Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaften und öffentliche Angelegenheiten
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First Indian Prime Minister without an Aristocratic Past

Nadia Margalit*

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is popular. There is not an iota of doubt about that. He won the General Election 2014 on the strength of a strong campaign coupled with an anti-INC sentiment that was rife — and, of course, Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar did have a nice ring to it. He is still as popular, if not more, as he completes the first year of his second term and global surveys are testament to this. But it's not like the Modi government has got everything right in the last six years. The blunders, however, fail to sully Modi's popularity — the economy has been in a tailspin for the past year much before COVID-19 hit us, unemployment rates have consistently increased over the last term, the abrogation of Article 370 and the subsequent lockdown of Jammu and Kashmir, the CAA and NRC issue and the protests that followed, the Delhi riots that showed the communal polarisation that still rears its ugly head from time to time, and then very recently, the migrant exodus and the deaths of those walking hundreds of kilometres back home — nothing has dented to a very large extent the larger-than-life figure that is Narendra Damodardas Modi. At least to India's socialmedia savvy, upwardly mobile youth. There will always be detractors and opposition, but the numbers often pale in comparison to the legions of fans.