Micromanager-in-Chief: Narendra Modi Upends How India Is Run
Prime minister is the most powerful Indian leader in a generation, working in secret and challenging bureaucrats; cabinet got 20-minute heads-up on cash crunch
It was a quintessential move by Mr. Modi, planned in secret with a handful of close advisers. He announced it to the country only hours before it went into effect. His own cabinet ministers knew just 20 minutes before the announcement.
.. A victory, particularly in India’s most-populous state of Uttar Pradesh, would give the BJP more strength in Parliament and momentum for a widely expected re-election bid by Mr. Modi in 2019. If his party loses, opponents will be emboldened to block more of his legislative agenda.
.. In 2014, Mr. Modi’s political party became the first in three decades to win a majority in Parliament, campaigning on a promise to restore the prime minister’s authority.
.. Critics ranging from human-rights groups to student unions have accused Mr. Modi’s party of propping up his popularity by stirring sectarian resentments and Hindu nationalism.
.. Even his staff is sometimes caught off-guard by his decisions. On Christmas Day in 2015, he called Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to wish him a happy birthday. Mr. Modi then decided on the spur of the moment to fly to the Pakistani city of Lahore to celebrate in person with Mr. Sharif.
.. “It’s command and control,” said Jairam Ramesh, a former minister in the opposition Congress party, of Mr. Modi’s relationship with his cabinet. “You don’t have alternative points of view. You don’t have discussion.”
.. According to an official who was there, the prime minister recalled a re-election campaign in Gujarat when he refused to match another party’s promise to make electricity free. Mr. Modi pledged only to make the power supply more reliable and was re-elected.
.. Late in the process, Mr. Modi asked that the new rupee notes be printed with the name of his “Clean India” public-sanitation drive. He also wanted the new money to show off the campaign’s logo: a drawing of Mohandas Gandhi’s round eyeglasses.
.. During the chaotic aftermath, Mr. Modi praised what he called the sacrifices of Indian citizens for the sake of the “historic rite of purification.”
.. One snag: The new rupee bills were designed to be smaller in size than the ones they replaced
.. But all 200,000 automated teller machines in India had to be manually configured so they could dispense the new money. The process ended up taking weeks, slowing the rollout of new cash.
Shekhar Gupta, a political analyst in New Delhi, said the cash exchange shows what can go wrong when “one man comes up with the ideas and everybody else just implements.”