Raj, Uddhav say 'me too': How Modi made power, ambition cool

A sea change being heralded by the rise of Narendra Modi is in how politicians are beginning to see themselves — and the trend is all to the good. Thanks to the emergence of a new generation of voters who are impatient with non-performance, the old formal ambivalence towards power is gone.

The old India valued excessive humility that often served as a cloak for incompetence and sycophancy. When asked if they were seeking power, the old-style politicians would say “Who am I to decide that?”, or “If the people want it, I will not shirk my responsibility”, or worse, “My leader will decide.”

Even in the recent past, we had one leader claiming that “power is poison”, and another denying personal ambition by asking “meri aukaat kya hai?”

The culture of false modesty and the pretence of denying ambition and power ended with the arrival of Narendra Modi who clearly sought the top job and went after it systematically. So clear was the break with the past that the Congress thought they were handed a huge political advantage: they made Modi’s ambitions a key campaign issue and he was relentlessly attacked for that. Most of the media, used to singing hosannas to those pretending to be unambitious, also pilloried Modi for his promotion of himself and his raw pursuit of power.

They got it wrong – and even before the verdict was out it seemed like they had missed the wood for trees. Soon after Modi broke the mould of hypocritical modesty, J Jayalalithaa declared her own prime ministerial ambitions, and even Mamata did so indirectly. Over the last few days, we have seen Raj Thackeray boldly announcing himself as candidate for Chief Minister of Maharashtra if his party won the next assembly elections, and cousin Uddhav looks set to follow suit. His partymen have certainly gone ahead and made the announcement, to much consternation in ally BJP’s camp.

A few months ago, this would have been seen as an invitation to political suicide, or at least politically too risky.

Not anymore. Ambition and the pursuit of power is no longer taboo.

There are two reasons why politicians are finally beginning to get it. The new India, populated by an aspirational generation, does not view the pursuit of power as evil in itself. If a politician claims he will do something for the people by seeking power, voters understand that power is necessary to pursue change. What they do not want is politicians giving excuses for failure saying they didn’t have the power.

Secondly, the new India is also wary of electing people who separate power from responsibility. In fact they are more suspicious of remote controlled-politicians than those who wield direct power.

The politics of remote control began in the 1990s with Bal Thackeray, who famously talked about holding the remote. He put two Chief Ministers in power on a whim and fancy. Then Lalu Prasad put his wife as proxy CM on Bihar, once the law began to catch up with him. When something similar happened with Jayalalithaa, she put her own nominee as CM. More recently, Akhilesh Yadav has effectively lost control of the Uttar Pradesh administration as his father’s cronies are powers unto themselves.

The whole business of remote control reached it apogee under the Sonia-Manmohan Singh regime, where we saw the damage that could be done when power was separated from responsibility. UPA-I and, more specifically UPA-II, showed the whole nation that trying to pretend that power was unnecessary to performance was nonsense, and it could only lead to irresponsibility.

Modi benefited from this realisation. And now the penny is dropping for all ambitious politicians. We are now entering a more honest phase in the pursuit of power where the voter will not grudge any politician his ambitions, but she will certainly chuck him out if he does not deliver. The message is clear: perform or perish.