"...why did voters reward him with a landslide victory?..."



The answer is trivially simple, and it lies entirely at the door of decades of Congress misrule and what Modi is now doing on the ground. The first thing I can guarantee is that any narrative, like that of the author here, which implies that Indians are gullibles who have en-masse bought into a personality cult perpetuated by money, media and coercion, while enlightened politicians like himself can see the 'truth' which few else are privy to, is going to come a cropper. Keep pushing this line, that implies voters are fools, and you push yourself out of the possibility of ever governing again. I have the distinct sense that distaste for Modi in PS type circles stems from his non patrician background, neither anglicised (not Oxbridge) nor Americanised (not Harvard), his thick English accent from non English medium schools, his entirely Indian antecedents lacking any of globalisations' language of suaveness. Someone who was actually villainous but ticked those boxes would be treated a lot more forgivingly. The simplest proof is that plenty of Congress attached politicians and academics write Modi attacking pieces on PS but I don't recall ever seeing anyone allowed a piece to answer with a counter narrative.



A truly inconvenient fact for the author I suppose is that a lot more non-hindus voted for Modi this time than did in the previous election. Why do you suppose that is? Modi is not in fact the cartoon populist demagogue routinely attacked in Congress and some western circles. There absolutely are aspects of the BJP that are thuggish and unsavoury, and many BJPites are religious idiots, but that is hardly unique in India, I have even met Congress politicians so openly misogynistic and racists that were they in the west they would be prosecuted; and in fact over the decades Congress has been the party guilty of entrenching rather than eliminating religion and caste divisions, all the while paying lip service to secularism, simply so they could play the stupid game of acting the good secular guys within a divided country, and you can't in fact play that game if you act to remove those divisions. The truth is, the Congress Party so beloved in PS and like circles (I bet Chris Patten is a big fan), betrayed the trust handed to them on a plate at Independence, and has cost India dear over decades. On the face of it, the Congress Party has been and remains committed to democracy. Corruption by the bucketload of course, but no authoritarianism, apart from the brief Sanjay Gandhi phase. But look at the aggregated long term cost to the Indian citizen. Congress governments systematically stifled growth in India through the entire second half of the 20th century, because they bought into and promulgated this lethal cocktail of protectionist Nehruite champagne socialism and an odd, home-spun version of Gandhian Ludditism. A typical example is the car making industry which entirely remained in the hands of a couple of rich families through backhanders, making those awful Morris Oxford 'Ambassador' and Fiat clones from circa 1945 for decades, in cahoots with the financing of Congress party politicians, when in fact India could easily have had a modern thriving competitive automotive sector providing well paid jobs for decades from the late 40s onwards. There is no way of second-guessing, but I suspect India would be very significantly more prosperous by now were it not for the Congress Party. To give just an inkling, just a half percent per annum of extra growth compounded over half a century would have resulted in an economy well well over double it's current size.



I don’t want to go overboard – Modi has made plenty of mistakes and not been particularly effective. But it is obvious he is at least trying to fight corruption at all levels in India and is making a big effort to remove discrimination, both negative, and, to the chagrin of Congress, positive.