This week is the first anniversary of Narendra Modi's premiership of India.
His election was a big, big deal, for a number of reasons. Modi had campaigned against the corrupt and dynastic culture of India's then-ruling National Congress party. The exhausted Prime Minister Manmoan Singh was being kept on only to make room for Rahul Gandhi, son of two prime ministers, and descendent of the Gandhi and Nehru families. Because Congress had to rely on a fractious coalition of smaller parties, its agenda was often stuck in neutral, and it often had to deal with corruption scandals that it could do little about.
Meanwhile, Modi, leader of the Hindu-nationalist BJP party, had the whiff of scandal about him. He was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat during anti-Muslim riots, often described as pogroms that left hundreds dead, with his government an alleged accomplice. Modi has always been unapologetic about his behavior in those days. But as Gujarat's chief, Modi had also been an ambitious and successful reformer, turning the state into a target for foreign investment — a big deal for India.
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After many years of lackluster Congress rule, Modi swept in in a landslide victory — the first time in modern history that a single party took a majority in the Indian Parliament's Lower House. That, plus Modi's big promises of reform, generated big expectations; some hailed him as an "Indian Reagan."
How has he fared?
The pluses, first.
The economy has done well under his tenure, although that is mostly due to factors beyond his control — mainly the lower price of oil, which weighs dearly on India's oil-poor economy, and the global recovery.
The second plus is that Modi thus far hasn't confirmed the worst fears of those who fret over his sectarian past. Although he and his party are officially wedded to the ideology of Hindutva, or "Hinduness," which connects Indian national pride with Hinduism, he hasn't made any moves to sideline religious minorities, although he hasn't by any means sought to strengthen pluralism and religious liberty in India.
On foreign policy, Modi has also had good moments. He has racked up many airplane miles, going on a goodwill tour around the world, which was mostly well-received. One year in, it's hard to say anything one way or another, except that Modi seems, again, to have reined in his nationalist instincts. There is even talk that he has a good relationship with his Chinese counterpart, and that he might have initiated a rapprochement with India's biggest regional rival, with whom the country still has border disputes.
The third, and biggest plus, is that Modi's image of "Mr. Clean" is still intact. Although he hasn't engaged in a big corruption crackdown, his administration also hasn't been beset by the kind of corruption scandals that bedeviled the previous administration.
The real problem with Modi's administration so far is that so few of the promised reforms have materialized. Some think that Modi is trying to turn his popularity into a majority in Parliament's Upper House before he starts reforming, but in any democracy the most productive time in office is always the first years, so he may have wasted his big opportunity.
Nobody doubts that India needs a number of reforms to tackle its major, and interlinked, problems with corruption, infrastructure, and the red tape that is the legacy of the License Raj, the period when India practiced actual state socialism.
The biggest reform currently underway is to replace India's patchwork system of in-kind hand-outs for the poor — which encourages corruption and graft, as supplies get shipped to some corner of India but never materialize — with cash subsidies. These subsidies, in turn, are to be linked with biometric ID cards: One reason why subsidies never get to their intended recipients is because hundreds of millions of Indians are essentially off the grid. This is a major, ambitious reform, one that plays off India's strengths in IT, and Modi should be commended for continuing to see it through, but it was initiated in the previous administration.
Even as Modi has concentrated power into the prime minister's office at the federal level — one complaint is that most ministerial appointees are there for political reasons, and the BJP has a thin bench when it comes to administrative skills — he is also planning to devolve many powers to the states. In theory, this is a good idea, since it would allow states to compete for the best public policies that would attract the most investment. In practice, it might just entrench local corruption.
The bottomline about Modi speaks to a truth that crosses national borders. Leaders who get elected with landslides usually do so by finding a way to be all things to all people, without committing too much to anyone, becoming a kind of Rorschach Test (see: Obama, Barack H.). Modi was Mr. Hindutva, Mr. Reform, Mr. Anti-Corruption, Mr. Change. These kinds of leaders inevitably raise impossible expectations, only to inevitably let them down once they get into office.
Meanwhile, India is a democracy. What that means is that change is atrociously hard. There are just too many constituencies to quickly ram major reforms through government. But the lesson of history is that while change in democracies is atrociously slow and frustrating over the short run, democracies actually prove better at reform and improvement over the long run.
Modi will almost certainly disappoint. But given its fundamentals, India will still almost certainly overperform over the long run.
