Sixty-five years ago, on January 27, 1947, the venerable American magazine Time had featured Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on its cover. It was captioned: ‘India’s Vallabhbhai Patel’. But he wasn’t the first Indian leader to make it to the cover of the world’s largest circulated news weekly. That honour went to ohandas Karamchand Gandhi who appeared on the cover of the March 31, 1930 issue of Time. The caption read: ‘Saint Gandhi’. With the March 26 issue of Time hitting the stands, Chief Minister Narendra Modi becomes the third Indian leader from Gujarat to feature on its cover. The caption reads: Modi means business — But can he lead India?’ Inside the magazine, the story is headlined: ‘Boy from the Backyard’. A blurb follows: “Narendra Modi has defied humble origins to become the powerful leader of booming Gujarat. Here’s why Indians both love and loathe him.”
The reasons why some ‘loathe’ Modi, as listed in the story, are predictable — the 2002 post-Godhra violence; the allegations of state complicity (till now unproved); the charges levelled by his detractors; and the hostile campaign against him by activists. Jyoti Thottam, the author of the story, mentions them all. So, it’s not what’s called a puff job. Not that Time would do one. But the reasons why some “loathe” Modi stand diminished when compared to the details of how, over the past 10 years, he has transformed Gujarat into a development success story that evokes both admiration and envy. As Time puts it, Gujarat is today “India’s most industrialised and business-friendly territory”, a State that can boast of “good planning - exactly what so much of India lacks”. The credit for that goes to a leader with the “ability to get things done”. Under Modi’s leadership, Time says, Gujarat has “largely escaped the land conflicts and petty corruption that often paralyse growth elsewhere in the nation”. Listing the many achievements of the Government led by Modi, the magazine points out that Gujarat is the only State in India where both big businesses and small farmers can expect uninterrupted power supply. If elsewhere in India babudom can prove to be an insurmountable hurdle, in Gujarat a “streamlined bureaucracy” serves as a facilitator.
“Unlike many Indian politicians, Modi doesn’t put his faith on display. There are no religious icons in his office; the only adornments are two statues of his hero, the philosopher Swami Vivekananda,” Time says, adding, “In a country where nepotism and dynastic politics are the norm, Modi’s family is invisible.” His brother, who works in the State Government, hasn’t visited him even once at his office. “To his loyalists,” Time points out, “Modi is a decisive leader deserving a bigger platform than Gujarat, deserving, indeed, of all India, and of the prime — rather than just a chief — ministership.” Modi is “perhaps the only contender with the track record and name recognition to challenge Rahul Gandhi”, the magazine says, adding, when people “think of someone who can bring India out of the mire of chronic corruption and inefficiency — of a firm, no-nonsense leader who will set the nation on a course of development that might finally put it on par with China — they think of Modi”. Gujarat’s “$85 billion economy may not be the largest in India, but it has prospered without the benefit of natural resources, fertile farmland, a big population center like Mumbai or a l u c r a t i v e h i g h - t e c h hu b l i ke Bangalore”. Gujarat’s success, “even Modi’s detractors acknowledge”, is a “result of good planning”— something which, as Time highlights, “exactly what so much of India lacks”. Other Indian leaders and politicians have featured on Time’s cover,most notably Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. The leader who has been featured on the magazine’s cover the most is Nehru.
But it was a leader from Gujarat whom the magazine named as the ‘Man of the Year’ while featuring him on the cover of its January 5, 1931, issue. That was Gandhi, a year after he first appeared on the cover of Time.
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