Indira's India & Modi's Bharat

As Narendra Modi becomes India's second-longest consecutively serving Prime Minister, we look at how he compares with Indira Gandhi across four key dimensions

- SHEKHAR GUPTA

On the day that Narendra Modi won his third term in June 2024, it was inevitable that this year he would become India's second-longest serving Prime Minister in consecutive terms, surpassing Indira Gandhi (January 24, 1966 to March 24, 1977).

It also became inevitable, therefore, that around this time in 2025, the season of Modi vs Indira comparisons will begin. Let me be the first, or among the first, of the block.

First of all, we need to look at the larger political realities in which each came to power and the challenges to their authority. Then we will assess their record across four dimensions: Politics, strategic and foreign affairs, the economy, and nationalism.

Mrs Gandhi and Mr Modi took over in completely different circumstances. There was a differential in political capital between the two. Mrs Gandhi had not won an election in 1966. She was a convenient compromise after Lal Bahadur Shastri's death.

She didn't help her cause by looking overawed in Parliament early on, and Socialist Ram Manohar Lohia dismissed her as a "goongi gudiya" (a doll who didn't speak). She had also inherited a broken economy. The growth rate in 1965 was (-) 2.6 per cent, in fact. The triple blow of a war, droughts, food shortages and instability and the deaths of two prime ministers in harness within 19 months had weakened India.

The picture for Mr Modi in 2014 was the exact opposite. He won a majority, the first in India after 30 years, and was his party's chosen candidate; the economy was averaging a robust 6.5 per cent growth across the preceding 15 years. His was a peaceful, planned, predictable electoral transition. The degree of difficulty on his first day in power was way lower than Mrs Gandhi's, just as his political capital was enormously higher.