Narendra Modi completes 10 years in office today

Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi completes 10 years in office on Thursday. Does his government’s focus on development explain a surge in his popularity?

As Modi begins his tenth year in office on Thursday the talk is only of the state’s growth and development. CNN-IBN explains the significance of some fundamental political changes that are now becoming increasingly visible in Narendra’s Modi’s Gujarat.

“The BJP is in Gujarat and everybody is benefiting. We thought why should we be left out,” said Ayub Chauhan, voter.
Words that are being interpreted as indicative of a fundamental change in Gujarat. Chauhan is among growing numbers of Muslim voters who appear to be voting for Narendra Modi. The BJP’s first ever victory in the Kathlal assembly seat in the recently concluded bypolls being the biggest indicator with a 65 per cent Muslim voter base – the BJP had never won the seat in over 50 years. Modi believes the credit for this tectonic shift should go to development.

“The past one decade has been a decade of growth. Gujarat has scaled new heights in the past decade,” said Narendra Modi.

Modi rode to power in the communally charged 2002 assembly elections, held in the backdrop of the 2002 riots. Despite widespread condemnation, Modi repeated the victory in the 2007 elections.

Barring the Junagadh Municipal Corporation that the BJP lost, Modi’s party has been able to hold all other civic bodies in the past decade.

In the past nine years, Modi has focused on an inclusive growth and development model. But many feel Modi’s dictatorial and confrontationist approach stands against democratic values.

The Kathlal victory has trickled down changes in ticket distribution too. Modi has given tickets to as many as 51 Muslim candidates for the forthcoming civic elections across the state – the highest ever in the state’s history. One of them – BJP candidate A I Saiyed says voters know what is best.

“My honourable chief minister has assured us that peace security and development will be the only issues that will be on our agenda in this area,” assured A.I. Saiyyed, retired Additional DGP and BJP Candidate.

But not everyone is convinced that the change is down to the core. Political scientist Hemantkumar Shah says political success is insignificant unless the core values of democracy are upheld. He even questions the growth rate saying it’s lower than what it was in the 80s.

.”Hitler was also successful and so were Stalin and Indira Gandhi. But democracy concerns values and these have not been protected in Gujarat,” opined Hemantkumar Shah, political analyst.

Modi’s detractors may never forgive him for the 2002 riots, but there is enough evidence that Modi’s popularity has increased over the past decade.