A Harvest of Trust

A FORTNIGHT AGO, FRENCH PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON WAS forced to pass an immigration bill with the support of the far-right National Rally party. Marine Le Pen had earlier said her party would not support it but changed her mind later. An embarrassed Macron had to publicly assert that he was “not betraying” the trust of those who had voted him in, just recently, to keep out the far right—fast gaining popularity all over Europe, including a shock win for Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. In a desperate balancing act, Macron attempted to justify the passage of the bill, saying: “France needs this shield.”

Trust is a commodity that is extremely fragile these days, especially in politics. Politicians have always had to deal with the risk that the trust that voters placed in them at election time would decline once the polls were done and dusted. This, thanks primarily to the mismatch between voter expectations and their own performance that realpolitik shapes over time. The problem has become more acute in an age of polarisation and greater democratisation of information ac­cess, where every claim throws up a counterclaim. Nothing that one says, even if factual, passes uncontested at a time when facts, counter-facts, and alternative facts thrive simultaneously. People are divided into ideological silos and concepts that were supposed to be absolute not long ago are today split into binaries. In this age, the very existence of trust has become more precarious.

Leaders across the globe are realising this, much to their consternation, as they deal with plum­meting rankings. US President Joe Biden—with a popularity ranking rapidly nose-diving com­pared to just a few weeks ago—is doing a desperate trapeze act on key issues bothering voters, including the US’ unconditional support for Israel’s war and the immigration bill involving the Mexican border in the south. According to polls, there is also a depleting faith in the American Dream, based on how this generation is likely to do better and have a higher standard of living compared to their parents and grandparents. The Biden administration is also battling hard to get voters to believe that the president has done well in managing the recovery from Covid-19; that job creation and inflation control are real; and that it’s not just signed-up Republicans and large sections of traditional cynics who have lost faith in Biden as a presidential candidate.

The definition of what constitutes facts is now split right down the middle. Even good perfor­mance is no longer a guarantee for politicians to continue enjoying public trust. From Macron to the UK’s Rishi Sunak, they have all had to deal with this problem of a growing trust deficit. There is one notable exception, though: Narendra Modi. According to the US-based consultancy firm Morning Consult, Indian Prime Minister Modi retained his position as the world’s most popular leader, with an approval rating of 76 per cent.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is ranked second on the list, with an approval rating of 66 per cent. According to the report, approval ratings were based on a seven-day mov­ing average of adult residents in each country, with varying sample sizes. Regular trackers have pointed out that Modi continues to enjoy gravity-defying acceptability among voters. This was so even during the Covid pandemic which scalped careers across the board and took a heavy toll on the popularity of leaders who once seemed invincible. Modi consistently bucked the trend, even at times when levels of distrust in politicians were at an all-time high and left countries open to a dangerous “‘trust vacuum’, where manipulation… emotional truths… and sleights of hand can flourish,” as one commentator wrote recently about South Africa. Instead of being driven at the polling booth by trust, elections, before Modi’s arrival on the scene, were being increas­ingly driven by populism, uncertainty, fear, and a severe lack of reliable options. Trust in political leadership has significant implications for the relationship between the public and the populist leader. There is a broad consensus, studies suggest, that public trust is valuable to political leaders because it can lend support to their policies and promote compliance from the public without coercion. For these reasons, public trust is generally perceived as a political good.

Studies have also established that a lack of reliable leaders for the public to opt for leads to disenchantment and disengagement, scepti­cism and cynicism, all debilitating the very cen­tre of democracy. All of that, according to Rachel Botsman, author of Who Can You Trust?, “is distorting [the voter’s] trust filter.” Writing in The Guardian on the British elections (holds good here, too), she un­derscores: “When we are standing in the privacy of the election booth… we’re not just voting. We’re part of a crucial exercise in trust.” She lists some key yard­sticks by which the voter should gauge how trust­worthy a political leader is: reliability, competence, empathy, and integrity. Botsman maintains: “Trust is being invested in screen presence and bluster; a trick of smoke and tweets. Time to remind ourselves that voting is about the admittedly drearier business of working out who we can trust the most—or at any rate distrust the least—on the basis of solid reasons, rather than showbiz pizzazz. Reliability comes down to a person’s consistency in doing what they said they would do, over time.” Ultimately, she maintains, it’s about “knowing and feeling that you can depend on this person in the long term…” Another yardstick she posits is one for measuring competence. Instead of “Who do you trust the most?” the voter should rely on “the kind of contextual thinking” that gets one “closer to assessing competence”. That is, the voter should ask himself or herself how much they trust someone to do x, y or z—a specific task or issue; or tackle a specific problem that matters to them on, say, public health, na­tional security, the economy, unemployment; putting India as a leader on the global stage, amplifying Indian cul­ture and traditions; and so on. “As a voter, I have to decide which of those trust and competence issues matter most to me,” Botsman contends. She cites US President Franklin D Roosevelt trying to carry along a devastated American public with him during the Great Depression with empathy and genuine concern. Roosevelt, engaging the public through fire­side chats (not dissimilar to Modi’s own Mann ki Baat) dem­onstrated his empathy for what the American people were going through, saying, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Arguing that an era of unalloyed political integrity is hard to come by, Botsman says “integrity”, today, comes down to intentions and motives. The voter should be convinced that the leader is unlikely to take decisions in personal interest but in the country’s interest. Ten years after he took charge of the country in New Delhi, Narendra Modi continues to score significantly among voters on all key counts to measure trust worthiness that Botsman outlines.

HOWEVER, MODI’S POLITICAL opponents, mostly blind to the writing on the wall, put it down to classic political legerdemain, his oratory and his party’s suc­cess at polarising the electorate. This explanation has found acceptance even among political scientists and sociologists allegedly rigorous in studying their subjects. A clear reflection of a confirmation bias problem which has thwarted an honest and unbiased understanding of the Modi phenomenon and an explanation of his enduring popularity. An intrinsic part of his oratorical skills is his use of social media, TV and radio to communicate with ordinary voters by amplifying his message over and over. How crucial social media is to his messaging is clear: He is the first world leader to reach two crore subscribers, the most followed on Instagram (8.3 crore+), the most followed head of government on X (9.4 crore+), the most popular world leader on Facebook (4.8 crore+), and the world leader with the highest and fastest growing following on social media (1.26 crore+) .The newly set up Selfie Points at railway stations across India only drive home Modi’s popularity.

Modi’s popularity compares very favourably with leaders of the earlier generation but even more favourably with leaders in the social media era. By the 1990s, the highfalutin speeches of pol­iticians educated abroad, drawn from more privileged sections of society, had come to an end. Public addresses by leaders were more earthy, colloquial and colourful, reaching out instantly to ordinary people. The fact that Modi has remained, over a decade of his prime ministership, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) and the Sangh ecosphere’s key speaker across the country has only served to plant the tenor and tone of his voice, his inflexions and expressions, as well as his body language indelibly in the consciousness of the voter. From simplifying algebra to rocket science to climate change to harnessing economics for driving the growth engine to demystifying religion and culture, Modi has been able to unravel apparent political and socio-economic complexities for the aam nagarik with relative ease. Apart from sharp, earthy jibes at opponents using colourful metaphors, Modi uses mythological references, anecdotes, and pregnant pauses in his rhetorical speeches that are boosted by his body language to push through his message: that the voter has no op­tion but him if India is to break its thrall to colonialism and reach peak growth on every front.

Social-sector schemes tailor-made to address the core con­cerns of the poor cutting across caste and community, of women, and of other marginalised sections have formed the core of his speeches. But Modi also confidently and publicly blueprints for the voter the cultural, spiritual, social and political growth story of the country over the next few decades, focusing especially on decolonisation (rejecting foreign yardsticks of growth, prosper­ity, and social content, and adopting homegrown yardsticks); a war against graft, dynasty politics and nepotism (pariwarwaad and bhai-bhatiijawaad); cleanliness (Swachh Bharat); the dignity and health of women (importance of toilets, free gas connections for the poor, gas chulhas for cooking, even directly addressing eco­nomically priced and easily accessible sanitary pads); etc. Modi’s critics uncharitably compare him and his hypnotic speeches to Kaa, the serpent in The Jungle Book. Kaa’s famous song in the movie, where he locks his spellbinding eyes with those of the simpleton kid that is Mowgli, is titled ‘Trust in Me’. Ironically, there could not have been a better compliment in Modi’s case. His speeches strike a simple but powerful chord with most ordi­nary voters. And that is mainly because he has a story to tell. An authentic story. One authenticated regularly by people who get to witness and experience it unfold firsthand.

Today, there are few leaders with Modi’s success at matching what he promises with what he delivers—starting right from his first term in 2014. Toilets that were constructed, the sheer speed of implementation of the Ujjwala scheme, last-mile con­nectivity for electricity and drinking water access, distribution of free vaccines in the pandemic years, free foodgrain for 80 crore needy citizens, teaching Pakistan a lesson through the Balakot strike—the fact that he lived up to his promise to teach Pakistan a lesson if it tried to hurt India’s security forces or transgress into India’s territory—lifting over 13 crore above the poverty line in just five years. On every single count of concern, Modi has invested himself with a credibility that is the envy of his rivals. Each time a woman is spared social indignity through targeted Modi government schemes, it is a reminder to beneficiaries that an empathetic Modi says what he means and means what he says; nor is it only about women who have been transformed into a solid vote base for him across India. Four crore houses were constructed for the needy. Another several crore receive their government subsidies and funds through Direct Benefit Trans­fer (DBT), with cash put directly in their bank accounts. None of these beneficiaries would need any additional validation of Modi’s political credibility and trustworthiness.

In his second term in office, Modi restarted with determina­tion where he had left off despite a pandemic that crippled the world. How Modi and his government tackled the travails of the pandemic in a nation with the world’s largest population— with a cocktail of moves to rally ordinary people by invoking tradition, scientists and the medical fraternity, using the credo of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam that entailed vaccine supply to smaller and less developed nations, and a strong social welfare support system, a galvanised administration and bureaucracy at home— is an interesting story in itself. Today, this is seen as a textbook case in leadership. Celebrated economists, academics and experts urged him to splurge his way through to address the economic devastation the pandemic left in its wake. But when Modi did take the necessary decisions, he did so by defying the so-called expert advice which often bordered on mocking and hector­ing the prime minister. The ‘experts’ had precise and dogmatic prescriptions for how to fight the pandemic at a time when even convincing vaccine sceptics pan-India, both among intellectuals and the vast rural population, demanded out-of-the-box think­ing. Journalists schooled in liberal arts turned virologists, univer­sity teachers turned monetary experts, and social media influenc­ers turned economists overnight, each falling over the other to lead the punditry parade against Modi. In the end, he succeeded by silencing them with decisive action. Western economists admitted that stimulus measures undertaken by their govern­ments were rolled out in haste—almost in panic—to contain the economic fallout of the pandemic. This fire-hose approach was neither targeted nor precise in most countries. The situation was diametrically different in India. In the last two years of the pandemic, digital payments grew rapidly in India, mainly due to the mass adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for daily transactions. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) digital pay­ment index (DPI), launched in January 2021, reflects this mile­stone. These unerring decisions allowed the Indian government to significantly plug leakages and target subsidies and welfare programmes better than ever to eligible beneficiaries.

A biased media played up the ‘expert’ advice, however, to drive home its point that Modi’s stubbornness was risky and could cost the country dearly. Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan was the first to attack Modi. He said the relief from the government was “meagre” and argued that what India had done till then (mid-2020) in terms of fiscal support was not adequate when compared with many other economies. India, he said, entered the pandemic-led health crisis with declining growth, a poor fis­cal situation, and legacy non-performing assets (NPAs) in Modi’s first term, even as the government in its second term focused on “BJP’s majoritarian objectives rather than repairing an impaired economy.” The government’s key decisions on this front, he said, primarily comprised free foodgrains to poor households. Rajan also maintained that the government’s strategy to conserve re­sources for a possible future stimulus was “self-defeating”. Again, in his conversation with Rahul Gandhi, he said that India would be lucky if it registered 5 per cent growth. India now has 7 per cent growth and is the fastest-growing major economy. Modi’s cred­ibility, contrary to what his opponents presaged, went upwards manifold. The growth of the economy was at direct odds with the predictions. The massive infrastructure boost, the signifi­cant number of kilometres added nationwide in the highways and roads network, the unprecedented railway connectivity, the launch of several Vande Bharat trains, the orders that Indian flight carriers were placing—all of these told the Modi story in captivating ways. They reinforced his claims about this being India’s moment, at home and in the world.

Trust is a value formed and nurtured as much by tangible achievements as by the psychological satisfaction people derive from them. This is evident in Modi’s case. What he delivered on were not just physical commitments; his pledges were deliv­ered on the cultural, spiritual, religious, and civilisational fronts, eliciting mass faith and collective confidence. When the Ram Mandir promise is fulfilled, it is likely to be a cathartic moment for the people who, while passionate about the construction of the temple at the birthplace of the tallest of the Hindu pantheon of gods in Ayodhya, had virtually given up because of resistance from formidable adversaries and the stratagems used by them to thwart the temple’s construction for decades. When the Balakot air strike occurred, it directly addressed the long-felt urge of a large section of Indians for a muscular response to Pakistan. It was a marked departure from the fatalistic acquiescence in ter­rorism celebrated during the Manmohan Singh years as master statecraft. Balakot was the first time India effectively countered the “thousand cuts” policy of Pakistan, formulated at the staff college in Quetta and made famous by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Modi inspired widespread trust and earned street credit on all these counts. But he did so with a larger global audience as well after hosting the G20 summit in New Delhi. For the first time, an Indian prime minister and his government lever­aged India’s revolving-door hosting of a G20 summit into a statement from the Global South on a changing global power equation. Overnight, it stopped being just another glitzy multi­national event of the past at Vigyan Bhawan. What was so far an exclusivist event to be showcased to the world became a celebra­tion of India’s global might that meant much to the people of In­dia, an event with concrete and comprehensible achievements. At the end of a year of clearly earmarked goals and micro-man­aged negotiations under Modi’s baton, the summit was able to arrive at a consensus on the admission of the African Union (AU) in G20 before the deadline, a development viewed as a major trib­ute to his leadership at home and abroad. That act, which Modi had promised the AU chairman earlier in the year, catapulted him to the ranks of the tallest leaders of the Global South, a strong voice to ram through the economic, food and fuel concerns of the region, including several nations of Africa and South America, on the largely Western-dominated G20 platform. The other big achievement for Modi was mooting the rail and sea trade link to connect India to West Asia and Europe which was seen as a viable alternative to China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative. It was backed by both the US and the European Union (EU). Modi called the proposed India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor “a beacon of cooperation, innovation, and shared progress”. US President Joe Biden said it was a “game-changing investment”. The details are still to be worked out and the wait is on for a con­ducive geopolitical environment, but the importance of the proposal cannot be understated. Foreign policy achievements, mostly considered esoteric and elitist in nature, have tradition­ally not been things to sway people and influence their political choice. But if they come from a person voters already relate to, at least most of them, then they tend to see it all as a personal feat.

 

Above all, there is the personal connect with ordinary folk. Through all of Modi’s achievements, there has run a strong thread of hard work, determination and a single-minded com­mitment to values. Modi’s uplifting tale of rising from poverty (his mother worked as a domestic help and he himself sold tea at the Vadnagar railway station in Gujarat) to the highest office by perseverance has made ordinary people see him as mirroring their own difficulties and challenges—and how their own lives may improve. In an interview with Open (‘It is important that every youngster get opportunities, not assistance’, October 11, 2021), Modi had said: “I get awed by the kind of country we are and our people, who can pick a poor child and make him reach where I have. I feel privileged that the people of this country have given me such huge responsibilities and continue to repose their trust in me. This is the strength of our democracy… As for me sell­ing tea as a child and later becoming the prime minister of our na­tion, I see this very differently from how you see it. I feel that the 130 crore people of India have the same capabilities that I have. What I have achieved, can be achieved by anyone. If I can, anyone can! A nation of 130 crore capable people… the contribution that our country can make to humankind is tremendous! And so, where I started, where I reached, what I did, what my individual experiences are, these things do not matter much. What matters is that this shows that any Indian can achieve anything.”

Modi is the first prime minister of India who was born after 1947, the first from the BPL (below poverty line) class. In 2015, the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar included the Teli com­munity, to which Modi belongs, in the Economically Backward Class (EBC) category. Speaking at the Teli Sahu Sammelan at the time, former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi had said that it was only possible in a party like BJP that a person hailing from the Teli community was chosen for the prime minister’s job. All of that forges an abiding link between him and the people who sense an instant ‘one of us’ connec­tion. No amount of rhetorical sorcery or political management can achieve this quality or level of trust; a political leader can only earn this through hard work, delivering on pledges to the public and with personal charisma. Desperate efforts are afoot by Modi’s opponents to dress up the pretender to the top post, Rahul Gandhi, in similar robes and flood social media with videos of the Nehru-Gandhi scion working in the fields, shak­ing a leg with tribals, cooking in the open in villages, driving long distances while chatting with truckers, trying his hand at using machine tools, driving tractors, swimming in the seas with fishermen, and so on. But that can, at best, help his fans make catchy videos.

Modi’s story is still being written and often surpasses ex­pectations. Not without reason. Take, for instance, foodgrains. On November 29, India extended the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) free ration scheme for another five years, till December 2028. The scheme was originally intro­duced in 2020, in the thick of the Covid pandemic, to ensure free foodgrains for 80 crore-plus eligible beneficiaries under the Na­tional Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013. It was to end in December 2023, but Modi decided to extend it. The scheme aims to feed the poorest citizens of India by providing grain through the public distribution system (PDS), to all the priority households (ration-card holders and those identified by the Antyodaya Anna Yojana scheme). Eligible ration-card holders under NFSA 2013 are en­titled, under the scheme, to 5kg free wheat/rice per person, per month. This is in addition to the 5kg foodgrains already provided to beneficiaries under NFSA. The scheme has been successful in providing food security to millions of poor families in the pan­demic years but now it is likely to strengthen food security for the poorest of the poor right up to 2028.

This is no mean feat. Modi has managed to firmly consolidate his support among the poor with the supply of free foodgrains for most of the five years beyond the 2024 General Election. Barely anyone would have hit the streets in protest if Modi had discon­tinued the distribution of free foodgrains by December 2023 as originally planned. It would also have saved the exchequer an estimated `11.8 lakh crore. Yet, Modi did the unthinkable and extended the scheme for another five years, thus earning the confidence of crores of beneficiaries.

On September 28, a month before the decision on extending the supply of free foodgrains, President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam passed earlier by both Houses in a special session of Parliament whose agenda was unveiled only after its commencement, mainly to pre-empt sabotage. It was a historic moment that officially marked the legislation of the long-pending Women’s Reservation Bill. Last approved by Rajya Sabha as far back as 2010, the proposal to re­serve one-third seats for women was by and large pushed to the backburner by tacit consensus and would have remained there had it not been for the political will shown by Modi to push it through. Modi’s adversaries criticised the Bill for several reasons, including the lack of a separate quota for women from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and the lack of a definite timeline for the reservations to actually kick in. Parties, including Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and the Samajwadi Party (SP), were forced, however, to back the government’s Bill for fear of being taken for hypocrites. It was a masterstroke that has only served to endorse the Modi magic among his female vote base.

India had a total of 97,830 km of National Highways (NH) in 2014-15 which was expanded to 1,45,155 km by March 2023. Modi’s push for an infrastructure upgrade to boost the economy led to an unprecedented 50,000 km of NH being added in the last nine years. From 12.1 km per day of highway built in 2014-15, the speed had grown to 28.6 km per day in 2021-22, as per official data. Around 85 per cent of passenger and 75 per cent of goods traffic is carried over roads annually in India, boosting the economy, jobs and access to essential goods. In a country known for its fatalistic acceptance of the status quo, voters would not have been agitated if the construction of highways had taken place at the ‘Manmohan pace’ post-2014. However, Modi has set the bar very high across sectors.

AS COUNTING PROCEEDED in early December for the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, it became clear that BJP was set to sweep in the three bigger states of the Hindi belt notwith­standing exit polls and the deliberate framing of the elections as the ‘semi-finals’ before the 2024 parliamentary polls. Modi’s imprint was evident all over. Congress only managed to win Telangana. BJP wrested Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from Congress and retained Madhya Pradesh, tightening its hold on the Hindi belt. Exit polls had given an edge to Congress in Chhattisgarh but that was not to be. The big gains in the Hindi belt came despite BJP running on the power and charisma of Modi and Modi alone, with even veteran Shivraj ‘Mamaji’ Singh Chouhan relegated to one of the many leaders that the Modi-Amit Shah duo directed to contest in a bid to insulate the ruling BJP against any possible loss in the key state. Modi did not endorse the tallest of BJP leaders in Rajasthan, former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, either. As it transpired, all the three BJP chief ministers sworn in were newcomers, ringing in the GenNext anointed by Modi.

The Assembly polls proved how the trust factor remains strong in Modi’s popularity. When the opposition leaders met in Delhi, they discussed several strategies to weaken his popular­ity—debilitating the Hindu consolidation, strategic seat-sharing so that BJP does not taste runaway success, and so on—basically attempting to pull all the anti-Modi votes to the I.N.D.I.A. bloc through a cocktail of campaign strategies. But faced with Modi’s tight grip on voter trust and political consciousness, all their at­tempts to dominate the ballot box fell flat and what lay exposed was an ugly tug of war of claimants among Congress, the Trin­amool Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, etc. The one cru­cial thing that they lacked was a leader of Narendra Modi’s stature and calibre, one who could match the man from Vadnagar on the trust factor. It is likely to weigh heavily on Modi’s rivals in 2024.

Political scientists have often pointed out that trust in the reliability of individual political leaders, especially when compared to institutions, can never offer a full guarantee on integrity, motives, or delivery of essential services. However, a guarantee based on existing and widespread trust works very well to strengthen the political system and public policies in a democracy. That is likely why Modi is certain that that the 2024 General Election can only make independent India stronger. It is Modi ki guarantee.

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