Prime Minister Modi’s work starts now

Modi will have to juggle strong personalities and show the public at large that he is up to “cleaning up politics”.

Monday May 26, 2014 will mark the day the son of a tea vendor became the most powerful man in India.

In the grounds of the Presidential Office in front of an assembled audience of global presidents, prime ministers and ambassdors, Pranab Mukerjee, the president of the Indian Republic, accepted the oath taken by Narendra Modi.

The former chief minister of western Gujarat state is now Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

So with the officialdom put to one side, the task of work begins.

Prime Minister Modi has constantly suggested that the previous government squandered many opportunities to kick-start the economy. On-going corruption allegations mired the former administration and their allies, leading to their rout in the recent election. It is one of the many reasons they lost.

Modi is aware that clear clean politics is a must for his administration, so is the right attitude by those in charge. They are still euphoric at their huge election victory and it’s easy for any one in control to be arrogant enough to think they can do what they want.

Modi will have to juggle strong personalities and to show the public at large that he’s up to the task of “cleaning up politics”.

To do this, he needs to make sure he has the men and women he trusts in key positions to implement and execute the policies he sees as imperative.

Many of them are names you, the international audience will come to recognise as household names during the next five years. Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Lal Krishna Advani, are just a few of the senior leaders I expect, who will hold lead cabinet roles or high profile parliamentary positions.

The test, I think, is the junior positions that may well be handed out to allies or inexperienced party members.

Power, no matter how large or small, corrupts and for some goes to people’s heads. I have already experienced this on the election campaign and it’s interesting to see how humble the mighty are once they fall from their office.

Modi said on May 20, when he was formally nominated as the party prime ministerial candidate in the Central Hall of the lower House of parliament.

“The elected representatives would collectively and piously work not for position or power but for the good of the people”

If Prime Minister Modi is going to make this a government of clean transparent politics and policy, then he needs to make sure the message gets down to the grassroots BJP workers and allies.

The humble Indian will come knocking on an official door. He may not have money, power or position but his grievance, is to him and to all in tense and purposes more important to him than anything else in the world.

Keep him waiting outside your office too long, ignore, dismiss his concerns or abuse him through a bureaucrats arrogance to think he is insignificant…then come the next election…people like this will never forget!

Word soon gets around and with the media ever watchful of the new Modi government one unfortunate wrong step by any junior administrator will be pounced on.

It’s a distraction Prime Minister Modi should not want to see.

“Government is that which thinks of the poor and exists for poor” – Narendra Modi

Keeping your word and treating everyone in this country as an equal human being is something easy for politicians to say yet difficult to see implemented.

When you see millions sleeping rough on the streets, or dispossessed from their lands due to big business, then it’s hard for the outsider to see the very wealthy getting richer, avoiding tax and getting away with it…because they know how to play the system. 

It’s this system Mr Modi that people want to see you change, if you really do mean what you say.