Robert Kaplan on Modi, Gujarat and India

Robert Kaplan's profile of Narendra Modi in The Atlantic has all the usual lies and myths about the man, the 2002 Gujarat riots and Hindu nationalism. But it also has some interesting facts and insights.

On Modi:

His machine-like efficiency, financial probity, and dynamic leadership of the government bureaucracy have made Gujarat a mecca for development, garnering more internal investment than any other state in India. Migrants, both Hindu and Muslim, from throughout India have been streaming into Gujarat to find work at its expanding factories.

He is so honest that gifts for him are regularly deposited in the state treasury – a far cry from the corruption and nepotism that are so routine in Indian government.

By all accounts, after the riots, he manically dedicated himself to development, sleeping less than four hours every night, up at 5 am to check his e-mail and read the local papers, visiting about 3000 of the 7000 villages in the state, and empowering the lowest reaches of its bureaucracy through his slogan, "Less government, more governance."

On Gujarat:

Gujarat had experienced 10.2 percent annual GDP growth since 2002. It had eight new universities. In recent years, almost half the new jobs created in India were in Gujarat. The state ranked first in poverty alleviation, first in electricity generation.

He rolled off his accomplishments: "modern roads, private railroads with double-decker containers, 50,000 km of fiber-optic networks, 2200 km of gas pipelines, 1400 km of drinking-water pipelines to 7000 villages, 24-hour uninterrupted power in rural areas, the first Indian state with private ports, a totally integrated coastal-development plan, two LNG [liquefied natural gas] terminals and two new ones coming on line."

On India:

The British, by contrast, brought tangible development, ports and railways, that created the basis for a modern state. More important, they brought the framework for parliamentary democracy that Indians, who already possessed indigenous traditions of heterodoxy and pluralism, were able to fit to their own needs. Indeed, the very Hindu pantheon, with its many gods rather than one, works toward the realisation that competing truths are what enable freedom. Thus, the British, despite all their flaws, advanced an ideal of Indian greatness. And that greatness, as enlightened Indians will tell you, is impossible to achieve without a moral component.

(And that moral component is, of course, Dharma)