Will Modi's Strategy To Target Key Vote Banks Help Him Win A Second Term?

With its micro-targeted sops for key vote banks, the Modi government has effectively used the interim budget as a platform to launch its election campaign. But will it work?

- Raj Chengappa

Soon after Vladimir Putin took over as president of Russia in 2000, he was confronted with the Kursk submarine disaster that resulted in the death of 118 navy personnel. Putin was vacationing outside Moscow and handled the crisis from there. But he was criticised for not cutting short his trip and being in office. Putin confessed to this writer that he had learnt his first big lesson in politics: a leader must not only take action but the public must see him doing so. Putin never made that mistake again and has ruled Russia unchallenged since then.

Narendra Modi made a similar mistake in his first year as prime minister. He faced his first big farmers’ crisis in March 2015 when unseasonal rains damaged farmers’ crops in Punjab and Haryana leading many of them to commit suicide. Modi ensured that the afflicted farmers got a higher compensation and that all the grain they produced was procured at the Minimum Support Price (MSP). But he was criticised for not personally visiting the affected areas and sympathising with the farmers. An exasperated Modi told this writer: “Tell me if a Congress leader has visited a farm in the past 10 years. Were there no farming calamities then? As chief minister, I used to regularly visit farmers. My job now as prime minister is to collect information, take decisions, mobilise the machinery.”