Narendra Modi sets a global high bar on democratic leadership

Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi marks an important milestone in his leadership journey as he surpasses Jawaharlal Nehru as India’s longest continuously serving elected Prime Minister.

To historians and history buffs in India, the Nehru era has largely been judged from the perspective of the two decades following India’s independence. The Modi era, which is about halfway into its second decade, will likely be judged from the perspective of the path it is laying towards 2047, by when independent India will turn 100. However, Narendra Modi, who neither enjoyed the privileges of birth that Nehru had, nor had the political advantages that Gandhi bestowed upon Nehru, has had to trek a far more arduous path to this milestone when compared to Nehru, while earning the mandate of a billion Indians three times in a row along the way.

Most discussions about democracy are often framed from the vantage point of indices conceived and designed in the so-called liberal West. These indices largely measure the success of democracy in mostly homogeneous societies with populations predominantly in the few millions. In scale, the United States, which is the world’s oldest democracy and marks 250 years in a few weeks from now, has only a few hundred million people and is perhaps, for the first time, being tested and challenged in its multicultural makeup on account of significant migration.

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India, on the other hand, is unlike any other major democracy. In sheer scale, it is more than three times larger than the next nearest democracy. India’s socio-economic complexity is best appreciated from the fact that it is home not only to the world’s largest talent pool for high-tech skills, from semiconductor design to artificial intelligence, but is also home to a vast diversity of tribal communities, artisanal skills, and agriculture. India’s cultural and linguistic diversity is best understood not just through its more than hundred languages and dialects, but also in how local cuisines and food habits shift every few hundred kilometres. The one-size-fits-all frameworks underlying the indices of democracy designed in the West neither have the ability to fathom the scale of Indian democracy nor are they able to meaningfully account for its diversity and complexity.

This, to a large extent, explains the rather unidimensional manner in which most Western analysts and media commentators have tended to write about India’s democracy over the decades. The rise of Narendra Modi over the past three decades, first as Chief Minister in Gujarat and then as Prime Minister in New Delhi, has stress-tested their unidimensional mental models of Indian democracy. Narendra Modi’s rise has broken through their stereotypical understanding of India while shattering the binaries within which they have tended to analyse the country. Three general elections and a staggering number of electoral victories later, it is mind-numbing that there has been no honest exercise on their part to introspect and reflect, not on how wrong they have been about Narendra Modi, but more importantly on their abject failure to understand how different and unique the Indian democratic experiment is, without either a precedent or a parallel elsewhere on the planet.

The dominant political story of 20th-century India was the story of nation-building. The generation of Gandhi, Patel, Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad and Nehru confronted an extraordinary challenge. They inherited a nation traumatised by Partition, burdened by poverty, fragmented by language and caste, and doubted by much of the world. Few international observers expected India’s democratic experiment to survive. Many expected military rule. Others predicted fragmentation. Some believed authoritarianism was inevitable.

The miracle of the first 50 years was not prosperity. It was continuity. India remained democratic. Power changed hands through elections. The Constitution endured. The republic survived. But by the beginning of the 21st century, a different question had emerged: not whether democracy could survive, but whether democracy could deliver.

Throughout much of the 20th century, democratic success was measured primarily through institutional endurance. Countries were praised for maintaining constitutional systems, conducting elections, and preserving civil order. By the early 21st century, however, citizens across the world were demanding something more. They expected governments to produce outcomes, from economic growth to infrastructure, and from security to opportunity.

Democracy was increasingly judged not only by process but by performance. India thus became the most important test case in the world. No democracy had ever attempted governance on such a scale, making Modi’s India a globally unique phenomenon.

Unlike many of the dominant political figures of the 20th century, Narendra Modi did not derive legitimacy from founding events. He derived legitimacy from repeated electoral renewal. While Nehru’s authority rested partly upon the immense moral capital of the independence movement, Narendra Modi belonged to an entirely different political age as India’s first Prime Minister born in independent India. He inherited no freedom movement and did not have the aura of a national founding moment to bask in. There was no tryst with destiny or dynasty. Neither was there any natural claim to leadership handed to him on a platter. Every stage of his rise required democratic validation, every advancement required electoral success, and every exercise of executive authority required voter approval.

While the first generation of Indian leadership possessed what might be called inherited legitimacy from history, the Modi era demonstrated earned legitimacy through competition. That transition reflected a broader transformation occurring within Indian society itself. While Nehru governed a nation riddled with scarcity, Modi’s India is a nation of a billion aspirations. Every five years, and every single day in between, Narendra Modi has had to face a citizenry that is no longer merely seeking stability. They seek advancement.

India’s aspirational citizens are younger, more educated, more connected, more urbanised, and more demanding than any generation before them. Historical prestige no longer guarantees public trust. Performance increasingly determines political success.

The global high bar that Narendra Modi has set for democratic leadership at the scale of a billion people has demonstrated that democratic legitimacy in modern India will increasingly depend on the ability to persuade citizens repeatedly rather than rely upon inherited authority. This profound democratisation of political leadership ensures that all future leaders of India will have to strive even harder to earn their right to govern this billion-people democracy.

While Nehru benefited from the reverence accorded to founders, Narendra Modi has operated in an age of relentless examination, social media saturation, 24-hour news cycles, and unprecedented political polarisation.

As he surpasses Jawaharlal Nehru’s record, Narendra Modi’s most enduring historical contribution may be the maturation of Indian democracy, where democratic leaders must continually earn trust. In 2047, when a hundred-year-old independent India reflects upon the “Modi Model”, it may well conclude that the bar for leadership had permanently risen.

The writer is the Chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and former CEO of Prasar Bharti. Views expressed are personal. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.