Without a doubt, every morning any head of state or government, whether in an advanced democracy or a consolidated dictatorship, gets up thinking how to make his people happy. All the orders he will give throughout the day will be in the name of the common good and he will go to bed thinking that he is a good shepherd because his flock is in a safe place.
There is no leader without a position of messianism and this faith in the manifest destiny of his homeland surfaces in speeches, inaugurations and mass baths. Most of the time, people, whether subjects or citizens, laugh at this significance, see it with cynicism and ignore it as much as they can. However, there are times and places where the national epic and religious sentiment love the social fabric, and that's when the polls are filled with radicals, and the trenches with soldiers. Racial, nationalist and religious supremacism has always been a good anti-depressant. It is administered in generous doses to the offended and the lunatics, to people who have lost faith in the future of man and the world.
These political therapies are common in depressed Western democracies, as well as in emerging countries with many inequalities.
India is a democracy, the fifth largest economy in the world and an unequal society. President Narendra Modi prescribes Hindutva to the 1.2 billion Indians who are Hindu. It is a nationalist doctrine with a strong religious content.
Religion in India is everywhere. It structures social life, imposes food and conditions personal relationships. The god Ganesh, a fat boy with an elephant's head, protects homes. Believers caress his belly and he helps them as much as he can, which is a lot.
Ganesh is the god of education, wisdom and intelligence. Avoid obstacles and help the one and a half million engineers who graduate from technology institutes every year, including stalwarts such as Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet-Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, or Arvind Krixna of IBM .
India is a young and technological country. The average age is 27.6 years, which represents a great demographic dividend because it boosts domestic consumption and investments, driving growth. Before the end of this decade, India will be ahead of Japan and Germany. It will be the third largest economy in the world, behind China and the USA.
The 4G network covers 98% of the country. Almost every Indian has a smartphone and almost everyone has opened a bank account. 40% of global mobile payments are made in India.
It sounds like a Chinese miracle: 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty since Modi came to power ten years ago. Getting out of poverty in India, however, is cheap. It is enough to earn about three euros a day.
Women find it very difficult to work. Only 24% work. 70% of the population is rural, but more than 50% of the economy is services. Wealth accumulates in very few hands. The twenty main business groups capture 80% of the profits.
The tycoons are happy and so are the poor. They all look happy. They laugh and cry with Bollywood, McDonald's serves spicy hamburgers and there is no extraneous luxury to tempt them. They prefer a silk kurta to a Gucci or Chanel suit.
86% are optimistic about the future, according to a poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations, and there is no other country in the world with more confidence in its leaders and faith in the future.
Modi is their shepherd and goes to bed more satisfied than any other world leader. He has more followers on Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) than any of them. It has sent a probe to the moon, hosted the G-20 and filled the shop windows of Chinese 80-euro smartphones. In the spring he is guaranteed re-election for a third term.
His references are Lee Kuan Yew, father of contemporary Singapore, and Vinayak Savarkar, Hindutva ideologue. Religion, nationalism and liberalism underpin their ideology.
Modi has a dark side. It encourages the cult of personality. He considers that Mahatma Gandhi was a traitor because he sought coexistence with the Muslim minority and despises Nehru because he was a social democrat. He doesn't hold press conferences. He has ordered the killing of Sikh dissidents in Canada and the United States, and in 2002, as chief minister of Gujarat, he condoned a massacre of Muslims. Last week he inaugurated a temple built on top of a razed mosque. States where their ultra-nationalist party does not govern receive hardly any public investment. Kashmir has lost its autonomy. He would like India to be called Bharat, an old Sanskrit appellation, and Bharat to crush China thanks to cheap Russian oil and economic and military aid from the United States.
Five more years in power will increase his mystical and messianic authoritarianism, but that's because he's a vegetarian, does yoga, trusts Ayurvedic medicine, prays to Hindu gods and worships Buddha. He is the quintessential new age politician, the sandals-wearing guru who shows the way to eternal happiness.
Wouldn't you trade your local politician for one like that? It is a guarantee of good karma on the way to perfection. Don't think twice. have faith
