When he won the general elections last year, P?rime ?M?inister Narendra Modi lifted his party to a 32 per cent vote. This means he added about 10 per cent over the average the party achieved in the Vajpayee years and immediately after that. ?I have always thought of his support as coming from two different, and disparate, groups. The dominant one is the traditional Bharatiya Janata Party voter, who is attracted to the party because of its principles. By this I mean Hindutva, and the dislike of Muslims expressed through the three primary issues — Ramjanmabhoomi (Muslims should give up their mosque), Uniform Civil Code (Muslims should give up their family law) and Article 370 (Muslims should give up their autonomy in Kashmir).
But I also mean those who admired the BJP as a meritocratic party whose ideological wellspring is located in social work through the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. This makes it different from the aristocratic and dynastic Gandhi-family led Congress.
??The second group of BJP voters were those who came to the party mainly through the attractiveness of Modi. A brilliant speaker (I used to rate him in the same category as Bal Thackeray and Lalu Yadav in being able to connect with the audience, but now I think he's ??quite simply the best we have produced in decades) who is able to compress complex issues into simple slogans, Modi comes across as credible. He is a great representative of Indian nationalism, and an attractive figure because of his charisma. His promise of a new India and new beginning under him was bought comprehensively by this second group.
This is the background in which we have begun to receive news that India is not really very different either in reality or in the way that the government functions.
The economy hasn't taken off and the credit rating firm Moody's has reported a disappointment at the rate of reforms. A staggering report on poverty this week shows that 92 per cent of rural Indian families survive on less than Rs 10,000 a month.