From selling tea as a boy at a railway
station in Gujarat, 62-year-old Narendra Modi is now the Bharatiya Janata
Party's chosen one to lead it into the Lok Sabha poll battle due in 2014.
The boy from a lower middle class
family in small town Vadnagar in north Gujarat can become prime minister if the
country votes the BJP to power.
From a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS) pracharak in the late 1980s to prime ministerial nominee, Modi's meteoric
rise in politics is action packed as well as a reflection of paradoxes that
underline India's social and economic transformation over the past two
decades.
His detractors hate his guts; his
supporters swear by him. He is a politician who apparently delivers on
governance. He is a loner, yet no other leader connects with the electorate as
he does.
For politics, he blends modern
technology with medieval ideology. He is a demagogue par excellence and a
master strategist. He turns adversity into opportunity with ease and he is
perceived as Hindutva hard-liner who has complete backing of the RSS, the
ideological fountainhead of the saffron party.
His handling or lack of it of the
February 2002 riots in which over 1,200 people, mostly from the minority
community, were killed is regarded as blot on his government and is often an
impediment to his acceptability.
His dictatorial style of functioning
also riles many. Because of the 2002 riots, the US had denied him a visa in
2005 and the policy continues.
Modi's first break in politics came
when he was appointed the first general secretary of the BJP's Ahmedabad unit
in 1987. Five years later, after the party's impressive victory in the city's
municipal elections, he was elevated as organising secretary of the state BJP.
When the BJP formed its first
government in Gujarat, Modi, then 45, emerged a key aide of chief minister
Keshubhai Patel. He allegedly heightened the rift between Keshubhai and party
stalwart Shankersinh Vaghela, who later walked out to join the Congress.
Vaghela's defection precipitated a
political crisis, forcing mid-term elections in the state. The BJP won, but
Modi was shifted out of the state for falling out with Keshubhai and taken to
Delhi as the party's national general secretary. Later, he got elevated as
organising secretary.
Keshubhai's government had become
unpopular for mishandling reconstruction work following the Gujarat earthquake
of 2000. Modi was sent back to Gujarat to replace Keshubhai.
With less than a year left to go for
the next elections, in which the BJP's prospects appeared discounted, Modi
clearly needed a strategy that broke with the practice of the past.
The religious riots in Gujarat followed
the burning of a train carrying kar sevaks from Ayodhya. The riots left the
state communally polarised.
Modi, who was accused of not doing enough
to stop the violence, cashed in again, emerging as the new icon of hardline
Hindutva politics - a tag he apparently wants to disown.
The stains of the 2002 riots are what
stand in his way to gain acceptability.
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