India. The Modi Factor


Book Description

When Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister of India in 2014, he promised to push through key reforms and bring about the massive economic development needed for the “world’s largest democracy” to win its place among global superpowers. With over 1.3 billion citizens, India is soon to become the world’s most populous country, and more than one quarter of the people joining global workforce during the next decade will be Indian. The poorest of the world’s 20 largest economies, India’s potential for catch-up growth is enormous. And so are the limits and contradictions India must overcome for Modi’s vision to gain momentum. What has his government achieved so far? How likely is Modi’s “Minimum government, maximum governance” strategy to deliver the expected outcomes? Is India, often described as a “reluctant superpower”, now closer to becoming a regional leader? In a crucial year for local elections, and with the Prime Minister ready to run for a second term in 2019, this volume investigates the economic, political and diplomatic trajectories of Modi’s India in its quest for a global role.




Making Sense of Modi's India


Book Description

An incisive look at India under Narendra Modi essays by Meghnad Desai, Andrew Whitehead, Sudheendra Kulkarni, Rashmee Roshan Lall, Sevanti Ninan, R. Jagannathan, among others Making Sense of Modi's India attempts to understand the meaning and implications of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party's massive victory in the May 2014 general election, regarded as a watershed in post-Independence India's political history. The book brings together a cross-section of leading voices from academia, media and politics to examine the factors behind the dramatic resurgence of Hindu nationalism and Modi's own meteoric rise.Where is India headed under Modi? What exactly are the contours of the 'new' India he has promised to build? And is his promise of 'development' real or a cover for a hidden agenda? The book raises these questions in an attempt to contribute to - and hopefully shape - the debate on the future of modern India.




Modi's India


Book Description

Introduction: The three ages of India's democracy -- The Hindu nationalist power quest : Hindutva and populism -- Hindu nationalism : a different idea of India -- Modi in Gujarat, the making of a national-populist hero -- Modi's rise to power or how to exploit hope, fear, and anger -- What fight against poverty? -- The world's largest de facto ethnic democracy -- Hindu majoritarianism against secularism -- Targeting minorities -- A de facto Hindu rashtra : Indian-style vigilantism -- The Indian version of comptetitive authoritarianism -- Deinstitutionalizing India -- Towards "electoral authoritarianism" : the 2019 elections -- The making of an authoritarian Hindu state -- Indian Muslims : from social marginalization to institutional exclusion and judicial obliteration.




Modi : Comman Man's PM


Book Description

This book is a worth-reading, prolific and insightful life-sketch of the torch-bearer of Indians. It is about common man’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has become a ray of hope for 125 crore Indians—from a humble farmer to an ambitious industrialist—having taken the route to good governance after being sworn as India's Prime Minister in May 2014. The game-changer of Indian politics, Modi had taken the mesmeric hold over Gujarat masses with three consecutive victories in the state assembly elections and was a senior campaign adviser drawing unprecedented crowds for Lok Sabha 2014 elections. After getting elected PM, Modi is often echoed in 24x7 Breaking News on media channels and enjoys good rapport with the top world leaders whom he visited during his six months of Prime Minister-ship. The insightful leader led India at the India-ASEAN Summit, G-20 Summit and had bilateral meetings with the leadership of countries like US, Japan, China and other neighbouring countries of India. He has launched new avenues of cooperation with the countries with which India has deep historical and cultural ties over centuries. His initiatives like 'Make in India' and 'Swachchha Bharat Abhiyan' have been widely lauded. Modi has called for innovative effort to make renewable energy, especially solar energy, competitive with conventional energy and pitched for global cooperation on repatriation of black money.




Staggering Forward


Book Description

There is a paradigm shift in India's politics. With his clean reputation, proven track record as chief minister of Gujarat and formidable leadership qualities on display, Narendra Modi seemed the right fit for the prime minister's job, and just the man to turn the country around after the decade-long UPA rule by the modest and tongue-tied Manmohan Singh. Prime Minister Modi's first term, however, raises troubling questions. How has his strongman persona and social background impacted policymaking? Has Modi delivered on the high expectations to advance India's national interest and security? Has the country's role in the region, in Asia and the world changed, become more meaningful? What has been the effect of Modi's India First foreign policy on neighbours, and with respect to raising India's stock in the world and showing the Indian military has teeth? Especially with regard to the UUS, Russia and China. Analysing Prime Minister Modi's foreign and military policies in the context of India's evolving socio-political and economic milieu, this book offers a critical perspective that helps explain why India has not progressed much towards becoming a consequential power. Argumentative and thought-provoking, Staggering Forward is a must-read to understand India's foreign and national security policies since 2014.




Middle Class, Media and Modi


Book Description

The spectacular victory of Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2014 and again in 2019 demands a nuanced exploration of the factors that led to it. Though the role of the middle class and the media in the making of what is called the 'Modi Wave' is often talked about, a clear-eyed and unbiased look at how they transformed the political landscape in post-liberalization India is still wanting. This book studies how the Indian middle class, once seen as politically indifferent, has gradually become a player of importance. This change, which slowly began in the 1990s, has now reached a crescendo, and Modi has become the icon of the changing economic demands of the middle class and their ideological rightward shift. The new middle class played a decisive role in the electoral outcomes of 2014 and 2019 - two elections that have undoubtedly changed the way India imagines itself and how the rest of the world sees India. Modi's management of mainstream and social media - primary consumers of which is the ever-growing middle class - has played a key role in his emphatic victories. This book will help the reader understand the arsenal that Modi used in these elections and is a must-read for scholars of politics, media studies and sociology.




Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times


Book Description

About the Book THE FIRST AUTHORITATIVE BIOGRAPHY OF INDIA’S CURRENT PRIME MINISTER On 26 December 2012, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Gujarat for the fourth time, to extend his record tenure in office. Even then, his name prompted extremes of hate-filled anger or outright adulation. Since then, despite polarising Gujarat and India in more ways than one, he continues to do what it takes to survive in a democracy: win elections. Written by veteran journalist and writer, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, after several in-depth interviews, meticulous research and extensive travel through Gujarat, this book reveals hitherto unknown aspects of Narendra Modi's psyche: as a six year-old boy selling tea to help out his father and distributing badges and raising slogans at the behest of a local political leader, abandoning his family and wife in search of his definition of truth, being initiated into the RSS as a fledgling who ran errands for his seniors and finally, his meteoric rise after 2002. Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times is the definitive biography of a man who may have challenged the basic principles of a sovereign, secular nation, but emerged as an undisputed and larger-than-life leader.




Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy


Book Description

Narendra Modi’s energetic personal diplomacy and promise to make India a ‘leading power’ surprised many analysts. Most had predicted that his government would concentrate on domestic issues, on the growth and development demanded by Indian voters, and that he lacked necessary experience in international relations. Instead, Modi’s first term saw a concerted attempt to reinvent Indian foreign policy by replacing inherited understandings of its place in the world with one drawn largely from Hindu nationalist ideology. Following Modi’s re-election in 2019, this book explores the drivers of this reinvention, arguing it arose from a combination of elite conviction and electoral calculation, and the impact it has had on India’s international relations.




Modi Doctrine


Book Description

Since becoming India's prime minister in 2014, Narendra Modi has been a tour de force in foreign policymaking. A vastly experienced administrator who has held key public positions as chief minister of an Indian state for more than a decade, and now as prime minister, he has always seen value in foreign affairs and devoted special attention to it with his unique entrepreneurial flair and coherent set of ideas. Every realm of Indian foreign policy- commercial diplomacy, defence diplomacy, diaspora outreach, cultural diplomacy, geostrategy and soft power- has been transformed by him with a sense of destiny not witnessed in recent memory. Indians and people the world over have noticed his star presence and are asking questions like 'Why is he investing so much time and energy into promoting India's international relations and global image'?; 'What are his vision and goals for India's role in the world'?' 'What kind of distinct techniques define his approach to foreign policy?'; 'How is he changing India's self-understanding and preparing it for world affairs?'. This book provides the answers by delving into the mind and method behind Narendra Modi's avatar as India's diplomat-in-chief. It argues that under his able watch, India is heading toward great power status in the international order.




Costs of Democracy


Book Description

One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.