asks, “If   four lakh Telugus in my state can live in harmony with us (in Gujarat), why can’t Telengana walas and Andhra walas do the same?”

If his pitch is to turn relentlessly political however, some of the Modi USP will be lost. What works with his campus audiences for instance is the energy of his promise: endless stories about video conferencing villagers, farmers with soil health cards, state electricity boards pulled out of debt, and the repeated emphasis on the youth dividend India can reap as a country with the youngest population in the world. He talks of the new universities he has thought of which nobody else in the world has! One for forensic sciences, another for teacher education. 

Mr Modi is selling himself, but not to his worst critics. There he draws a line.  

Listening to Modi reminds one of Chandrababu Naidu’s chief ministerial pich in the late 1990s. It was a similar “I am a doer” pitch. But it did not succeed at the polls when he had nowhere near the liability that Modi has. Modi thinks he knows why: the difference between Naidu’s defeat and his own victory, he tells the audience in Chennai, “is that if you have inclusive growth you cannot change the face of the state.” Modi harps on technology too, but on village and farm development much more. “In May I do krishi mahotsav. At the height of summer we go and and look at how to transfer from lab to land.”

The third pitch is economic reform, without the terminology. Narendra Modi is not a big ideas man. Government schemes and formulas like P2 G2 (pro people, good governance) are more his thing. Or F5 for his textile policy (farm to fibre, fibre to fabric, fabric to fashion, fashion to foreign.) The reform he articulates is village level productivity. He does not use the terminology of economists any more than Manmohan uses the word yaar in his speeches. But he organises Vibrant Gujarat Summits where foreign guests gush about Gujarat’s growth rate being on par with China. (The Karachi chamber of commerce was invited but its 22 delegates were not even allowed to attend the venue of summit. They had to go back after the soldiers’ beheading incident took place in January 2013)

Which brings one to the fourth stream of his pitch: secularism. This man does not want to be PM so badly that he will tell his worst critics what they want to hear on secularism. “For me secularism means India first,” he said. “If I speak against terrorism, is it communal? If I have to pay the price for this, I will pay the price.” 

And, “I do not know the meaning of secularism. Earlier it meant religious harmony. Slowly it changed colour. Secularism (now) means lip sympathy to minorities. Then appeasement to minorities. Then focus on Muslims. Then hate Hindu(s).” “Every five years the meaning of secularism is changing,” he says.   

There are not old articulations, but recent ones. However much the media may hound him on the subject, he is giving no quarter to his secular critics. Maybe he believes that is the way to go for 2014.  

(This is an expanded version of a column published in Mint on August 22, 2013)