Did The Prime Minister Deliver On His Big Promises?

As he enters his final year, the overall sense is that Narendra Modi is honest, hard-working and has delivered on many fronts. He is miles ahead of the Opposition for 2019, but many economic and social challenges remain, apart from the feeling of alienation among the minorities

- Raj Chengappa

On May 26, the day Narendra Damadordas Modi completed four years as the nation’s ‘Prime Sevak’, as he puts it, he let his senior cabinet and party colleagues brief the press in Lutyens’ Delhi about his government’s achievements. The prime minister instead chose to fly to Cuttack and address a BJP rally organised on the banks of the Mahanadi. Odisha was one of the few states that had remained unaffected by the Modi tidal wave in the 2014 general election. The Biju Janata Dal, headed by Naveen Patnaik, swept 20 of the 21 seats in the state, the BJP winning only one. It was characteristic of Modi that on a day when he could have basked in his glory in Delhi, he decided instead to take the battle headon in a state where his party is weak. He is acutely aware that the BJP needs to win many more seats in states like Odisha to offset any losses his party may suffer in its northern bastions in 2019.

Those who know Modi well and have worked with him say that four years as head of the world’s most populous democracy have made him even more impatient to ensure outcomes. That he remains uncompromising towards failure. That you need to take whatever he says seriously because he means what he says and believes in practising what he preaches—a karma yogi. And that in anything that he does or takes up, he never looks at doing things for expediency, but always has a long term vision in mind. His sights are already fixed on 2022—when India completes 75 years of Independence—and beyond. Modi’s target may be to get re-elected in 2019. But by working on a vision that is well into a second term, he is streets ahead of the Opposition, which is struggling to put together a convincing enough positive narrative to defeat him.