The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age

by James Crabtree

These, then, are the tragedies of Modi. The first: that such a bargain had to be struck in the first place. In 2014, many voters were forced to conclude that a personally honest and economically reform-minded leader was the best that India could hope for, even if his election came with the risks of political schism. This choice was made because the desired alternative—a leader who was popular, honest, economically imaginative, but also statesmanlike, untainted by violence, and willing to place issues of identity and faith outside the public square—was now in India almost impossible to imagine. The second: that Modi, a man of such great persuasive abilities, has consistently declined to speak up in defense of the kind of social tolerance that, in the long run at least, ought to have provided the surest footing for his own stated economic objectives. And then the third: that having struck this devil’s bargain, and chosen the hope of reform over the risk of polarization, those same voters have found their hopes of economic development at best half delivered—as Modi has proved to be a far less courageous and radical leader than they had hoped.