No, the title isn't click-bait. By now, you must be used to people comparing Modi to Indira Gandhi and remarking how similar they are in their working styles and their thirst for power. But, in fact, Modi's modus operandi isn't very different from Mrs. Gandhi's extremely well-regarded and respected father Jawaharlal Nehru too. To make this point, let us take a look at how the first PM of independent India handled a situation where something he felt was the right thing to do went against the constitution that he and his colleagues had ratified just over a year ago.
First some context. The first government of independent India wasn't an elected government as we know it today. In 1946, a year before independence, the Constituent Assembly was set up. The members were elected by the people who were elected to the provincial assemblies. It consisted of 299 representatives. On 15 August, 1947, all members who had not moved over to Pakistan became the interim Government of India. Jawaharlal Nehru was selected as the PM on the basis that the Congress party held 82% of the seats in the assembly.
In November of 1949, the Constituent Assembly formally adopted the Constitution of India and it became effective on January 26, 1950. With the ratification of the constitution, the role of the Constituent Assembly was fulfilled and elections should have been called. The first general elections in India were held between October 1951 and February 1952. This meant that the Constituent Assembly continued to be the Government of India for almost two years after the ratification of the constitution.
After the constitution came into effect, Nehru almost immediately ran into trouble. Some of his main agenda points were in direct contradiction to the constitution. When they were tested in the courts, he lost. These were the freedom of speech, the freedom to run a business, the right to own property, and the right to be treated equally.
So how does all this tie into Mr. Modi's stewardship of the nation?
What Modi is doing is not very different from what Nehru and Indira Gandhi did during their terms as PM. All of them suffer from the same problem - the Hero complex. It is dangerous for the nation when one person decides that they have all the solutions to the problems in front of us. In a country as diverse as India, it is almost impossible that a single action will have the same effect everywhere. Local conditions vary to such an extent that what is good for one part of the country may not just be less effective in another part, but it could have negative effects.
Narendra Modi came to power by promising that he would be different from the Congress governments. This is where he has let the country down the most, because over the last six years he has been simply and extension of the Congress form of government, with a lot of Muslim bashing thrown in.
The other problem with the hero complex is that while it is nice to take credit for everything that goes well, you also have to take the blame for everything that goes wrong. While Modi has seemed to be quite insulated from blame for the most part, the COVID pandemic may be a bridge too far for him to cross unscathed.
India does not need a hero, what it needs is a leader, someone who can give direction, share responsibility, and bring us together so we are all pulling in the same direction - India onwards.
In the 1960s, when faced with the Soviet's winning the race to space, President Kennedy focused the nation to putting a man on the moon. He did not spent time and energy explaining how the Soviets were lying or how American technology from a zillion years ago was better than the Soviet technology that put a man in space. Instead, his positive actions led his nation down the road of scientific development which has kept them on the top of the heap when it comes to being the aspiration for people all around the world.
By comparing Modi to Nehru, I do not mean to legitimize Modi in anyway. Modi came to power with the promise that he would be better than the governments that preceded him. On that account, he has failed miserably. In the two terms as PM, he has repeated shown that he hasn't learned from lessons of the past, instead he has learned the lessons from the past. In almost everything he does, he repeats the worst mistakes of the past governments.
In the end, it is all about precedents. A bad law, just because it is wielded by a good person, can never be a good law. We have to always assume that somewhere down the line, it will be wielded by a person with not-so-benign intentions. This was the reason I always felt that Manmohan Singh did the nation an extreme disservice by never standing for election to the Lok Sabha. By becoming PM through the Rajya Sabha route, he insulted the voice of the Indian people. While MMS may be benign, he has set the precedent for someone who is so evil that he/she cannot hope to be elected through the Lok Sabha taking the Rajya Sabha route to take control of out government.
Is Modi taking India forward? Most definitely not. He is in fact, taking us back. Slowly but surely we are heading back to Nehru's vision of India and how it should be governed.
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