Politics is a strange business. Told scientifically, it hides its messages. For example, to talk of Gujarat near election time, reduces politics to electoral mathematics. Sometimes politics is better seen as an empirically grounded fable.

This is a fable about a master politician called Narendra Modi. As chief minister, Modi writes the script of Gujarat politics with himself as the sole actor. The Congress is seen as the opposing part but it hardly constitutes an opposition. It is a nominal opponent. The real opposition to Narendra Modi is Narendra Modi. The rest of the essay is an expansion of this argument.

Every fascist is a moderniser and it all begins with a misreading of history. Modi feels Patel was given a raw deal and that he is a continuation of The Sardar by other means. He has reduced the State to himself. People claim he has national ambitions but his nation is a globalised view of Gujarat. He quotes the quantum of investment as an index of his stability. Even Ratan Tata has said that it would be foolish not to invest in Gujarat of the present. Modi parades the diaspora as further testimonial to himself. But Modi is a particular kind of moderniser.

He gives change a collective idiom and a privatised frame. He promises industrialists a carte blanche by creating plans for privatisation that could make Friedman blanche. Modi has privatised 40 ports and created a slew of SEZs and science cities. In fact, his image is that of a chief minister for the new industrialists. At the same time he likes to remind the dalits that he is moving beyond dominant caste politics.

... contd.