Some months back, when two Supreme Court judges invited him to the wedding parties of their children, Prime Minister Modi obliged their Lordships with his presence. Later, as the counsel for activist Teesta Setalvad cited it as the reason for the two judges to be recused from a bench hearing her anticipatory bail petition, and had his way, it irked Modi so much that he couldn’t resist making a snide public remark about the judiciary. As he charged judges of being “afraid” and reminded them of the threat from “five star social activists”, Chief Justice of India H. L. Dattu was glumly sitting by him. The CJI politely rebutted him. But the incident left government-watchers in a quandary as to the extent of the Prime Minister’s rage at a private citizen like Setalvad who fought against his administration in courts since the 2002 Gujarat riots. He took it personally and exploded in front of the country’s top judges. It left the audience petrified.
Modi’s conduct as Prime Minister is increasingly acquiring a mercurial edge. On the economic front, he is goading the Reserve Bank of India governor to ease interest rates but seems blind to the stark reality that Indian businesses are unwilling to invest not just because capital is costly but also due to the fact that they are irremediably debt-burdened.
Surely Modi has inherited a tattered balance sheet of the economy from UPA, which leaves little wiggle-room for growth through further debt. Export of material and man-power could be a way out if only India had a skilled workforce and decent infrastructure; it has neither. With the help of his trusted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Modi is trying to get out of this drought of capital by questionable means, like delaying the fiscal deficit target by a year. It means, in other words, license to spend beyond one’s means for a longer period. It will be playing with the fire of a future inflation, a risk that Rajan has repeatedly cautioned the government against. But it seems Modi takes counseling as impertinence and there is a pattern.
From his Gujarat days, where he took the help of professional panegyrists to be painted as an ace administrator, Modi has built for himself a man-of-action image. It gels with his background in the RSS, whose drills follow the boy scouts marches. But Modi is not the ideal team leader. He has very few people (practically none) that he takes into confidence and decision making takes a long drawn process. This trait was not in evidence in Gujarat where as chief minister he could rule virtually as a dictator, but India is a much bigger field with too many people are watching ! So he is playing this safe by postponing moves.
The key anti-graft post of Chief Vigilance Commissioner is vacant since August last; a Vigilance Commissioner retired later last year. The body now has a lone Commissioner. There are 120 applicants for the CVC post. The list is before the PM. In normal situation PM and his senior cabinet colleagues have plenty of day-to-day interactions with senior bureaucrats, and, when a top bureaucratic vacancy arises, the PM and his team have already spotted the man. It shows that there is no ‘team Modi’ in the government; there is only a lonesome pine.
The unfilled desks in the government are a legion. The Central Information Commission posts are vacant for 10 months due to a court petition. Modi should ask himself why his high-powered legal officers haven’t got the stay order revoked yet. There are 450 top vacancies in the government, including in the Election Commission and 5 out of 7 posts in the Central Board of Excise & Customs. Even Enforcement Director is holding dual charge for a year. Ten governor’s posts are vacant. He has no press secretary. R. K. Takkar, imported from Gujarat, is his Man Friday. No Principal Information Officer has traveled with him in his foreign trips. His dealings with foreign countries too are mostly routed through his PMO and favourite Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar. He is trying to solve in his own way the economic hurdles faced by the country. He is seeking France’s help for nuclear power which he realises, and rightly so, must replace CO₂-emitting thermal plants sooner rather than later. He is scouting around in Germany for a manufacturing breakthrough to happen in India, like it did in China. He is heading to Canada for capital from rich NRIs and PIOs to grease the choked wheel of industry in his country.
He is a good planner but he wants to do everything alone, or mostly so. Last year, when the then CBI director Ranjit Sinha came to see him quite some time after he had assumed office, he told him, “Yes, I have seen you, on the TV”. The risk of leading a country, yet remaining lonely at the top, can be frightening. It happened to Indira Gandhi in the wake of 1971 “massive mandate” when suspicion of her peer group took hold of her so much she kept to a small coterie of opportunists who, in their turn, reported to her younger son Sanjay. An extra-constitutional authority was thus born. The rest is history. Fortunately, Modi neither has a cotrie nor a son. He may be a good listener. But does what is pre-decided. The trust deficit is rising and the loneliness is growing by the day.
