‘I believe there’s a 50:50 chance for both sides. It all depends on how well the Opposition gets united and how efficiently they transfer their votes to their allies.’
For over two decades now, Ruchir Sharma, a global investor and author of bestselling books Breakout Nations and The Rise and Fall of Nations, has been crisscrossing the election-bound states in India with a team of journalists, psephologists and poll pundits. As the nation gears up for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he is ready with another book, Democracy on the Road (Penguin, Rs 699), based on the experiences of his “25-year journey” through India.
A contributing writer at the New York Times, Sharma says 2019 is going to be a competitive election, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi having a 50:50 chance. He, however, adds that the decline in Modi’s poll prospects is primarily because of greater Opposition unity this time. “In 2014, the Opposition was badly divided and Modi could become Prime Minister with just 31% vote share.” What adds to the Opposition’s strength is Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s growing confidence and transformation as a full-time politician. “But it’s a chicken-egg story. Did Rahul become more confident and then his party’s prospects improved? Or, is it that the party’s improved prospect has made him appear more confident? We don’t know that,” says Sharma with a smile. On Priyanka Vadra recently joining politics, the author says matter-of-factly that she would have “no impact” in the elections.
In an interview with The Sunday Guardian, Sharma shares his views on a range of issues. The following are the edited excerpts:
Q: What are PM Modi’s chances of coming back to power in 2019?
A: The 2019 election, which seemed a near-certainty in favour of Modi a year ago, has suddenly become a competitive one. I believe there’s a 50:50 chance for both sides. That, for me, is a big takeaway, especially given the fact that as early as a year ago, everyone thought that Modi was invincible and the real battle would be fought only in 2024.
The change I primarily see because the Opposition is getting united this time. In 2014, the Opposition was badly divided and Modi could become Prime Minister with just 31% vote share. Even if he gets the same vote share as in 2014, it will be very difficult for him to return to power in 2019. So, for me, all depends on how well the Opposition gets united and how efficiently they transfer their votes to their allies.
Q: How do you see Modi’s performance as Prime Minister?
A: When Modi first came to power in 2014, I wrote a very favourable piece in the Wall Street Journal, saying he could be the next Ronald Reagan, but he ended up being different. My hope was that he would do more for privatisation and in terms of liberating people. In India, we give people a lot of political freedom but less economic freedom. I was hoping much more from Modi.
Modi, for me, is more a performer than a reformer. But as a performer, I don’t mean he is a showman. He is still acting like a Gujarat Chief Minister, with his let’s-fix-this-one, let’s-fix-that-one mentality, rather than go with a big vision on reforms. Because this country is so diverse and federal, governing as a Prime Minister is a lot more difficult. If you really want to make changes, these would have to be done at a chief ministerial level. Modi has failed to evolve his Gujarat model of governance nationally. At the Gujarat level, you can act as a CEO, the way Modi did during his chief ministerial stint, but nationally you have to act as a team leader; you have to take the Chief Ministers along.
Q: Priyanka has finally entered politics. Will it impact the Congress’ poll prospects, especially in Uttar Pradesh?
A: Priyanka has been given the role of handling eastern Uttar Pradesh. I don’t see her making much impact. I think she has entered the electoral race a bit too late. The only way she can create some impression is by taking PM Modi head on. She should challenge him from his Varanasi seat, something Arvind Kejriwal did in the last Lok Sabha elections, but failed miserably.
I believe it’s all about an alliance in UP. If the alliance goes in a particular direction, so do the votes. When I went to the state last year, I found that people’s minds were already made up along religious and caste lines. Here arithmetic will score over chemistry. One saw this trend in the bypolls, too.
Q: How do you look at Rahul Gandhi?
A: Sometimes people get so exhausted with the incumbent that the Opposition naturally starts looking better. Maybe Rahul is riding on this wave of disappointment, if not anger, with the current dispensation. But I believe Rahul seems to have matured politically. When we first met him, the biggest drawback we found that he was just not ready to listen. He wasn’t at all engaging with us. We met him for almost two hours in Moradabad, and he just kept speaking, refusing to take a single question. He now seems to engage a bit more. The second transformation is that he now comes across as a full-time politician, and not a reluctant one.
Q: You were part of a media team that met Modi in 2007 and 2009. In the book, you mention how the delegation only insisted on asking him about the 2002 Gujarat riots, while he wanted the discussion to go on the development track. Do you think the media has often treated Modi unfairly?
A: That’s not for me to judge. My job, in 2007 and again in 2009, was to take people along and meet Modi, who was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat. I would concede that the second time we met Modi we should not have raised the Gujarat riot issue, keeping in mind the 2007 experience. But I can’t control other people. We, however, learnt our lessons and when we met BJP president Amit Shah in 2015 and 2017 we never raised the issue. Yet, there was tension out there. Maybe by then they were all convinced and given up on the media.
I believe there are two strands in the BJP: If there are Modi and Shah, there are also leaders like Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Sushma Swaraj who may disagree with you but are never opposed to engaging with you. When we met Shah, I reminded him that Trump might attack the media in public, but in private he often sought the attention of the New York Times. He regularly meets them one on one. I wish Modi does the same, at least privately.
Q: You write in the book that Delhi is not a place to look for big bang reforms. Why?
A: Because I believe India is a continent and not a country. The federal structure is such that it’s very hard to govern from Delhi. Also, there’s no big constituency for market reforms in India. Every big leader, starting from Mahatma Gandhi, emphasises on the ability of the state to deliver. The best we can see in India is a pro-development Chief Minister. In fact, the politics on an economic front may have moved left, with Modi too now announcing one welfare scheme after another.
Q: Why reforms and winning elections don’t go together, especially in India?
A: As a Karnataka politician told me that fighting an election in India is like passing six tests and you need minimum passing marks of 35% on each. For me, development and reforms can be just two of those six. Since 1980, there have been about 27 periods when a state has delivered growth of more than 8% during a full five-year term of a Chief Minister. Half of these times, the Chief Ministers lost the elections. The mistake that Chandrababu Naidu and even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for instance, made that they majorly focused on one or two factors.
Q: What are the fundamental changes you see in Indian politics in the past 25 years?
A: My favourite line in the book is in the chapter, “This Palace Was Once Mighty”, on my second return to my hometown Bijnor. It “showed how after changes upon changes, India can feel more or less the same”. A lot has changed in the campaigning style, the advent of social media, among others. One big trend which I talk about in the book is the rise of single leaders in India. In the 1980s, all of India’s major political leaders were married. Today, one-third of them are either single or unattached. That is the big shift. That is a USP for someone like Modi, who can often be heard saying, “Hey, I’ve nobody after me who will be corrupt.” Also, it may be because politics in India is a 24×7 job. We under-appreciate how hectic and intense it is.
Q: How do you see the India story on a global scale? Do you think India would gain from the prospect of China’s slowdown?
A: India’s will be the story of steady growth. We will keep rising but we will never be going to have a China-like giant leap. We will do well in our own space, but the world has moved on with two superpowers—the US and China.
As for the fears of China’s slowdown, my apprehension is just the opposite. If the Chinese economy slumps too much, it would cause a global problem. I believe if there’s a big slowdown in China, it would impact us badly, like it did in 2015-16.