Can Brand Modi survive a Covid-transformed India?

By now, most astute political observers will readily acknowledge that it would be unwise to separate Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Brand Modi. Put differently, the product and the commodity are indistinguishable. Even if the product fails to meet obvious needs, it can still triumph as a commodity of want and desire.

This explains why colossal failures such as demonetisation, a scattered implementation of a unified goods and services tax system, rising joblessness and even the brutal migrants crisis of the first Covid lockdown have only lightly scratched Brand Modi rather than destroying it.

But has everything changed in the second Covid wave ? From April 15, the variant B.1.617 moved at a rapid pace, from infecting 200,000 per day to scorching at 400,000 plus fresh cases by early May. Covid-related deaths in terms of official figures shot up to 4,000-plus a day, adding to the already horrific total of 200,000-plus deaths in India so far.

These numbers, however, have yet to hold up to scrutiny. Given how overwhelmed crematoriums have been and how many bloated bodies have wafted down the Ganga, the fudging of numbers cannot be ruled out. In a carefully number-crunched report published in the New York Times on Wednesday, journalists Lazaro Gamio and James Glanz project that the fatalities could go up to 4.2 million in the worst-case scenario. A more likely outcome, they say, could see the toll at about 1.6 million.

‘Covid apocalypse’

It cannot also be ruled out that the sheer crush of death, smoke and grief in the past two months might have shape-shifted the perception battle. A number of damning global headlines, in quick succession, have excoriated Modi’s government for mismanagement and ineptness. Phillip Sherwell’s piece in The Times, perhaps, set the international tone by holding Prime Minister Modi squarely responsible for India’s “Covid apocalypse”. Many other searing headlines have followed since then. They were rounded off by the prestigious medical journal Lancet, which, again, placed full culpability at the door of the Indian prime minister.

Many national newspapers, news channels and the social media have been equally unsparing by describing the crisis as being brought on by a “hapless government”, a “flailing state”, an “absent administration” and even accusing the Prime Minister’s Office of morphing into a version of Nero, the tyrannical decadent Roman emperor who fiddled away as Rome burnt. Given how unforgiving and ferocious the pummelling has been, most brand managers would readily admit that they had lost the narrative and, at best, only some sombre damage control could now be attempted.

But what really was Brand Modi all about? In its first avatar, the image of Narendra Modi firmly rested on the “Gujarat Model”. The rapid economic progress of the state during his tenure of nearly 14 years earned him several sobriquets – “good governance”, “no-nonsense administrator” and decisive leader”. All of these added up, especially for India’s aspirational middle class, to an economic reformer who would hothouse an economic boom. Who can forget the redoubtable Time magazine’s gushing cover of 2012, “Modi Means Business”.

Many a keen observer, nonetheless, warned even then, that the Gujarat Model, in essence, was premised on the belief that economic development can happen without democracy.

Post 2014, however, after assuming the office of the prime minister, Brand Modi was radically repurposed. In the highest office, the Modi government unabashedly pursued majoritarian politics from the get-go, but with a twist. On the one hand, it resolutely fuelled the idea of an angry, impatient and threatened Hindu, who became ever more desirous for restoring some imagined glorious past.

On the other, it hurriedly sought to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few conglomerates by brusquely causing intense social dislocation and economic disruption. Brand Modi, in essence, stood for hardening a majoritarian identity while putting neoliberalism on steroids.

Collateral damage

This great stirring, however, has brought about devastating collateral damage in the form destabilised institutions – from the courts to the Election Commission – the gutting of government capacity in education and health care and the erosion of social safety nets, even as it carried out several populist schemes. In the first Covid-19 wave, the Modi government was still confident to pursue market and Atmanirbar or self-help solutions. Even in the second and more vicious phase of the pandemic, these neoliberal instincts have thus far remained undimmed.

As economist Partha Mukhopadhya puts it, the Modi government has turned the entire vaccination drive into a liberalised competition between state governments. Brand Modi, in effect, continues to be locked into free market prescriptions and chooses to keep ideological faith with private profiteering.

The world over, however, success with dealing with Covid-19 has involved getting big government back, by increasing public goods and implementing stimulus spending. In the US, President Joe Biden has been unabashed in likening his interventions to the New Deal – the era of “big government” under the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s.

In India, however, some state governments have chosen to go their own way. Notably, the course taken in the communist-controlled southern state of Kerala under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Not only has the Kerala government been efficient and rational in handling its lockdowns, ensuring medical capacity and putting into effect a Rs 20,000-crore stimulus package but the innovative administrative abilities of its former health minister, KK Shailaja, proved, once again, that governments and not markets are more effective in sorting out disaster events.

Increasingly, as Covid-19 has begun to ravage India, its exhausted citizenry, unsurprisingly, are losing their appetite for majoritarian politics and free market ideologies. A recent PEW Research report suggested that the pandemic might have shrunk the size of the Indian middle class by 32 million, more than any other country in the world.

T rate of unemployment, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a leading data agency, spiked from 6.5% in March to 8% in April. Rating agencies such as Moody’s Investor Services are already scaling down their economic forecasts for India which suffered the worst economic contraction among major economies of the world during the pandemic year.

In such a context, Brand Modi appears to be woefully out of step: continuously reiterating faith in markets and spectacle when what is needed is bigger government. It is, in fact, no policy mystery anymore, a meaningful road to recovery will hinge on how quickly an emphatic government delivers a mix of public health, social welfare and a targeted economic stimulus.

The choice is clear, either Brand Modi radically reinvents itself or becomes history.

Rajesh Mahapatra is an independent journalist and a public policy analyst.

Rohan D’Souza is a professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University.