ISAS Insights

What does the rise and rise of Narendra Modi mean for India? The question consumes vast amounts of Indian newsprint and electricity as it rockets around the newspaper-reading, all-a-twittering public. There are at least three views of Modi, the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat. One is that he is India's best hope for substantial economic and political change. A second is that he is an ardent communalist and the tool of the worst sorts of global capitalism. A third view is agnostic about how good or bad he is, but holds that his reputation makes him too divisive to win a national election. On 9 June, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appointed Modi as chairman of its national election committee to prepare for next year's general elections. This move suggested that the BJP would later project Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.