“This is a country where, for most people, Barack Obama is a right-wing economic thinker,” said Ashok Malik, a columnist who supports Mr. Modi. The candidate, he added, “is not Milton Friedman, but he is as right as one can get in the Indian political class. He is selling this as a manufacturing economy, that we should make things in India. He would say, ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs.’ ”

Already during the campaign, Mr. Modi, the candidate of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, has come under heavy criticism from the ruling Indian National Congress party for the incentives he has offered in an effort to attract manufacturers.

Gujarat has had impressive growth over the last decade, and its roads, electricity and water services are excellent. But critics argue that Gujarat had performed well on these measures for many years before Mr. Modi took office, and note that the state still lags on social indicators, in particular infant mortality and child malnutrition.

Gyanshyam Shah, a political scientist in Ahmedabad, said those shortfalls reflected the priority Mr. Modi put on the middle class. So, he said, does the Sabarmati riverfront project, which displaced around 10,000 poor families.

“These projects are meant for the middle class,” Mr. Shah said. “Those who are living on the bank of the river and working as laborers in various sectors, they are pushed behind, far behind.”

There are also serious questions about whether Mr. Modi can replicate at a national level the success he has had bringing manufacturing to Gujarat, a state with the advantages of a long coastline and expanses of vacant land.

India’s federal system makes land use a state issue. Mr. Modi’s advisers hope he will find ways to wield influence from the center, perhaps by creating a “union government” that includes state leaders to oversee projects. But it will be hard to use his Gujarat model in New Delhi, they admit.

“There is a much more entrenched bureaucracy at the national level, and there’s going to be much more stiff resistance,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. “Trying to limit red tape — that immediately cuts at the purse strings that politicians have access to. So this is a very tricky issue for him.”