Not just in India but the world over, the view outside the Overton Window, has completely changed.
The Left-Liberal ideology, the political mainstay of national leaders, is giving way to the Right-Conservative thinking. Whoever gets it, rules by it, and whoever doesn't, pays by it.
Those who still prioritize loose globalization over civilizational ethos, democracy over development, secularism over security, freedoms over duties, and human rights over human dignity, are asking for a template that has in recent times been tried, tested, and failed.
It is being discarded by nations across continents.
That model worked brilliantly after the 2nd world war, when the global economies were wrecked and America, a nation with no ancient cultural moorings nor kings, and no bombs that fell on it despite participating in that global war, demonstrated an unprecedented growth, beginning the 1950s.
From governments to teenagers, everyone wanted to emulate the American way of life.
Today, America is leading the dismantling of a system that it invented as that engine is now sputtering.
Presently, every nation is averse to imitation of the other, and instead wants to accept only suitable elements of the other, so long as they can be contextualized civilizationally.
Coming to India, a bit of background: Unlike much of Western history, shaped mostly by crusades, conquests, slavery, and colonization, India’s civilizational arc is ancient and distinctive.
Even when the Western constitutional psyche often springs from a different set of historical experiences, including guilt, unfortunately India’s founding fathers borrowed heavily from Western models when drafting our Constitution.
That injustice was further degraded by the surreptitious insertion of the out of context words "Secular" and "Socialist" in the midst of a national emergency.
The result: governing India requires choosing the path of least resistance among many competing demands.
Laws and policies must be constitutionally sound, socially acceptable, culturally appropriate, economically feasible, technologically viable, parliamentarily passable, legally defensible, and geopolitically prudent - all at once!
It is akin to solving an endless Rubik's cube where even if one face is aligned, it is at the cost of messing up the other.
So to get anything done, strong and popular leadership matters more in India than in any other country, because ruling here is exceptionally difficult.
Unrest can smolder in multiple regions at the same time, and yet a leader must still win a national majority from people who, less than a century ago, lived under more than 560 separate princely states.
To succeed, a leader must be ambidextrous: able to connect with diverse, often disconnected groups across the subcontinent.
In the end, only a government that is philosophically plural, ideologically patriotic, socially engaged, culturally conservative, fiscally liberal, technologically experimental, and disciplinarily tough can somewhat keep the society cohesive and hope to deliver steady reforms that bring long-term transformation.
The current Modi Sarkar has a sound understanding of just that.
The government therefore is run by a party that is cadre-driven, as opposed to being family led, and so comes closest to that ideal. The ideal being delivering maximum good for maximum people, but pragmatically never attempting the impossible task of pleasing all the people all the time.
The results are visible: India is rising in wealth and respect. It is delivering social aims through market-led dynamics.
Bolo Bharat Mata Ki .... Jai Okay Please! 🇮🇳
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