Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The world is noticing. Good. Under Modi, India has grown a spine but at the cost of an illiberalism that’s ~ 70% of the country unlike about 35% for Trumpism. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/18/narendra-modis-illiberalism-may-imperil-indias-economic-progress
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The modern history of the Ayodhya temple has been laundered and the <35 set is too young to remember. 1990 Advani rath yatra was 34 years ago. I was 16. <35 set has no memory of just how ugly things got then, or what the current theater of creating a new nationalist identity is built on.
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Sachin
@sach
there was the Gujarat riot in the 2000s that I clearly remember but feels like people rarely bring that up now. It was a big talking point the first time he got elected
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Yep, the Godhra incident and response. His reputation is completely laundered now. He was also smart enough at the time to indulge only in sins of omission rather than commission. Slow/non-response etc.
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Sachin
@sach
It also seems hard to say how much of the economic improvement was because of his policies vs continuing the same trend of the last 30 years. Makes me think if most populist leaders just ride off of the momentum of previous regimes and the association with progress is just coincidence
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
He takes way more of the credit than he deserves. The hapless V. P. Singh was forced to make the hardest moves, and Manmohan Singh as finance minister in the 90s laid most of the foundations. Congress in the aughts basically screwed it up with a series of scams, so main contribution of BJP was not screwing it up more
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Patrick Atwater
@patwater
I remember having dinner in Argentina a few years back with some die hard Peronist s and yeah it’s hard to shake the faith
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