Modi has been one of India’s foremost modernisers. He has transformed Gujarat into an entrepreneur-friendly state and given India a foretaste of the potential benefits that can accrue from a government committed to economic freedom. His critics are right: Modi is India’s only genuine right-winger.

Ironically, Modi’s difficulties have arisen from this unwavering commitment to efficiency as a principle of governance: “Minimum government and maximum governance”. The political culture of India, cutting across parties, is rooted in patronage and self-gratification. In defying these pressures — an important example is resisting political interference in Gujarat’s hugely successful public sector units — the chief minister has been portrayed as arrogant and insensitive to political compulsions. Both MLAs and pracharaks have turned their guns on him for repudiating the politics of ‘adjustment’, a euphemism for cronyism and discretionary irregularities.

Modi is an inept pragmatist. He could easily have bought peace for himself by making expedient compromises, as politicians are expected to do. In being fanatically uncompromising and, at the same time, maintaining the highest standards of personal integrity, he has shown the possibilities of an alternative approach to politics.

In challenging the ‘power brokers’ (what Rajiv Gandhi tried and failed in the first years of his rule), Modi has taken a stupendous risk. There are many in the BJP who are fearful that his no-nonsense reputation, embellished by a show of machismo, may prove contagious and unsettle their little cosy arrangements. The fears are not unfounded. Modi has attempted to strike a direct rapport with the electorate bypassing intermediaries who call themselves ‘karyakartas’. In a parliamentary system this is always difficult, but he has tried to negotiate the problem by banking on a fierce personality cult around himself.

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