When a week is a long time in poli-tics, a decade is a miracle of survival. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi celebrates his 10th year of rule this month. How does one look at a regime like Modi’s? How does one evaluate a man who has become both a mnemonic of despair and a Rorschach of desire and development? It is difficult to be simplistic on Modi because Modi himself has moved from the simple pracharak that he was in the years after the Emergency to a man who is seen to be a national alternative to the Congress. Critics can be accused of Modi envy. This article is an attempt at assessment.

What are the plus points? First, Modi has survived. Second, he has more than survived. He has become a semiotic act which people cannot refuse to watch. Modi’s importance is not in doubt. He commands attention, he demands attention and the press and the diaspora cannot keep away from him.
We have also to acknowledge that the appeal of Modi goes beyond the ideology of the BJP. The middle class, the younger generation, the professionals see in him the future. They believe his achievements are colossal. If investment is an index of achievement, Modi has achieved a lot. He has created at Sanand a second Detroit where major car manufacturers like Tatas, Ford, Peugeot and Maruti see, and invest in, the prospect of a state which is stable and believes in governance. Governance is a word that corporations love and international agencies see as their rationale.
Modi’s achievements go beyond the car industry. Gujarat is a state which was impressive in its handling of the earthquake. The earthquake of 2002 became not just an act of rescue and rehabilitation, but an attempt to create new forms of governance, new ideas of standardisation and new concepts of participation. One can be niggardly and say that Modi was not responsible for this. That would be ungenerous. Modi was open to ideas from the World Bank and even from NGOs and this created all sorts of recognition for his competence. He was seen as a leader who makes things work and allows things to work.
Modi has understood the art of governance, at least as a certain form of decision-making. The corporates and the diaspora feel he is effective, more importantly, he is seen as effective. Modi has become an icon of a middle class that sees masculinity as expressed in managerialism as a core character of a leader. Finally, Modi has given Gujarat some sense of pride. He has opened up the creation not just of industrial corridors, but intellectual corridors, which could be the pride of any state.

The roll call of achievements sounds impressive. Why then should one doubt the achievements? If the world is to be evaluated by critical words like “efficiency”, “development”, “decisiveness”, “technocracy”, “populism”, then I am afraid Modi wins hands down. But if the world of Modi is to be evaluated in terms of ethics, plurality, justice, memory, then the Modi mirror cracks from side to side. I must add that the tragedy of Modi is that which is now seen as his achievement. It is his ability to separate these two sets of terms. The real disaster is that Modi has separated these two grids of evaluation and worse, he tends to see dissent and doubt as suspicious acts of treason.
When Modi celebrated his fast, talked of reconciliation and announced on his birthday the Sambhavna Mission, even skeptics were a bit surprised. They were hoping that he was going to declare the necessity of reconciliation and apologise to the victims of the riots. What one saw was a display of raw power. A spectator watching it is impressed by the logistical achievements of the man in creating disciplined crowds which acclaimed him as a future leader, but the same spectator feels that a leader has to be more than a manager and that ethics can eventually defeat the most logical of technocracies. What one found missing was that the act of listening was neither compassionate nor open. Modi refused to meet the victims of the 2002 riots. A leader has to be a listener and a leader has to allow for dissent. Now let me state my other doubts about the regime.
Gujarat is inaugurating one of the most profound acts of urbanisation. In fact, it is going to be the centre of giant megalopolises, linking Surat, Bhavnagar, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Mundra. This urbanisation, which is impressive in its speed, may be built at large human cost. Gujarat is home of some of the greatest nomadic and pastoral civilisations. The question not just to Modi but to development experts is, what do we do with them. Do they have a say in history or is the logic of development indifferent to alternative lifestyles and alternative visions of the future? Will they disappear in the years to come?
Finally, how does one create a dream of justice that includes minorities? Where do Muslims fit as citizens? In fact, where do marginals and minorities exist in this dream? Do they get destroyed in a flat land of citizenship? If Gujarat’s development is an act of culture, do Patel and Gandhi have a place in it? A regime that condemns dissent and treats human rights as a poor commodity eventually falls on its own assumptions. I admit this is a marginal view, as dissent today is a dying industry in Gujarat.
Amid the hosannas to Modi as a great manager, decision-maker, politician, let me insist on presenting this footnote as a critique of 10 years of a regime that refuses to go away.

The writer is a social science nomad