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Showing posts from August, 2014

Shah’s elevation: That’s Modi Model

BY R.K.MISRA In the womb of conflict lie seeds of change. You need conflict to grow but you must learn to harvest from it. Or so says Subroto Baghchi, the chairman of the hugely successful, global IT solutions company, Mindtree in one of his very popular books. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi seems to have picked a page out of it to parent a politics of confrontation and conflict that saw him chisel out an unprecedented national mandate for the BJP and the prime ministership of India for himself. If the 2002 ethnic conflict that  followed the Godhra train carnage brought  Modi to national focus, it was his aggressive ,confrontational politics that  paid him rich dividends. Dispensing with niceties of the previous generation, Modi lunged into his opponents, both within the party and without, to decimate as well as create-decimate his rivals and create a national constituency . Modi’s politics brooks no grey. There is only black and white. You are either for him or dee

Anandiben in the shadow of Modi

BY R.K.MISRA After the crest, a stoic calm. That is Gujarat  after Narendra Modi. Replacing a banyan tree of a chief minister-the longest serving  in the history of the state-is the most difficult of tasks. Though Anandiben Patel who moved in to fill the void  is a very predictable choice since  she and  party general secretary, Amit Shah enjoyed  Modi’s confidence, her rise to become the first woman chief minister of Gujarat provides a keen insight  into the present Indian prime minister’s political planning. A man known to leave little leadership space for either aide or opponent, Modi ensured  that both his  aides-Anandiben and Amit-ever at loggerheads ,and he made sure that they remained that way, operated in distinct spheres designed to fulfill his goals. If Shah was the head of his dirty tricks department as minister of state for home before the fake encounters felled him, Anandiben was a trusted sheet anchor shoring up ‘manna’ raining ministeries like Revenue and PWD

Modi’s stratagem: Abuse media to use it But image make-over is a hurdle race

 By R K Misra MEDIA is both the handmaiden and the guinea pig in the laboratory of the ambitious. Some use it to become rulers of the day. Others misuse it to lord over the times. Both nevertheless ride a tiger. Both live by the clock, ultimately devoured on their way down by the very genie that they harnessed to go up. Public adulation is a fickle phenomenon. It lasts for just that long and no more. Late Prime Minister VP Singh in Delhi and former Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel in Gujarat remain eloquent examples. Both came to power, carried aloft a popularity wave.  Both fell by the wayside in course of time. The media was badgered for crafting their rise and fall. Did it? The poor, inevitable fall guy! Agreed news is all about todays. In fact after the advent of television it is all about this minute, or at best this hour. For the yesterdays there are the archives. But then should it remain the favourite whipping boy perennially? Science can be harnessed to deliver b