Transcript: How Did BJP Become A Political Superpower? – ft. Shantanu Gupta on IBP Podcast

Be it a Dream 11 or a Zomato. Zomato has to deal with the FSSAI license, the food licenses, right? And Dream 11 will deal with is this a game of chance or a game of skill? And there’ll be a lot of court cases. And what is the position of the government in there?

Ola, Uber have to decide: is it an aggregator app or what is a taxi? Can an app be a taxi or is a physical entity a taxi, right? So Google and Facebook and Instagram have to say who will decide which content can go and who is the holder of the content. You as a content creator have a responsibility for the content, or the platform has a responsibility for the content. If something goes bad, if your content gets criticized in the public, right, are you responsible or is Facebook responsible, or is it a shared responsibility, right? So invariably, government is involved.

How Budget Announcements Impact Business

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: You know, I often tell people that whenever the budget announcement happens, you should have a look at the biggest business leaders in the country. A lot of people might not have met such business leaders, but I have. And during the budget, if you call them, they’ll say “I’ll call you in the evening, I’m watching the budget.”

And there’s an entire team of analysts who constantly try and map as to how the announcement of the budget is going to affect them. And this is very easily reflected in the stock market. Also, the moment Gadkari Ji went bullish on ethanol, sugar stocks went up. Now Modi Ji announced rooftop solar, and there is a large segment of 1 crore rooftop solar houses.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Government buying, right?

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So 1 crore rooftop solar, which means a large segment of companies will benefit, because of which their stocks will eventually go up. So when you give them this association of politics and stocks, then they’re very deeply interested because now they know that my money is going to double if I invest the right way.

SHANTANU GUPTA: I’ll give you a very interesting simple example because we’re shooting this in Mumbai, right? We used to hear about movies. Remember that old saying “kala paisa lagta hai,” that black money is heavily invested. This is a 20-year thing, you know. And that has a structural problem with the government policy. Because film was not an industry. And if film is not an industry, you can’t write contracts.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Film was not an industry?

SHANTANU GUPTA: Film was not an industry 20 years back. Credit goes to Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Film was not formally an industry. What are you saying? Yeah, film was not an industry, right. So if film is not an industry, you can’t write a contract which is honored in the court of law. Because you are not an industry, I can’t invest in you. I can’t take an insurance instrument. Because insurance instruments are only applicable on a certain number of industries, right? Because film is not an industry.

As soon as film became an industry, formally Reliance could become a big banner, right? And formal money started coming. And as formal money started coming, this black money started… I’m sure still the black money might be coming, but that became a fraction of the whole Bollywood, right? Versus just a major portion of the Bollywood.

So a policy like putting film into the status of giving films or the entertainment industry the status of an industry makes it very formal and very regularized. And a lot of new money can come in.

The Journey of Yogi Adityanath

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Shantanu Ji, tell me something. You wrote this book, “How a Monk Became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.” How did a monk become the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh? Because it is a story that is quite fascinating. And when I started to study Yogi Ji’s life, if you go by his background… And in fact, by the way, I also read in your book that even he was surprised that he became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. So tell me, how did a monk go on to become such a revolutionary leader?

SHANTANU GUPTA: See, before this monk became the Chief Minister in 2017, he was already a politician. A member of parliament. Nothing less than a member of parliament for the previous 19 years, right? He becoming the chief minister… Why he was chosen as chief minister? You have to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. What went in their mind, right? But being an analyst, I can read their mind. I can say what might be the conjecture. What might have happened in their mind, right?

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay.

SHANTANU GUPTA: But again, he was not a new politician, right? Maybe he was away from the camera lens or he was in some camera lenses, right, as a Mahant politician. A member of parliament for five times from Gorakhpur constituency. So he became a politician in 1998.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: 1998, which is 26 years back.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Yeah. So he became… And he was only 26, right. In fact, there is a very famous video when he’s 26 and he’s taking an oath in Sanskrit. He’s lean and wearing a bhagwa pagdi and he’s taking an oath in the parliament in Sanskrit. That video is getting viral these days, right.

In 1994 he became the Mahant. So from a pant-shirt wearing, from a goggle wearing, from a bandana wearing school-going boy of the 90s, right, he became a sanyasi in 1994 all of a sudden. So first is that transition. So his guru, Mahant Avaidyanath, passed on his spiritual baton to him in 1994. And in 1998 when Advani Ji came to Mahant Avaidyanath saying, “Okay, the elections are coming and you have to get this Gorakhpur seat for us,” he said Mahant Avaidyanath said, “We will get Gorakhpur seat for you for sure. But this time I will not contest. Yogi will contest.”

So he passed on his political baton to him and then he became a member of Parliament in 1998. And that time Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister. So who are the coaches of Yogi Adityanath? The likes of Atal Bihari Vajpayees and the Advanis and the Sushma Swarajs and Pramod Mahajan and Venkaiah Naidu. He was getting tutored and mentored through them. And he has a guru who is a politician himself. So Mahant was a member of parliament for multiple times.

So this was tutoring that was happening constantly for Yogi. And then he wins another election, 1999, another election in 2004, another election in 2009, another election in 2014. And two elections are very important: 2004 and 2009. Why? Because BJP is doing miserably bad.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering.

SHANTANU GUPTA: But he’s winning his… He’s becoming so popular in his own area. When my party is not winning. See, winning the 2014 or 2019 election is no big deal. And Modi says also, “If you want to make me a prime minister, then elect this person, whoever this person is.” So winning a 2014 and 2019 election is not a brilliant thing. But winning a 2004 and 2009 election is a brilliant thing.

Building Popularity Through Social Reform

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So how did he win it? What was so special about Yogi Ji?

SHANTANU GUPTA: So there are multiple things. One is the lineage of the Mutt, right. But his margins were shrinking in the starting. Then he understood the area and he started increasing the influence of the Mutt from the spiritual end to the social realm.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Can you throw some light on that?

SHANTANU GUPTA: Yeah. So Mutt is a spiritual thing. You come there to pray. So there is a lot of influence.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: For the international audience, let’s first help them understand what is a Mutt.

SHANTANU GUPTA: So Mutt is, what do you say, a physical structure of a religious sect, right. You can make a parallel to it of the church, right? But a Mutt is also a concept, right. So let’s say a Protestant church or a Catholic church or Orthodox church, right? So Hinduism has multiple sects. So this sect is called Gorakhnath Parampara or a Nath Parampara, okay. And they have their own meditation technique, their own prayer techniques, how they deal with their disciples.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Almost like a school.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Like a school from that spiritual realm. Yogi Adityanath, the Mutt was already doing. He said, “I will also transgress that into a social realm. So I will start…” Maybe Hindus had a problem with caste, that differentiation between castes. So he started something called a Khichdi Bhoj.

So every Basant Panchami, lakhs and lakhs of people will come and do a Khichdi Bhoj. Who is cooking it? No one knows. Who is serving it? No one knows. And who is eating? No one knows. Meaning the people of every caste and even religion came and lakhs of people had khichdi together.

Because I’m sure you understand in the caste differentiation, the two differentiations are: I will not eat food with you, I will not give my girl, I will not marry in your house, right? So these are two fundamental differences when it’s the caste differentiation. These are two fundamental differentiations: that I will not eat food with you or the food cooked by you, the food served by you. If you are a lower caste, I’m upper caste, whatever the combination. And I will not marry my daughter in your family, the marriage relationship will not happen.

So he broke the first boundary that “I am ready to eat food with anyone. I am agnostic of who is sitting next to me, who is cooking the food, who is serving the food,” right? Which is a fundamental change in that part of the…

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Was that also something that the Mutt also stood by?

SHANTANU GUPTA: The Mutt stood by and he made sure the Mutt stood by. Earlier the Mutt did not. The Mutt was doing flirting with the idea. But he institutionalized that idea, right? And then he made it a… Then his people told him that everybody cannot come to the Mutt though lakhs and lakhs of people are coming. But not everyone, right?

Then he started doing these Khichdi Bhoj… Khichdi Bhoj only used to happen on some festival days, right? He said, “I will do it in villages.” So declare tomorrow in, let’s say, X village that Yogi Adityanath will come, the Khichdi Bhoj will happen, and you will prepare the khichdi because you have to crowdsource the money also, right? Preparing so much khichdi also needs money.

So that village is super excited that Yogi Adityanath is a brand by now. He was called “Naika Baba.” Naika Baba is a new Baba. Naika is “new” in Purvanchal, or “Chhutka Baba” or the “Chhote Mahant,” right? Because Bada Mahant is still surviving. He only died in 2014, right?

So the Chhota Baba is coming. He had a charm around it, right? He used to still in that bhagwa sport a goggle. So he had mannerisms. He used to travel in a red Sumo. If you remember, Tata Sumo was quite a fancy car in those days, right? In a Tata Sumo, red color Tata Sumo, a Chhutka Baba is coming with a goggle and he’s modern education trained. He did his BSc, MSc. He did not get the MSc degree because he dropped out and went to become a sanyasi. And he is trained in the Vedic Parampara also.

So and he’s only 25, 26, right? So he’s quite an intriguing personality with everyone who has a sight of him.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So this is almost like a campaign to break the stereotype?

SHANTANU GUPTA: Kind of.

The Rise of a Political Phenomenon

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: And that is something that resonated with the people a lot.

SHANTANU GUPTA: He’s becoming cult. He was becoming a cult and now he’s so available that he’s going village after village and he’s sitting with everyone, the people who nobody was talking to, who nobody was giving heed to. He was from a lower caste. This caste, this card, a cult, a hero kind of brand is coming to their, traveling to their village and eating and they are eating the food prepared by them, eating the food sitting next by them.

And he’s not doing this one village or two village. He’s going with multiple villages every day. So in a span of 20 years he, he in fact saturated Gorakhpur and he started going to other districts. That’s why people say he has influence on whole of eastern UP and also parts of Bihar and also parts of Nepal.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: All this while the BJP was not doing well all across India.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Doing patchy sometime good, sometime and not very good. Exactly in that part of the, that part of the country, that part of Uttar Pradesh. The building years of Yogi Adityanath, right? And because of all of this, right? When 2017 comes and he was a star pracharak of BJP more or less every time, right? He was traveling for any elections that happening, right?

And when 2017 comes, right? And this was the first election after notebandi. Notebandi happened in the December of 2016. This was the first major election. A lot of people say no, no, no, BJP will do very poor. And BJP won the thumping majority with 300 plus seats in a 404 assembly.

And the biggest question, I was in the TV studio then, the biggest question was after this thumping victory who will be the chief minister? Because BJP has a lot of leaders and a typical, typical political commentary will tell that the politics of UP is a OBC Dalit politics, right? OBC politics by the Mulayam Singh Yadav party and Dalit politics by Mayawati’s party.

Understanding Vote Bank Politics

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Can you explain this a little bit? Because this is something that I’ve read about very deeply. So let’s throw some light on that.

SHANTANU GUPTA: See Ganesh, Congress invented a very lazy politics in this country. While I call this lazy politics, don’t work too much, right? Because working, working very efficiently and effectively is a very hard work, right? It’s not an easy work. So play on identities. What entities tell Muslims that Hindus are against you, scare them, right? And I’m your Masiha so vote for me, right?

So try to take their vote en bloc and keep doing some appeasement for them. Send them to Haj Yatra, put some Sachar committee report. So put some places of worship act which can help them culturally, right? If court rules against the mullahs in Shah Bano case, you bring a law, Rajiv Gandhi brings a law in favor of mullahs against the court just so that Shah Bano should not get 300 rupees in alimony after divorce, after Talaq, Talaq, Talaq, right.

So appease the mullahs, get their votes and block this is one part. And don’t allow Hindus to feel like Hindus. Make them feel like a Brahman or Kshatriyas or Dalit or OBC and just catch one category combined with Muslims and just create a block of 29, 30% vote share. Which is a very formidable vote share in a first past the post system. In the first past the post system you need 50% vote that you need in a presidential system like US, right. You just need 29, 30% vote and you form a government.

And this technique they taught to every regional party. Also to a Samajwadi party or a BSP or a Mamata Banerjee or any fallout of Congress, right. Or a RLD, Lalu Prasad party. So let’s say how it translated for Mulayam Singh Yadav. That I’ll get a Muslim vote by maybe shooting at Ram Sevaks in Ayodhya. I’ll get this Muslim vote and I’ll take one or two communities. In his case Yadavs.

So I’ll give all, whenever I’ll become a chief minister I’ll give all the jobs to Yadavs and police Bhartis to Yadavs. I’ll give the patrol pumps to Yadav. I’ll give them incentives to create Dhabas on the roads, right? I’ll give them all the contracts. So my is a formidable combination for me, Muslim and Yadav. For Mayawati, it’s translated as Meem Bhim. So I come from a Dalit community Mayawati. So I will cater to Jatavs.

And that too not the whole Dalit community. One sect of Dalit community from which I come from, Jatavs, right. I’ll cater to Jatavs. I’ll try to give all my schemes to Jatavs. And I’ll try to pander to Muslim the same way Mulayam did. So with Meem Bhim combination, I’ll form the government.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: What you’re basically describing is social engineering.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Social engineering which is look for a…

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Particular segment of the audience which will give you maximum vote share. Identify a common pain point, cater to that particular pain point. Keep them extremely happy and then they’ll vote for you. So this is the vote bank politics.

SHANTANU GUPTA: That we often talk about which we normally call the vote bank policy. Create a combination and first past the post system. It works easily because you hardly need 25, 29. So whenever a Mayawati formed a government she must have got 29% vote bank or vote share or Akhilesh 30, 31% vote share. So this was the typical politics.

Breaking Through the Vote Bank Wall

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay, so how did Yogi change this? Because now this is like playing by the numbers, right? 29, 30%. If you’re getting, you are winning. Now Yogiji went against these fundamental concepts of social engineering and vote bank politics which had been established for 20, 30 years and still he won. How did he manage to achieve that?

One thing that I see is that even Yogi Ji deployed a very strategic social engineering strategy, which is the breaking the caste system move with the campaign that you just stated. But in the context of modern day, how did Yogi Ji break through that wall also to go on to become the chief minister? Because like you said, BJP was not doing so well during this time. How did he break through this 30% slam?

SHANTANU GUPTA: So I think the multiple things. And again let me put a caveat. He became a chief minister. It is not his merit. Okay. Someone selected him, right? In 2022 the election was fought on his face. But 2017 was not fought on his face. It was in fact fought after notebandi and Narendra Modi’s face. So the credit of 2017, he became the chief minister goes to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.

That they selected a, see, you selected a good team. You selected a good camera team. Is not only the merit of the camera team. You selecting a good camera team, right? So Narendra Modi selected a good chief minister. The credit should go to Narendra Modi, right? That’s being one, right? But what he might have seen in Yogi Adityanath, that’s very interesting, right?

So while making Yogi Adityanath a chief minister or anybody a chief minister, when BJP won 303 seats, what must have went in Narendra Modi’s mind or Amit Shah’s mind is that it’s a typical OBC state or a Dalit state. So what will be my obvious answer to it? Let me make an OBC chief minister, correct. Or let me make a Dalit chief minister. Whoever is available among my 10 popular leaders I’ll pick. Or even a member of parliament. I can make them go to the assembly.

And there are a couple of names also. From Manoj Sinha to Keshav Prasad Maurya to Suheldev Singh to Dinesh Sharma. So take some caste combination. But then he realizes there’s so many caste combination that, can I find someone who is caste agnostic? This is very tricky. How can someone be caste agnostic? There will be some caste.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Quite counterintuitive, right? Why would you make a chief minister who’s caste agnostic?

The Caste-Agnostic Strategy

SHANTANU GUPTA: I’m saying because, because there’s so many castes. If I cater to this caste then someone else may feel a little, because OBC is also big. OBC is also a Kurmi and a Yadav and a Shakya and a Rajbhar and a Nishad. There’s multiple OBC castes in UP, right? So if I give, so what I can do, I can give chiefness of a caste which has a maximum number. Even then the second maximum may not like, the third maximum may not like.

I want everybody’s voter, right? So, and I’m not in the government, so I can also win their vote with the good work that can only do once I start working, right? So I have to give a person who is, whose identity is caste agnostic. How can I come? In Hindu fold you have some caste. But interestingly, technically a Sadhu in Hindu ethos is not from any caste.

And there is a very interesting saying “Jaat paat puche nahi koi, Hari ko bhaje so Hari ka hoi.” So he is known for what he’s for his conduct, right? Not for his caste though from his pre-Sanyasi life. Yogi Adityanath comes from a Thakur family. So he’s a Thakur. And once he’s a Sannyasi, technically he’s a Brahmin, right? So he’s a Thakur Brahmin combined, right?

And because he’s running movements of Khichri Bhoj of dissolving the caste identity so people can attach him to that also he can represent any community. So that way Yogi Adityanath is someone who is like a, who is like a Krishna. You know why Krishna? I’m not saying, I’m not telling him Avatar Krishna. Why? Because when Krishna took the Chakra, right to kill someone, he became a Kshatriya. When Krishna gave the sermons of Bhagavad Gita, he became a Brahmin. When Krishna became a Sarathi, he became OBC, right? Because that’s like a kind of a lower job, right?

So he played all the roles whenever the need arose, right? So similarly Yogi Adityanath, he catered to multiple roles. So that fitted in the UP definition. Second thing, UP was a politics of nepotism, right? Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then his family has almost 40 politicians at one point. 40 politicians one time. Like some Rajya Sabha members, some Vidhan Sabha members, some MLCs, some Zila Panchayat chairman, some block pramukh, some Zilla Pramukh.

In fact I did a video and that got viral. When I’m reading everybody’s name, his family, that wife, his kid. And I’m like I’m losing track at some point, right? Even after reading from my book, right? So, so that was that. That was one politics they wanted to go against nepotism. I lost the track. Yeah, I want to so, so it was not only OBC politics, it was like a family politics, right?

And who can, who can be, who can crash the family politics? Who doesn’t have a family, right? So Yogi Adityanath defies caste. Yogi Adityanath defies the nepotist culture of UP. So I think that brilliantly must have went, this is, I’m trying to read Amit Shah’s mind, I’m trying to read Narendra Modi’s mind. That must have went against very other popular names of BJP in UP. That, oh my God, he’s amazing.

And also the third feature, the third negative feature of UP was corruption. So someone, there might be elements of corruption and even, even BJP or BJP is considered a far more non-corrupt party, but there might be the elements of corruption. Who can be non-corrupt? Right. Someone like a sadhu who doesn’t have a worldly desires anyways and who he will be corrupt for. He doesn’t have a son to give his money to, who doesn’t have a wife to give money to. He doesn’t have father to give his money to, right.

So these three elements that he’s caste agnostic, he’s family agnostic, and he is agnostic of the lurement of corruption, right. I think these three elements went in his favor in Narendra Modi’s mind and Amit Shah’s mind to make as a chief minister. And fortunately he became such a popular chief minister in those five years, right. Then he’s proven the choice of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, right. And in fact, that was my second book, “The Monk who Transformed Uttar Pradesh.” That came after five years of his work. Yeah. So that’s that.

Lessons in Social Engineering and Brand Building

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: What he just described is social engineering and brand persona building at its level best.

SHANTANU GUPTA: I guess.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: I guess to the people who are watching this Indian Business Podcast, this is the most important aspect of business that I just, I’m just taking away from this episode. This segment, which is breaking through the stereotype of nepotism requires a person who does not have a family. Breaking through the stereotype of caste requires a person who’s caste agnostic.

SHANTANU GUPTA: And identity is caste agnostic. Yeah.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: And breaking through corruption requires you to have a person who has a brand persona for whom there is no story…

SHANTANU GUPTA: Exactly.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Of passing on.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Well, and Ganesh finding all these three very tough elements in one person is quite tough, right. And that can occur only in a saint, right. In fact, I’ll just tell you a very interesting phenomena. And I’m already answering question which you may ask or not ask. I was in Harvard with my book, right? And someone asked is being a saint should be in the Himalayas, right? Why he’s enjoying the fruits of politics, right? And is he a liability to the system or is he asset to the system?

This was like a very wordy question of a very left leaning Indian boy studying there in Harvard, I think Harvard Kennedy School. And the answer came out, was not a very prepared answer. And that answer became very profound answer.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay.

The RSS System of Character Building

SHANTANU GUPTA: I asked them in Kennedy School, you study about campaigns, you study about policy making, you study about monitoring and evaluation. You study about justice. But do you study about how to make a good leader? He said no. There are elements of a leader. They are oratory, they should be studied. Do you have a factory of good leader, a non-corrupt leader, a selfless leader? Can someone enter into a Harvard machinery and after come out as very selfless, non-corrupt?

You have major corruption cases in United States. You have major moral corruption, money corruption, political corruption, every kind of corruption even in United States, right? But how a politician who passed through a Harvard machinery can be certified as a non-corrupt, that he’ll be non-corrupt for life, right? He said no. That’s a very weird ask, right? That cannot happen. Once he’s corrupt, judiciary can take care of it, right?

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: No, but judiciary will come only post facto after the damage is done.

SHANTANU GUPTA: After the damage is done, I’m saying. But in India we have a system and that’s called Sanyas Parampara or an RSS kind of system. For see, I cannot teach you non-corruptibility in a two hour workshop or even in one year course. You have to live that life for long to behave like that.

So let’s say in a Sanyas Parampara, and there’s a very interesting thing. In Sanyas Parampara you do your own Pindadhan when you’re alive. Pindadhan is for your international audience, it’s kind of a ritual which you do for someone who’s dead. So basically you kill your identity. And in your documents your father’s name become your guru’s name, not your biological father name.

So if you see the passport or Aadhaar card or voter ID card of Yogi Adityanath, in the father’s name column is Mahant Avaidyanath, not Anand Singh Bisht, his biological father, right? Because he has killed that identity. Anyways, and this is for any sadhu. You take the identity documents of any sadhu who was formerly taken sannyas.

So someone who has already killed his identity, there’s high possibility for him to not be corrupt. Right. His all are dead for him. His mother, father, siblings, anyone is just like any normal human being. That’s one. Right. And he’s taught this non-corruptibility day in and day out for a long time. Right. And that makes him behave. There’s a high possibility, there can be an exception. But there’s a high possibility this person will behave very non-corrupt when he or she is in government. And that was my answer that why he behaved in these five years the way he behaved.

BJP’s Talent Scouting System

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: You know what fascinates me the most about BJP? And I know that I’m going to get a lot of criticism for this. They somehow scout and pick the best leaders very, very consistently. Whether that’s Vajpayee, Modi Ji, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Manohar Parrikar, Nitin Gadkari, Yogi Ji.

And one example that I can think of in the context of sports is Alex Ferguson. Bartch is a big fan of Man U and he often says that Alex Ferguson had an eye for great talent. Now when it comes to sports also you can see a kid playing in an extraordinary way and you can choose that kid and say that maybe this kid will go on to become a great player.

But when it comes to politicians and choosing a national leader, most of these people have spent two decades as a nobody only to then become a somebody.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Who knew Narendra Modi before 2002?

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Exactly.

SHANTANU GUPTA: And I still…

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: And I also remember certain anecdotes of Narendra Modi in the 1970s and 80s where he was just another Karyakarta. My question is what is so special or what is the methodology of leader scouting of the BJP?

SHANTANU GUPTA: What is their HR department doing? Right.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Basically, right? Exactly. Because they’re able to scout leaders who come out and then become somebody after 20 years. And politics or leadership is not something that you can gauge in 90 minutes or even one full year. Right. You don’t know when this person is going to behave in what way. So now that all these leaders are coming to the surface, you understand that something has been done, right? 20 years. What is that something?

The RSS Factory of Leadership

SHANTANU GUPTA: So I think that’s a brilliant question, Ganesh. Right. That what is BJP doing? Right. You may agree, disagree with BJP and in fact you should. Right. If you want to, right, to your audience. But what are they doing right there? They’re producing leader after leader. Remember we used to say this thing with Australian cricket team.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Exactly.

SHANTANU GUPTA: That how can they consistently create? And then they realize that they have a very smart domestic cricket. Right. Our domestic cricket before IPL was not that smart. Right. Our Ranji trophies and all were little lackluster. Right. They’re not producing constantly amazing cricketers. Right. Versus now IPL is factories creating a lot of… That’s why Indian team is also because of the function of IPL. Yeah. Right.

So what they’re doing right is I think the major attribution is RSS. RSS is a factory to create good leaders. In fact one of the basic ethos of RSS is called Charitra Nirmana. That we are here, our Shakhas and our Baudhiks, our Pravas and our various Prakalp. There are various, what do you say? Various organizations. There are almost 42 organizations. From Sanskrit Bharati to Sanskar Bharati to Vigyan Bharati. All these 42 organizations are towards Charitra Nirmana. Basically character building. Right. Which is a long process.

I can’t create your character in the way I want in a day, in a workshop, in a year. It’s such a long lived life. It should be a lived experience rather than a tuition class. Right. So, and I can say with decent conviction that Narendra Modi is the best product of the factory called RSS. Why? Because an RSS identifying him and BJP identifying, that’s the scouting part. That first of all a training is happening. And out of the training I am also choosing the best person. So these two processes are happening brilliantly. The training process and the scouting process both. Right.

The Lived Experience of Understanding Society

The training process is quite large enough. Let’s say we’ll take the example of the brilliant case, the best case scenario which is Narendra Modi. Right. So Narendra Modi is born and brought up in a 10 by 10 house. He was selling tea after the school hours in the station. For him poverty is a lived experience versus the Rahul Gandhi. I’m giving a contrast not for the political so that someone has a contrast.

For Rahul Gandhi poverty is a tuition class with a tutor there, tutors like Jairam Ramesh and Sam Pitroda which don’t understand poverty themselves. Right. When Narendra Modi was living in a 10 by 10 house, someone like Rahul Gandhi was living in a palace under SPG protection. Right. So the context is very different.

And then someone like Narendra Modi joins RSS and he understands society for next 15 years. A lot of people say Narendra Modi has no family. Narendra Modi doesn’t have a family. He doesn’t understand family. But Narendra Modi have lived, ate food, a breakfast or lunch, and there are more than thousands of houses.

And that’s the very interesting, you know, says it’s almost directed. You will not eat food in a hotel. You have to eat food in a… For a Karyakarta, for a Pracharak, you have to, you can’t live even in Dharamshala. You have to live in somebody’s houses. Convince someone. I have to convince Ganesh. Ganesh, I’m coming for dinner. So they self-invite.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: What is the reason for that?

SHANTANU GUPTA: So that if I go to Ganesh’s house, right, I will understand a podcaster’s house. If I come to Shantanu’s house and eat food, I will understand the family of a homeschooling family and someone who writes. If I go to a farmer’s house, a teacher’s house, a banker’s house, industrialist house, a poor house. So I will be getting so many experiences. I mean I will be living those experiences.

And if I stay over in their houses even more, I’ll see their bathroom and their toilet. What kitchen they have. What do they cook in the breakfast. So I live and Narendra Modi must have lived in thousands of houses during his Karyakarta days. And can you imagine living in somebody’s houses? It’s such a lived experience, right?

Because if you live in the houses, their small fights, how they’re scolding their kids, what is the small fight between husband and wife? Are they respecting the elders in the house? What are the photos they’re putting? Is it an actor’s photo in their house or a Krishna’s photo in the house, right? What is the culture in the house? How they’re getting up in the morning? Are the slippers outside the house or inside the house? Every fabric of the house you understand, right? And you will do that every day? Every day, every day for 15 years, 365 days a year he is going to a new house. So that’s the training of whole of…

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: India, understanding of the society.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Society, right? And now he transgresses himself to BJP as a Karyakarta. Now what is he doing? He’s saying now my societal knowledge should translate into a voting behavior. Earlier before in RSS I was seeing you as a citizen of India, now I’m seeing you as a voter. Will you vote for me or not? My ethos are matching with your ethos or not? Shall I change my ethos? My ethos means BJP’s ethos cater to you.

See, BJP is a philosophy which I have to sell to you, right? It’s like a content which I have to sell you, right? Or maybe I will change your ethos only so that you will like my content, right? Which then happened for 15 years again.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Basically it’s market research of 15 years only to understand how to design a great product.

# How Voters Think: Understanding Electoral Behavior

Narendra Modi’s Journey: From Organizer to Prime Minister

SHANTANU GUPTA: First, he understood the society, the target group. And then he saw how to organize this target group to buy into his vision. Buying means voting for me. Buying voting is nothing but buying into my concept, right?

He did this for the next 15 years, and that too across multiple states. So a map of India is again a tuition class for Rahul Gandhi. But that’s a lived experience of Narendra Modi. He lived in Himachal or Kashmir or Bengal or Tamil Nadu for long, not for two days, but for months together. For managing the election, for managing campaigns, for managing a Rath Yatra.

It’s a very interesting thing that today Prime Minister Narendra Modi did the Pratishtha of Ram Mandir. And he’s the one who managed the Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya for L.K. Advani on so many things. And today he’s the prime minister when it’s happening, right? That’s a very interesting coincidence. Or as they say, Devi Yog, not Sahayog, right?

Then he’s the prime minister. But again, while doing that, he might have gained far more experience than L.K. Advani. Because L.K. Advani was like the face for it, right? But he was managing which state we’ll go to, where we’ll sleep, where the toilets will be used, who will eat food, how the Karyakartas will eat food. He was doing all of this. And he did that for 15 years.

From Gujarat Chief Minister to National Leader

And then all of a sudden, after doing all of this, he became the chief minister of Gujarat, right? And then he learned administration of a state like Gujarat for 13 long years. And then BJP projects him as the prime minister face.

And then credit goes to BJP. The way credit for Yogi Adityanath goes to Narendra Modi, the credit for Narendra Modi becoming the prime minister candidate goes to the BJP and its structure who decided, because he was not the first choice. Advaniji was still there and he was the prime minister face for long in the post-Atal era.

And Narendra Modi was almost a third-level leader. Because the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha was Sushma Swaraj. The leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha was Arun Jaitley. So these were the top two leaders. And Advaniji was a mentor for these two. So these three could have been the obvious choice. Chief ministers are like the second-level leaders. And among chief ministers, there was Shivraj Singh Chauhan also, right?

But when the party identified that the Gujarat model is a talked-about thing, right? He’s the Hindu Hriday Samrat also. And he is the development guru also. And he is popular even in Uttar Pradesh, which is not a Gujarati state, in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar also.

Reading the mind of the people and catapulting someone who is like a third-level leader to top leader against the egos of many. I’m sure the ego of Advaniji might have been hurt. I don’t know. But the ego of Sushma Swaraj or Jaitley ji or Rajnath ji, who were far more senior leaders than Narendra Modi at that time, might have been hurt. But the party took the decision because he was a more meritorious person and who was more capable of winning elections, right?

Modi’s Leadership Style and Talent Development

And then he worked as prime minister and understood the governance of a country. Earlier he understood governance of a state, and then a country and international governance also. And this is Narendra Modi, right?

And when Narendra Modi comes at the helm of affairs, he started using the way he catapulted himself, or the party catapulted him on the national stage. Can I create a battery of leaders who are young and experienced at the same time? And then he created a norm of 75 years, that someone above 75 should not be in active politics, right?

And then he started grooming politicians against the popular political acumen. So in Uttar Pradesh, which has caste-based politics, he gives a Sanyasi chief minister. In Gujarat, which runs on Patel politics, he gives Vijay Rupani, a non-Patel chief minister. In Maharashtra, which runs on Maratha politics, he gives Devendra Fadnavis, a Brahmin who is a non-Maratha, as an experiment on merit, right? Not getting bogged down by the popular narrative.

In Haryana, which runs on Jat politics, he gives Khattar, who’s a non-Jat. In Jharkhand, which runs on tribal politics, he gives Raghubar Das, who is a non-tribal, right? Some of the experiments failed maybe, or maybe did not give as much result as Narendra Modi wanted or the party wanted. But some of them gave results, right?

Merit Over Dynasty

And then a lot of these people are organically grown. Then he also poached a lot of people from outside, because an organization needs both. Some of the CEOs are organically grown CEOs. Even Infosys and Wipro took a lot of CEOs from outside. I’m sure you must have seen, right? Even Wipro, which is like a family-run company but a smart company, they took a lot of external CEOs. Infosys, which has an amazing battery of people, took a lot of external CEOs.

So at times BJP also took some external people. Someone like Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was a hardcore Congressman and became a chief minister of Assam. Or a lateral entrant like Annamalai, who’s not from any party but he’s an ex-IPS officer, IIM Lucknow graduate, studied, comes from an OBC Kisan family, and was made a party president against the will of a lot of local leadership who might be senior in age.

So I think this scouting for talent versus scouting for a surname. See, Rahul Gandhi is there because of Gandhi. Akhilesh is there because he has Yadav’s surname, right? Abhishek Banerjee is there because he comes from Mamata Banerjee’s family. Udhayanidhi Stalin is there because he comes from Karunanidhi’s family. They are not there because of merit. They are there because of their surname.

Parliamentary Performance: A Stark Contrast

And if you see their merit in the parliament currently, that’s abysmal. You know Rahul Gandhi’s attendance in the current 17th parliament is between 40 to 50%. If you ride a bicycle from Rahul Gandhi’s house in Delhi to Parliament, it takes 10 minutes. And your attendance is 50%. And the national average is 80%. Some people are coming 90 to 95%. People like Rahul Gandhi are pulling it down to 80%.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: And what is the attendance of Modiji and Yogiji?

SHANTANU GUPTA: I’ll come to Yogi. Just let me complete the attendance of a couple of others, right? Akhilesh Yadav was in parliament till recently and then he became an MLA. But he was a parliamentarian from Azamgarh. His attendance was 33%. Abhishek Banerjee, who is the nephew of Mamata Banerjee, his attendance currently, you know in the current parliament, you can’t even guess. It’s 15%.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: 15%?

SHANTANU GUPTA: 15%, not 50. 15%. And when every parliamentarian gets a house in a bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi, you know Lutyens’ Delhi. It’s full with the bungalows of these MPs. They get like a 4BHK with a garden, with a guard and a cook in Delhi, right? And they get 20 to 25 tickets to and from the constituency every year. So free tickets, right? This is the performance.

So they are not there, I think my larger point is, they are not there because of their performance. They are there because of their surname, right? Versus when Yogiji was in parliament, his attendance was between 85 to 90%.

And in fact, in Yogiji’s case, I’m sure you know parliaments get adjourned very often, right? And whenever the parliament gets adjourned, people go back to their homes because their home is nearby, right? Or they have two more options. They go to the central hall where they gossip around, right, across party lines. Or they go to the parliament canteen, which has very yummy food. Earlier it was subsidized samosas. Now Narendra Modi made it market price. So now samosa comes at 10 rupees, I guess, right? Whatever the price is.

So you go home, you hang out in the canteen, or you go to the central hall. But Yogiji, if the parliament had adjourned, he used to go to the library of the parliament. He is the top issuer of books in the parliament library when he was a parliamentarian, right?

So you are seeing how someone like Yogi Adityanath is building, training himself also, right? He asked almost 300 questions to the Modi government between 2014 and 2017. While Rahul Gandhi is asking zero questions. Rahul Gandhi should ask more questions to Modi government. But Yogi is asking when the AIIMS is coming to my area, when the fertilizer factories are coming to my area, when Japanese encephalitis, which is called Dimagi Bukhar in that area, will become a routine immunization for the kids in that area. He’s pushing his own government to do better work in his area, versus Rahul Gandhi who is not even showing up in the parliament, right?

So that’s why I think whenever someone says I disagree with Modi or Yogi, I say surely do, but match their hard work with your hard work. You can’t flirt with politics on weekends and say, “Oh, EVM rigged ho gaya.” Right? I think that’s a shoddy commentary. And that’s the thing.

Understanding Voter Behavior

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: I’m very fascinated to understand how does a voter think, because you know there are social indicators, economic indicators, and I’m sure that most of India doesn’t look at it at all. And you know, while we were having this conversation in the conference room, you mentioned something that actually caught my attention: “Ram ke naam pe vote ya kaam ke naam pe vote?” What does that mean? And can you give me an insight on how does a voter fundamentally think?

SHANTANU GUPTA: I don’t know how crores of voters think, what is their voting preference when they go to the polling booth or press the EVM, right? But talking to so many people and analyzing election results for so many years, I have a conjecture, I have a theory, right?

What are the parameters that might be going in a voter’s mind while pressing that button for a particular party or a particular candidate, right? And all your viewers who love mathematics, let’s frame an equation, right?

So voting behavior is a function, so f(x) equals A plus B plus C plus D. So there are four parameters I think which go on in any voter’s mind, right? And it’s not that those parameters are playing only that day or that week or that month or that year. He’s making these parameters while he’s deciding for the next vote, right?

And the weightage of these parameters might be different in different economic strata, right? So it might be 5A plus 2B plus 1C plus D for someone, and maybe D might be having more weightage and C might be having lesser weightage, right?

The Four Parameters of Voting

Let me tell you what is A, B, C, and D. For me, A is what is the change in my life, like the total selfish motive, right? How did my life change during this incumbent’s tenure? So let’s say if I analyze this election, which is the election for Narendra Modi’s incumbency, like he’s the incumbent, right? From the last 10 years, from 2014 to 2024, did my life change drastically for good or bad? Right? So that’ll be my voting preference. That’s one, right?

It might be very different. The same factor will play out very differently from economically weaker sections to middle class to a rich businessman, right? That’s one parameter.

B, Ganesh, is my identity.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Identity.

SHANTANU GUPTA: My identity, my personal identity. Do I relate with the politician? Because I relate with someone who’s similar to me, right? So that identity might be my caste, that identity might be my religion. That identity might be my age. So if I’m a young voter, I want to vote for a young candidate, right?

Or my gender. Maybe a woman voter wants to vote for a woman candidate, right? Or maybe a handsome candidate, right? I read a lot of theories that Obama’s looks helped in getting a lot of women votes, right?

Or my region. I’m a North Indian or South Indian. We have seen a lot of anti-North Indian statements from politicians from DMK. Or my language maybe. Now languages, Hindi-speaking, non-Hindi-speaking is also a trouble point, right?

So this is my identity, right? So I want to see, do I see the reflection of me in my candidate? So that’s called identity politics, right?

Number three is national pride.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: National pride.

# How BJP Became a Political Superpower: The ABCD Framework of Voter Behavior

The Power of National Pride

SHANTANU GUPTA: National pride. So that thing is not changing my life. Let’s say if someone is winning an Olympic medal, my life is the same, right? But I feel I take pride in that and my country. If India wins a match against Pakistan, my life more or less, until I’m a bettor and I’m betting on the match, my life doesn’t change. India wins or India loses. But I take pride in that.

If Narendra Modi goes outside India and he’s treated well and India’s image increases, my life more or less remains the same, right? But I take pride in that, right? So national pride. So my happiness increases with the national pride in most of the cases. So that’s the factor C, okay?

And factor D is who is executing A, B, and C: a leader. So my perception of that leader. We talked about multiple leaders in length, right? And that leader comes from a political party. So the combination of my believability, my trust factor in the leader, in the party, this factor D, right? So I think the combination of all these goes in the mind.

The Transformation of the Woman Voter

Now I’ll give you one or two examples to explain this ABCD. So let’s take an EWS voter, economically weaker section voter, and let’s take the parameter A: did the life of a woman voter, let’s say, change in last 10 years or not? And so much so that her voting preference changed. Because normally earlier the voting preference was what the male of the family has told her. That’s like a dictation from the head of the family, right?

Because their life is more or less the same in that polling year, in that government’s five years, their life was more or less the same. So if your governance remains the same, governance remains equally bad, right? Your voting preference is identity or whatever your male member has told.

Now let’s see. A woman, a poor woman voter. She gets up in the morning. She sees my kids are sleeping with a fan in a pukka house. You can’t imagine that sukoon, right? Which a mother can see, which she was seeing a couple of years back. They were sleeping under a leaking roof and hardly any fan, mosquitoes. And she’s saying, “Okay, my kids will get up with a fever maybe.” Yeah, right. Okay. Now that’s point number one.

Now her day is going on. Now she has to go to the loo, the morning loo, right? Earlier she has to wait. Earlier she has to go before the sunrise because she has to go in the bushes. Because otherwise the sun will be glowing bright and she can’t go to the toilet. Right now she has a toilet in her house.

And the houses earlier were not given to 12 people, not a couple of lakhs. Four crore people got houses in the last 10 years. Pukka houses. And all the houses are in the name of the woman. So her prestige in the household is also increased. The male member is living in her house, technically, because the house is in her name, right?

Now she just opened the doors of the toilet. She goes. A lot of people do not understand because most of us are brought up in houses. Even in middle class houses, we had at least a toilet in the houses, right? Very few of us went outside. Maybe during some camping that was fun for us to defecate in the open. But defecating in the open was a compulsion for crores and crores of people. Narendra Modi has given 10 crore toilets in last 10 years. So the life of this woman drastically changed. Okay?

Now she has to wash hands and take bath. Earlier, taking bath means water. Water means going to faraway places, carrying 20 to 30 liters of water on the head. Facing lot of headaches and spine problems because you’re carrying… Maybe your viewers can do a small test. Go to your bathroom, take a 15, 20 liter bucket. First of all, carry it on your head and walk in your house.

And these women were doing this from their childhood with 20 liters of water every day, multiple rounds a day. And now opening a tap is a magic for them. I’ve seen it’s a magic for them. Oh, this tap opening is a one hour run for them, right? Just imagine their voting behavior. And when they associate change, okay.

The Daily Life Revolution

Now she goes, she has to go to the kitchen. As soon as she puts the stove on, she thinks of those days going to the jungle, going to the woods and getting the wood back home, or making the cow dung cakes. And cooking three times a meal in a day is equivalent to smoking 300 cigarettes a day. And when she does, there’s again a magic for her. Because she will remember now it’s a magic for her. Imagine the perception of change of life in her mind, right?

That ration has come from, and very smoothly it’s coming now. You need some oil, you need some sugar, you need some vegetables, right? She has multiple kinds of cash transfer. Some from PM Kisan, some for widow pension, some from old age pension, some from scholarship for the kid. So she has some disposable cash, right?

When she goes out, she’s finding the roads are better, law and order is better. So her life has perceptibly changed. Visually changed. That’s why a woman voter has become a new voter bank for Narendra Modi. And they are not voting because they are a Brahmin or a Shakya or a Yadav or a Nishad or a Rajput. They are voting because they are a beneficiary.

So I normally say that Narendra Modi is creating one more caste which is called “Labarthi” which is voting for Narendra Modi. Because their life is significantly changed in last 10 years, right?

Governance vs. Identity Politics

And interestingly, whenever you increase governance quotient, if I plot governance effectiveness of governance on X axis and identity politics on Y axis, as soon as the governance increases, the identity politics decreases. Why? Because earlier I have to find the policeman of my caste to get a police complaint registered. To get a house from the government scheme, I have to find someone from my caste, some strongman from my caste. Oh, he will get me to the CDO’s office, BDO’s office and he can get me the house from the scheme.

My cash transfers only come if I know three people in the community. So my reliance on the community is not only for weddings, my reliance on the community is for getting the government schemes. Now the government schemes are directly coming to my account, right? So I only need community for wedding, party, function, which is the good news. We are a very community-led society, which is the use of the community.

But the uses of the community for politics happened because the governance was very weak. As soon as Narendra Modi increased the governance quotient, made it very effective, technology-led, the identity politics collapsed. So he created a beneficiary vote bank.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So you’re saying that he made A more effective because of which B became less effective.

SHANTANU GUPTA: B becomes less effective. Now in B, one of the elements is Ram. You said, right? Earlier I told you that Congress gave a formula that treat Muslim as a vote bank and make sure Hindus don’t feel like Hindus. They should feel like one of the castes.

Narendra Modi did a counter to this. Narendra Modi says I will make them feel like a Hindu rather than a Brahmin or a Shakya or a Vaish or a Dalit or a Thakur, right? How he did that? He said I will take pride in Indian culture, right?

Cultural Pride as Political Strategy

If I will go outside India, I will not give Taj Mahal to my counterpart. I will give a Bhagavad Gita to my counterpart. That my country, if Xi Jinping from China will come to India, I will take him to Sabarmati Ashram, not to some five star hotel in Delhi. I will take him to some temple in Tamil Nadu, right? I will sport a mundu in front of him. I’ll tell you, this is also my culture, right, in that part of the country.

If Shinzo Abe, the late Shinzo Abe, will come, I will take him to Banaras and he will also perform Ganga Aarti with me. If Macron will come from France, I will take him to Hawa Mahal in Jaipur and also make him drink a tea on the roadside and pay with the UPI. So the display of my culture and my policy is happening side by side, right? I’m not apologetic about it.

If I win election, I’ll go to Ganga, put tilak, the trishul. I’ll not mind, right? If Kedarnath temple is not good, I will renovate it. I will not be apologetic like Nehru was when Somnath Mandir was renovated. I will renovate Somnath Mandir also. I will create a Kashi corridor, Omkareshwar corridor, Ujjain corridor. I will go do the prayer for the Ayodhya also, against whoever, whatever, whoever says whatever, right?

So he brought back the pride in being a Hindu, right? And because of that, because the Ram politics, if I can say so. And very effective Ram politics and very visual Ram politics. Visual means earlier the Kashi corridor, the Kashi temple was left dilapidated, a small temple. Now it’s a Kashi corridor. Ayodhya temple is really existing. A grand Mandir is standing there, right? So these are not some wordplay. These are the real things happening there, right?

Hindu Politics vs. Caste Politics

Because of that again, if I plot the Hindu politics on the X axis, right, and caste politics on Y axis, as soon as you cater to the Hindu politics, and I don’t like the word Hindu politics, I’ll say Indian cultural politics, right? Because Hindu politics, the culture politics also has Ayurveda and Yoga into it, right? Because you see Indian scriptures are the life scriptures. They are not only puja, the same scriptures have Yoga and Ayurveda and science into it.

So more you cater to the Indian philosophy, right, your caste voter will start feeling like more of a Hindu. And the caste politics will also go down, right? So in B, Ram and castes both are there. So the sub-parameters of B, B1 or B2 if I can call them, right, they are also interplaying. So B1 which is the Ram politics, if you increase that, the caste politics again goes down, right?

Remember we used to talk about politics, but he has drastically reduced the importance of the caste politics by governance and by the Ram politics.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Which means you’re saying that macro social engineering is more powerful than micro social engineering.

SHANTANU GUPTA: You’re right. You’re right.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: In fact that makes more sense also. Like if you’re getting a broader spectrum of audience, why wouldn’t you do it?

SHANTANU GUPTA: Exactly.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: And by doing less things. Like if you have to cater to 50 different castes, you have to do 50 different things.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Exactly.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: But if you have to cater to one specific religion, all you have to do is do the groundwork.

The Ram Temple and Good Governance

SHANTANU GUPTA: Good work. See, this is my premise. Let’s say Narendra Modi might have run a very shoddy government. There are no houses, no electricity, no roads, the way it was before 2014. And he would have built Ram temple. The Ram temple significance would not have been that much the way it is today.

In fact I keep saying he gave the 10th crore, 10th crore gas connection in Ayodhya just three weeks before the Ram temple. And my premise is that Ram ji was also waiting for the elements of Ram Rajya to come before he gets installed in the Ayodhya temple, right? So the Ram temple is sitting over good work. Ram temple is not sitting only Ram temple. So he’s not doing only identity politics. He’s doing lot of good work and Ram temple also. I think that’s why it’s playing well.

And then we smoothly move to the factor C: national pride. Be it Bollywood, be it Indians winning medals outside. When he goes outside, he gathers 50,000 people at the drop of a hat. In fact I’m saying the local politician might be getting challenged. Can you imagine, in America, he’s talking to 50,000 people. 50,000 people gathering in America is like several lakh people gathering in India, right? Because they don’t gather in so much numbers, right?

When G20 happens, it happens in multiple cities, right? Foreign policy localized, right? So the pride that people are taking, right. And Indian brand has become big. So a lot of entrepreneurs, unicorn people, founders tell me that getting money from VCs became easy for Indian entrepreneurs because brand India has increased because of Modi.

In fact I always tell entrepreneurs that everyone should give 1% equity to Narendra Modi. Because he’s your free brand ambassador, right? Narendra Modi will be very rich getting 1% of all the 150 unicorns we have. And then the factor D: all of this, who is doing all of this? Narendra Modi is doing all of this also.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Jaishankar.

# The BJP’s Electoral Success: Leadership, Ideology, and Governance

The Modi Factor: A Product of Systematic Training

SHANTANU GUPTA: Yeah. I’ll come to the leader part. Like who’s doing? Who’s performing? A, who’s performing? B, who’s performing? C. A leader who’s coming from a party. Right? And then my theory will come of Narendra Modi is a product of 15 years of RSS. A product of 15 years in the party. A product of 13 years in Chief Minister. A product of 10 years being prime minister.

He is not product of he being Modi or a Gujarati or a north Indian, south Indian. Not of identity. He is a product of hard training and hard scouting versus any other leader versus a Gandhi or Abdullah or a Stalin. They are a part of a second name. Right? As I told you that Narendra Modi to my understanding the best product the RSS factory is created. Right?

See, lot of policies are Narendra Modi is able to implement because he did it. Examples is demonetization. Can you imagine if someone else who doesn’t have a social capital among people might have implemented demonetization? You as a banker, not allowing me to withdraw my money. You’re not allowing me to withdraw my money. People say no, Narendra Modi did it. There’s something good in him. But his intention might be. Right.

Many western countries, Ganesh were not able to put lockdown. Right? Because Narendra Modi said it. We have to be in the houses. That’s why India was able to put a fairly decent lockdown. Not because of police. Because Narendra Modi started. Then he said the health workers are getting very disappointed. Very delusion. Right?

He said may look very stupid and very amateurish. But again people were crying and talk to the health workers, talk to the doctors, talk to the medical staff. Right? How they felt? The whole country is banging for me. Whole country is motivating me. This only Narendra Modi can get it done. Right?

He asked people that can you leave your gas subsidy corrosive. People left their gas subsidy with that money. He started giving. He became a Robin Hood, right? He started giving poor the gas stuff, right? He asked a lot of senior citizen can you drop your IRCTC senior citizen senior citizen subsidy. Lakhs of people dropped it.

So he’s playing this role of a super guardian. He will do a call to the team. Two will get filled. He will hug the scientist. When you saw a prime minister hugging a crying scientist, right? And Chandrayaan 3 goes up, right? So this is a Narendra Modi factor. That is adding. Right?

BJP’s Organizational Strength and Ideological Clarity

So this is. This is D. And then D is coming from a particle. BJP which is a very strong cadre. Which is an electoral machine. Right? Where. Where a party position is very important. In fact, BJP, this is a very common thing. It’s very easy. Not very easy. It’s rather easy to become a member of parliament for BJP rather than become a general secretary of the party.

So party positions are honored, right? Party positions are like Paka. So that strong party position and a solid ideology. You may agree disagree with BJP ideology. But they have an ideology and they work towards it. Ramandir Katha Khadiya, Catha Khadiya Uniform, civil code. Katha partially Shuru Kadiatou. Right?

Versus if you ask a congress, what’s your ideology? I don’t know. Maybe I have to win elections. Maybe Rahul Gatra Karai. I have to do something around it, right? They have a. They have like kind of threefold ideology. I’ll. I’ll stand with the Indian culture which people loosely translate Hindutva. I’ll be nationalist. People loosely translate Bharat Matagi Jai and I’ll be good on governance. I’ll be non corrupt and efficient government.

This is my three ideology which a BJP to Prime minister. They will speak the same language.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Vision is very clear.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Which is very vision. Very clear. Right? Versus ask any Karakarta. Any Karakarta of a congress or Samajwadi party. Right? Just say Samajwadi party may say we are Lohites. We are socialists. Bicycles or logo. The logo of Samaji is a bicycle. He’s running a Mercedes bicycle. Who is saying my ethos are socialism. So they’re not living that. Living that. Their ideology.

Ideology is very clear. From Prime Minister to the Karikarta knows the ideology. The Karikarta. Wait. Hai. And they have a smart party structure. Jaisa Party structure center. The same is replicated in the state. Same is replicated in the district. Same is replied in the mandal. Same is replaced in the booth. Same is repeated in the morcha.

Morcha means same structure. There’s a president. There’s a vice president. There’s general secretary. There’s secretary. There’s executive team. Same structure. Cadre based party. And I’m talking to them every now and then. I’m giving them tasks. I’m giving them sometime good sometime artificial work. To keep them engaged. Right? Throughout the year. Throughout the year.

I remember I went to a Sanghatan Mantria of UP when they just won 2019 election. No. No. I have to keep them engaged. Otherwise they have empowered people in the colony. Right? I have to give them positive work. Keep. Keep acting like an NGO Also don’t be a political party only. And when you’re in government all the more so you have to be more disciplined.

So this disciplined cadre that all is BJP. So their believability increase. Egg. Same cheese. Same promise. 2024 election. May if Narendra Modi makes the promise or Rahul Gandhi makes that promise. It’ll have very different effect people. Because his past record, right? It’s like any brand, right? Brand. Trust.

So all of this plays very subtly. A. How my life improved. B. What is my identity? C. What’s my national pride? D. Which leader is executed in Sabka ratio is play played. Plays out in botless mind in different status. Right? And then he presses that machine. That’s my understanding.

Yogi Adityanath: Beyond the Saffron Robe

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Now having said that. Do you believe Yogi ji’s saffron robe plays against him? Because you mentioned identity. Because I remember when he became the chief minister of UP a lot of people criticized him for the saffron robe. And the same people ironically also speak about freedom of expression and freedom of speech. But having said that mob is illogical. Mob doesn’t understand nuance. So do you believe when it comes to Yogi Ji, his saffron robe might become an obstacle for him to become the prime minister?

SHANTANU GUPTA: See, yes and no. His prime minister question is like will come in a post Modi era. And the way Modi use Narendra Modi looks so youthful. I think the post Modi era will not come like before 10, 15 years. Right?

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Yeah. So we’ll talk about post Modi era in maybe when the post Modi era will come, right? And you will have maybe 100 million subscribers by then. I think the interesting question is about the saffron robe of Yogi Adityanath. It’s an asset for him or liability for him, for his electoral chances, for whatever role he’s playing. Right.

I think this plays out different. Different kind of people. The people who is, who is who takes pride in the Hindu identity now after the Narendra Modi’s engineering, so to say they take pride in him. They. They see a mahant in him, right?

And lot of people who thought in 2017, what is this stupid decision? But when they saw him executing from Law and order to Investment summit when he met Bill Gates and Bill Gates was amazed by his knowledge of health systems. Can you talk more about it? Yeah, I’ll tell you, I’ll come to the Bill Gates part, right?

So when people saw him doing from Law and Order to Investment summit to catering to unicorns, to expressways, to airports, to everything, then lot of these people who hated the Saffron Hope, right? Not hated, but they will very skeptical. But he doesn’t understand governance, he doesn’t understand law.

But for some reason they discounted that. This person was in parliament for 19 years. He saw 19 budgetary processes, whichever government it was. And he was asking 300, 350 questions to every government. He was asking culturally led questions. Also he was asking something like a CAA or Ramandir. But he was also asking India US relationships. He was asking India Israeli relationships. He was asking a new IIT or new IIM or an AIIMS in his area.

Only thing, we only heard a few viral videos where he in some electorally charged environment where maybe he’s giving little religious tone to it, we thought, oh, that’s only Yogi Adityanath for me. We never heard him asking about the Urea subsidy or AIIMS in his Area, right? So all of this together is Yogi Adityanath.

And when people understood his because he never got a chance to show his execution skills because he was never a minister even when he was MP. And when he has got a chance to show his execution skills in those six years even a lot of these people who are skeptical about the saffron robe, they started saluting him that when they saw the NCRB data and when investments started coming.

I mean that’s a lot of your business kind viewers will never go to an area where his employees and money is not safe. That’s like the basic, basic of the of ease of doing business. Law and order contracts follow hunge and law and order maintained.

And Yogi Adityanath is very clear about it that I have to create conditions for people to come outside from people who come from outside UP outside India to me. And I have to do two, three things. First, law and order. I have to create airports so that they will not keep riding on the roads. Right. I have to create amazing expressways and I have to give 24 by 7 electricity industries will not run on gensets, right?

And the first three, four years he did this. And that’s why even a MotoGP came. If you know MotoGP is the F1 of biking. And the first MotoGP of India happened in Noida in Uttar Pradesh last year. And Carmelo and Camelo, the founders, the people who hold the brand and they told the the monk who brought MotoGP to Bharat, that was the heading of one of the sports magazine and he was there for one hour.

He did the last flagging of the last circuit and he was giving the trophy to whoever. I forgot the name of the rider from Europe to the rider, right? So bringing MotoGP from bringing law and order to bringing MotoGP to Bharat, right. That was a Yogi addition.

And then people started discounting their skepticism with the saffron robe and they realized. So I think Narendra Modi Yogi Adityanath added a charm to the saffron robe now in fact, right that oh my God. Now when I tweet something about Yogi Adityanath a lot of people say so he’s become a brand of good governance now which was earlier was not expected by many.

Governance Over Identity: The Harder Path to Electoral Success

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Which kind of validates your theory that governance will always supersede identity as a variable.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Right? But that governance has to be like top class. You can’t do Chhota Chhota kaam and say Muje Kampe vote Kaan pe vote is tougher than identity by vote. Identity by vote. You can even appease. You can say some statement. Also has 11, 12 MLAs and one MPC disown seat in the old city area of Hyderabad.

That area, my wife’s from Hyderabad. That area is similarly undeveloped from last 30 years. I’m watching Hyderabad. But he just gives four electorally charged statements against Hindus and he gets vote, right? That’s why entity politics is the easier politics, right? Governance politics is a tougher politics. To make a new Greenfield Express. Then finally a road will come up, right?

So that’s hard work, right? What’s the entity politics Smart size statement. Boldo. Some people get charged and they will. Oh my God. He’s catering to my identity, right? So people, people. I think Congress taught this lazy politics. A lot of people and this governance politics is tough politics. Because you have to do real hard work for long time to get the Kaanpe vote.

The UP Model: A Vision for Prosperity

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So how would you summarize the UP model? Because it’s after Gujarat model. UP model is the most popular model in India. How would you summarize the UP model for the international audience?

SHANTANU GUPTA: I think UP model is a model of prosperity. And I’ll start with an anecdote. In 2022 I wrote a second book on Yogi “The Monk Who Transformed Uttar Pradesh.” It was a January of 2022 when I met Yogi Ji. To give that book to him, I was going to US to do a 20 day trip and I went to Harvard, Stanford.

Later I told him that sir, I went to. We call him Maharaji Maraji. I went to around 50 districts in last one year. And to my sense you are winning the election. He gave a smile, right? And you are winning, right? He said let’s see. And he said I’m saying okay, but I. I think you are winning. What will be Yogi 2.0 all about, right? What will be your main focus?

Can you imagine? He was between a very hardly contested election. Three ministers of his left his party a week back. A lot of caste combinations going in his mind. That’s his in mind, right? And I asked this question, what will you focus? You know, what did he say? I want to make UP a $1 trillion economy.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: $1 trillion economy.

The UP Economic Model and Development Strategy

SHANTANU GUPTA: Among all this caste calculation, electioneering, campaigning, his focus was $1 trillion economy. I will do whatever it takes to make UP a $1 trillion economy. He won the election again. He was active Chief Minister. You have to take the oath again, right?

By the time you are acting Chief Minister, he was the acting Chief Minister, his team floated the RFP to get a consulting company to guide them for $1 trillion economy. He has not taken the oath. Still he’s in so much hurry. Right.

The day he takes the oath, he started talking to a lot of companies. Four months into his second tenure, Deloitte gets appointed as the consulting company to guide them for the $1 trillion economy. And then he sends multiple teams to almost 17 countries. From Australia to US to Japan to Europe to Middle East, ministers and IAS officers, both to get investment proposals from them. Right.

And then he does India’s biggest investment summit where almost 33 lakh crore investment worth promises were signed. And you know how in style he has shown that he has done a drone show where he said investment promises 33 lakh crores. It was shown through drone in the sky. So like doing it in style, right? Yeah.

So I think that is Yogi model. And he said if prosperity will come, I’ll get more tax. I can do more affirmative action also. I can give more houses and gases and things for the poor also. But I can’t give all the jobs because government anyway have 2 to 3% jobs. Jobs are largely in the private sector.

So I will make conditions easy for the private sector to operate so that they will come in plenty. They will have a lot of employees, they will give employment. I will give them conditions to flourish. So I think that is the UP model and with strong law and order.

The $1 Trillion Economy Target

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Shantanu ji, you mentioned that Yogi ji is aiming for UP to become a $1 trillion economy by 2027. Right now it stands about $320 billion.

SHANTANU GUPTA: It’s almost a three and a half, four times jump. Yeah.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So for UP to become a $1 trillion economy, it has to grow at a staggering…

SHANTANU GUPTA: Rate of 25 to 30%.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: But right now it’s growing at only 9%. Why is there such a big gap?

SHANTANU GUPTA: See, when Yogi Adityanath became the Chief Minister, he inherited a very dilapidated UP. Right. Where assembly was full with people who are in jail today. Right. The mafias were running the state. Every district had an organized crime mafia.

When I say organized crime, meaning he or she has a big team. He’s a land mafia or a sand mafia or a Karachori mafia or a kidnapping mafia or exam cheating mafia or a land grabbing mafia. So this was the industry of UP. Nobody wanted to come to UP.

Even the Manchester of the East, Kanpur, was only ending up making Gutka. No big businesses were coming up, right? This was the caste politics, cheating politics. If UP became a bad brand, if I’m from UP, which I am, if I go outside to Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu or Bangalore, “Oh my God, you’re from UP. I can’t trust you. I can’t even trust your degree. You must have faked the degree, right? You must have done some crimes, right?”

It was difficult to even get a job if I’m from UP. That was the brand. That’s why when I wrote my second book, I wrote how “UP Wala Bhaiya” image became a badge of honor by Yogi Adityanath’s work. Right? So that’s why it’s hard work.

So he has taken a lofty target to shake a system which was in deep slumber. See, it is the same machinery, the same set of IAS officers. He’s not recruited some 2,000 new IAS officers. Right? Though he got a lot of consulting companies in new age. Now if you go to every officer, you’ll find an EY or a Deloitte or a consulting company working very closely with laptop.

He still is very tech savvy. He will show you graphs and data and dashboards and QR codes. He himself very tech savvy in his saffron robe, looks very with his goggles, his iPad and he talking dashboards and data.

So he gave a lofty target. Maybe UP may not be able to achieve. UP may touch maybe $700 million, maybe $800 million. But that’s his target that if I aim high, I’ll push my team up. And his aim is Narendra Modi is saying $5 trillion economy and I’m contributing 17% of the population. I’m Uttar Pradesh. I should contribute decently to India’s GDP.

So if Narendra Modi is saying $5 trillion, I will contribute at least $1 trillion. So that’s the gesture he’s putting and he’s pushing his whole team towards a very high target.

The Loan Waiver Controversy

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Shantanu ji, Modi ji often talks about Revdi politics, freebie politics whereby politicians give out loan waivers just to please the people so that they can eventually win the polls. But my question is, while on one side BJP blames other parties for freebies, in 2017, I remember when Yogi ji became the Chief Minister, the first thing he did is give away 37,000 crores worth…

SHANTANU GUPTA: Of loan waivers, which was the election promise also. Yeah.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: When UP had 70,000 crores in debt. So two questions over here. First question, can we also say that Yogi ji also won the elections based on this promise which was people pleasing, which does not fit with the philosophy of Modi ji? And secondly, when the state is in such heavy debt and you said that the system was broken, why give away 37,000 crores worth of loan waivers?

SHANTANU GUPTA: Again, very smart question. So you rightly said Narendra Modi recently commented about the Revdi politics. You gave a dole to your voter and your voter voted not because of your work or identity, voter voted, right? This was a typical Congress politics for years.

And when you are the new entrant in any game, you have to abide by some rules of the game. You have to become a Sachin Tendulkar of the game to change the rules of the game, right? So some rules means you have to do. And anyway, India is coming out of such poor, large masses of poor. You have to do some affirmative actions, safety net which we call it, right?

You have to do pro-poor policies which is like loan waiver to subsidies to free houses to free rations, right? And constantly also trying to pull them up, right? So you can’t… I’ll give you a parallel example. I was talking to a doctor who was an expert for de-addiction.

So let’s say someone is on drugs and he or she goes to a de-addiction camp. His kind of drug doses are not become zero the day one, he will die, right? You have to gradually decrease it. So this dope called subsidies, this dope called loan waivers, right? Which were a very easy politic for Congress, right? That’s one for your politics. You have to give this dope, right?

And also because anyway the people are poorest of the poor. And the business environment is hardly any. They will not get any jobs. They are largely into farming. And that too in a very unscientific farming where you need only 20% of the population or 50% population is only contributing 20% of GDP. I’m sure you know the numbers, right?

50%, 60% people in farming. But the farming is hardly 15, 20% of the contribution to GDP. So means a very inefficient system, right? So first of all the legacy system, right? You have to still… So 2017, you are right. The loan waiver was one of the promises. But loan waiver was not only the promise.

There were a lot of other industry promise, expressway promise, Ram Mandir promise, there were multiple promises. Loan waiver was one of the promises. The interesting part was that within the first six months, Yogi government executed that promise. Versus in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Congress government came and they did a similar promise. For their whole tenure, they never executed the promise.

And because of that, when next time Narendra Modi or a Yogi Adityanath or any BJP government will do such similar promise, the promise which is a factor is that who is making the promise, right? Who is a habitual liar and who is following his promise. So I think that is that.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: But don’t you think that’s bad for the economy? 37,000 crores.

SHANTANU GUPTA: You’re right. It’s bad for the economics. It’s bad for the immediate economics. So what you have to do, because that’s like a constraint, you have to do it because that’s your politics also. And the people are really so poor, right? But constantly make sure in the next election, in the next election I need not do that. So I will make sure the ease of doing business is also smoother than in the next five years. By the time my next tenure comes, a lot of people are engaged in meaningful employment.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So that you don’t have to give out farm loan waivers.

SHANTANU GUPTA: So yeah, you need not give the farm loans. Every district, I’ll create an ODOP and thanks to you, you created an amazing video on ODOP. That I will identify the Tala of Aligarh. I will identify the Chudi of Firozabad. I’ll identify the Banarasi sari of Banaras. I will identify the Kala Namak rice of eastern UP. I will identify the sports equipment of Meerut.

And I’ll call them the one district, one product. And give them the market. Give them the training. Make them travel to outside India. Make them travel to Delhi. Make them travel to the best of the exhibitions of the world. Give them subsidy to set up online shops, right?

So I’ll keep doing so that they need not go out. But these are hard work. You have to do this for couple of years to stop the subsidy. So you don’t stop the subsidies still. So that it’s almost like that. So let’s say if I see a bleeding person out of an accident on the road, what will be my first step? I’ll take him to the hospital.

I’ll not say, “Oh, I have to remove this road turn. I have to improve my road and traffic and I have to put other traffic.” I’ll not do that, right? That’ll be my post facto for sure. I’ll do a post facto analysis of an accident. But I have to take them to hospital. So that subsidy is the hospital.

But eventually I’ll make sure that the turn which has a very sharp turn should be improved. I have to make sure the speed, the helmet rules are properly followed the next time, the number of accidents reduces. So someone like Yogi Adityanath and Narendra Modi is doing both parallelly. So that they have to give away subsidy at some point.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So you’re saying that you can’t give a knee jerk reaction to everything.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Exactly.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: It’s not practical to not give out farm loan waivers. But if the farm loan waivers continue to happen election after election, then there’s a serious problem.

SHANTANU GUPTA: That’s a serious problem.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Which means the people need to keep in mind that if Yogi ji gives out farm loan waivers in the next election, which means there is a sign that the success is not that high.

The Local Employment Reservation Policy

Shantanu ji, I want to bring your attention to one more thing that Yogi ji mentioned and that is written in your book also. He said that he will allow industries to come up only if they reserve 90% jobs for the locals. Now this is quite harsh and again does not fit in with the philosophy of the BJP of being inclusive.

Because remember when Maharashtra said the same thing about the UP Bhaias and the Biharis, everybody was extremely angry. But then Yogi ji goes on to say the same thing. That I want to make this exclusive with only my local people. Which means denying opportunities for other people who also identify themselves as Indians.

SHANTANU GUPTA: To my understanding, this was indeed his initial push. But he never made a statutory law around it. Right. It was almost like a strong advice or a suggestion. It becomes problematic when you make a statutory law that I will count your head count, I’ll see which state domicile they have. I think that never happened.

So it was like, because local employment was very low, right? And first of all there was hardly any industry in interiors of UP. It was a very West UP led development or very Noida led development in previous government. Whatever little development happened, it happened in West UP and Noida.

So that’s why he said if you come to Kanpur, if you come to Gorakhpur, try to involve as many local people. So that was a strong advice. That was a suggestion rather than a statutory law.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So it was not implemented.

SHANTANU GUPTA: It was not implemented. It was never a statutory law.

Critical Questions About Modi

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Shantanu ji, I have one more critical question. You know you wrote this book “101 Reasons to Vote for Modi ji.” It’s a fantastic book. I actually read it. But critics actually point out, and this is coming from people who may not consider Modi ji to be the best candidate, they point out three very strong reasons as to why we should not vote for Modi ji. Okay. And I want to understand what is your perspective on this.

SHANTANU GUPTA: If I can check you there, I have written not one reason to vote for Modi. And you’re only countering with three reasons not to vote for Modi. Three versus one, not one. Anyways.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay. These are three reasons that I found logically true. That is the reason why I think I should bring this up.

Reason number one: Manipur was burning. And multi-million dollar businesses have quit Manipur forever. Including forever.

SHANTANU GUPTA: We don’t know right now.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Yes, I’m saying this, I’m saying forever. Because this office in which we are shooting, this is a very close friend of mine’s office. And her father used to run a very big business in Manipur. And now they’ve quit. They’ve moved to Guwahati forever. And that’s the case with multiple of his friends.

When Manipur was burning, do you believe our actions were enough to tackle the situation? Because during the same time we were talking about stopping the war between Russia and Ukraine. And here we were not able to do enough to save our own people and our own state from burning.

The Manipur Crisis: A Historical Perspective

SHANTANU GUPTA: So will you tell me all the three questions? Let’s go one by one. See, Manipur is a classic case which came in debates. We had multiple debates. Manipur was burning for a different, difficult reason and for historical reasons. Those two communities which were fighting, contesting in Manipur and the visuals came on TV which was a very heartening visual. Unfortunately that’s a new phenomenon in Manipur that’s happening from quite some time in Manipur. And Manipur burnt multiple times.

I want to take your viewers back in the history since the time BJP took control of Northeast, right? Whole of the northeast is BJP government or NDA government. And thanks to him and Biswa which is controlling, if I use the word, politically controlling whole of northeast for BJP or for NDA. Right?

So it’s not that everything was hunky dory. Nothing happened between those two communities ever. And today all of a sudden in Narendra Modi’s rule these two communities started fighting, right? So first of all it’s like a clash of civilization from time immemorial in that region, right?

The only blame was why Narendra Modi did not speak. But every minister of Narendra Modi was speaking. Every spokesman of Narendra Modi was speaking. The senior ministers were parked in Manipur to make sure what would have been a very long battle got shortened in three or four months. Right.

We don’t know. That is also quite grave in the way those communities fought in past. Such riots in Manipur ran for years together because in those times there were not podcasts like yours. There was no 24/7 TV. There was no Spotify. We don’t know about it. Right.

So anyone who reads the history of Manipur, I think how it’s curtailed, how the riots got shortened this time is marvelous when I talk to the people. But yeah, you’re right. In modern times it should, and I think also BJP and the government is also learning and now they are making long term fundamental security walls between communities.

And it was not a government failure. It was two societies, two communities fighting which has an age old clash of civilization. Now they have to work somewhere like a, and it is exactly not a government work. It’s almost like community work. How should I make sure that these communities get more friendly? Right.

And I keep hearing that now RSS and Sangh Parivar and a lot of these NGOs and social groups started working between these two communities so that there’ll be more goodwill among these communities. Right. So let’s not take this as binary. These solutions are not binary. And think this way: how these battles between two communities in Manipur happened in past and how they got shortened this time.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Yeah, but why didn’t we simply send the army and shut the entire chaos down? Because we have the capacity to do that, right? Why didn’t we do that?

SHANTANU GUPTA: See, I’m saying sending army in any conflict is the last resort, right? Because here the, I’m coming to that. So when army is sent as a last resort, army is normally used for your country’s opponent, not for your local people. Right.

But again during riots armies were sent and it’s always a tough call that shall I use my police to do it or shall I use my army to do it? Because army is like an antibiotic, right. If you get a bad throat, will you keep doing gargling and do a long term solution or take a quick antibiotic which is not good for your system? Right.

So it’s that tricky trade off, right. I’m saying on hindsight one can say oh, army would have been better or police action would have been better or making sure that communities coming together would have been better. I’m saying yeah, it’s a tough call. In hindsight it is easy to say, but I mean in that situation they say that local police can manage it and we’ll make sure that local communities can come together. That’s a long time solution versus sending army.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Because when I spoke to my friend, she told me that local police had clearly failed. There was no way in which things would have gotten better because her father is so attached to their house that he was not willing to move out at all. And him moving out was the last resort.

She said what is now left? Our factory burned, people were unemployed, businesses were quitting, houses were burning, people were dying, women were being raped. If this is not the last resort, then what is the last resort?

SHANTANU GUPTA: That can be error of judgment, delay of judgment. That’s totally sure. People of BJP agree to that. That might be error of judgment or might be, you don’t know, this solution worked better. That’s something. Hindsight is very easy to comment on anything.

And also I’m sure people will reflect back. The similar thing happened 10 years back, 20 years back. Every 10 years this kind of rioting happened. And now I think this conflict in Manipur is in public eye. And what I keep hearing from the government sources and some sources, now they are trying to find a fundamental solution and those riots have reduced drastically.

Though the incidents are happening, smaller incidents are happening in Manipur still and they’re trying to find a fundamental solution, a long term solution so that army or the police should not get into action anytime in near future.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay, cool. So let’s come to the second reason and this is the unemployment of India.

SHANTANU GUPTA: And also see frankly speaking, practically speaking what happens in Manipur will never change a poor voter’s preference in a Ballia or a Bihar because they know their lives have changed drastically. Right. It might be a narrative for a lot of people in Lutyens’ Delhi or in high street Bombay or Bangalore. Right.

But there everybody is seeing: is my life improving or not? Right? Yeah. If such phenomena is rampant in whole of the country and God forbid that should not happen and that will not happen in my country. Right. I think that’s also a connection we should make.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: I absolutely agree with you because if you look at my life, my life has drastically changed because of this government in a lot of ways, whether that is GST, the corporate tax or whatever that is, my life is significantly better.

The Challenge of Sustaining Progress

SHANTANU GUPTA: And you know a small caveat. People are also very forgetful and greedy, right? So Narendra Modi cannot rest on his laurels of these 10 years forever. Because once you started using toilets for one year, two year, three, that becomes the new normal. If you think the GST system is good, that’s the new normal. Once a small problem in GST form will annoy you. Now here form, entry side. That’ll be a new normal. You will not be happy with the smoothness of GST now, right?

That’s why a lot of people say at times you have to remind, you have to remind people. You used to go to the bushes for the toilet 10 years back. You have to carry 20 liters of water every day on your head. You only had 13 hours of average electricity in India. Today we have 22 hours of direct electricity in India today. There are 75 small towns where I can fly in and out in a day from any part of India, right? This was not there four years back, five years, 10 years back.

So I have to keep reminding people. But people are also greedy, right? So someone like Narendra Modi also has to keep inventing himself. So in fact Narendra Modi is talking a very interesting language in this election. He’s talking three languages.

He’s saying I’ll saturate the schemes. You never know, right? So he’s saying I’ll saturate my schemes. Second he’s saying I’ll increase the pie itself. So meaning I’ll increase the economy. He’s very flamboyantly saying in my third term India will be the third largest economy. So increasing the pie of the economy. If the pie of the economy will increase, more infrastructure spent, everybody will get more out of that pie, right? More jobs, more prosperity.

And then third thing which is my conjecture and I think he will be very hard on corruption within his own party and outside. And which we are seeing for last one year. Be it the Delhi arrests, not only Kejriwal arrest, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh that is there in jail from last one year. And no bail from high court and supreme court. Hemant Soren, maybe the Benami act, right?

So lot of fundamental corruption points in India. He may run this government, the third government on the anti-corruption plank also which was the movement of Kejriwal. But he never abided by his own movement, right? I think that’ll be the plank of his third government to my understanding, very interesting.

The Unemployment Question

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: The second reason why critics point out that people wouldn’t vote for Modiji is unemployment. Now if you look at the unemployment stats in 2008, that is during one of the worst times across the world.

SHANTANU GUPTA: 2008.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: 2008. During that time the unemployment rate in India was 5.41%. But in 2024 and this is three, four years after Covid, our unemployment rate stands at 6.57%.

How do we fix this problem? First of all, why is this a big problem? Because on one side we’re seeing that FDI is coming in. We’re registering record FDIs, we are registering record tax collection. We are giving away houses, we’re giving water, electricity. All of this is done.

Why is unemployment, which is one of the most fundamental pillars of the economy I would say, which is one of the fundamental issues of the economy, so prevalent?

The Employment Data Challenge

SHANTANU GUPTA: I think Ganesh, I will answer and handle this question at multiple levels. One at the level of data, right? Unemployment numbers come from various laboratories. One from the private organization like CMIE and one from the government’s own labor department. To one of the cases of Narendra Modi’s discredit, the labor department of India is still calculating unemployment numbers in a very old archaic fashion where a lot of new jobs are not even getting captured. For example, I’ll come to that. And a lot of new formulations are getting their job captured. I think the problem that even Narendra Modi has to fix in his own government is capturing the data properly, which other parts of the government machine are capturing.

So if you see the IIM Ahmedabad and SBI study, they are counting the employment number through the PF data. PF data is a provident fund data. So provident fund is whenever you have your employees more than 20. So as soon as you have the 21st employee, you have to register all of them into a provident fund, right? In only the last 3 years, there are 4 crore PF registrations in the whole of government. The data is more than 10 to 15 crores, right? And these are formal jobs.

And the problem is all around formal jobs. India is full with informal jobs. If you go down, you know, any street, there will be tea sellers, snack sellers who are also doing fairly good, right? But again, the question is all about formal jobs. So there are crores of formal jobs through the PF data, but a lot of these are not getting captured in the unemployment numbers of the labor department. So they are still running on the old archaic fashion of the surveys, right? Which is not a census survey. Which is a sample survey, right? That’s point number one.

The Gig Economy Gap

A lot of very healthy gig jobs are not getting accounted in the labor data, right? In any city, I’m sure, we, the modern consumers, are the consumers of these gig jobs, right? Gig jobs are your Ola riders, your Uber riders, video editors. Your video editors. No, video editor is still at least a white collar one who’s sitting in an AC office, right? At least I’m saying someone on the road but having a very decent employment.

An Ola person, if he works hard, is earning 40,000 rupees. If he’s a little lazy, then he’s earning 20,000. If I hire a driver full time, I will not pay him 20,000. I will only pay him 15, 17,000, right? So Ola rider, but he’s working also less, right? So all these Ola riders to Porter, right? All of these Zomato riders to Swiggy riders to what are the quick delivery things, right? So this is a huge, huge, which are informal formal, right? These are not getting captured, right?

So I’m sure a new technique of calculating them will be far more, and someone should come up with a far more genius number to calculate India’s employment numbers, right? And categorizing them into various categories.

Infrastructure Growth and Employment

Intuitively, when India’s infrastructure spend is rising, intuitively when India’s number of airports are rising, intuitively when India’s expressways are all time high. In previous government it was 10 km per day. In Gadkari’s time, I’ll give the credit more to Gadkari than Modi in this case, right? And also Modi to select someone like Gadkari, someone like Hardeep Singh Puri, someone like Yogi Adityanath in UP, right? Or someone like Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, right? Which are very infrastructure focused people, right?

So now when we are making 40 km per day road, who is making the road? Not robots, right? There’ll be for sure 4 times extra workforce, 4 times extra engineers, 4 times extra trucks, 4 times extra cement bought, steel bought, right? That’s not getting captured in a lot of machinery. So I think some new data analyst geeks should work out smart numbers so that all this unemployment data or employment data should get captured very smartly. And that’s my answer to your question.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: And more importantly, when these stats are put out, it is also important to put out the methodology.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Which is never coming from the government side, even from the private side also, very interesting.

The Manufacturing Challenge

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: So now I want to bring your attention to the third reason, which is the manufacturing dream of India, which on paper has failed. Because in 2010, manufacturing was 17% of our GDP. By 2022 it was expected to be 25%, but it has decreased to 13%. This is largely because Make in India has not been as successful as we thought it to be. One of the reasons being Covid.

But the other reasons that I studied are also land acquisition problems. There is no single window clearance system which we envisioned to bring, but we are too late for that. Number three is Vietnam. And Vietnam is offering much better import duties as compared to India. Bangladesh is much better suited for textile industry than India. So our real rival is not China, it is Vietnam, Bangladesh and all the other Asian countries, as compared to whom we are not doing a good job. So this is my analysis, but according to you, number one, why didn’t Make in India fail?

Make in India: A Long-Term Vision

SHANTANU GUPTA: I’m saying I’m not agreeing that Make in India failed. You don’t agree, but your point is right that the percentage of manufacturing contribution to India’s GDP should be higher, right? Any superpower which India is trying to become, or any super economy, cannot be based on services only. We are largely contributing through services with more than 50% plus. And agriculture should be more efficient and manufacturing in every sector.

And now we have to see the basket of manufacturing, right? Which is the hardcore engineering manufacturing and then the tech manufacturing, to mobile phone manufacturing, to now we are talking about semiconductor manufacturing in India, to chip manufacturing in India, every sector. I think if this is sectoral manufacturing and we see the increase in that, that’ll be far more ingenious and a genuine data rather than a number which is coming out of post Covid world, a post Ukraine war world, right?

So that’s why these numbers which are coming in 2024 are a product of a lot of a distressed world, right? So that’s point number one. If we see sector wise data, you will find that how many companies which were hardly under 10 were manufacturing mobile phones in India then? Now over hundred are making mobile phones in India. Now even iPhone is trying to make India not only for Indian customers but also for export, which was China. Now even a Samsung display, when it gets displaced from China, comes to Noida, thanks to someone like a Narendra Modi government inviting them and someone like Yogi catching that offer, right?

Also, a lot of these PLI schemes, the performance linked schemes which are making even the defense equipment manufacturing very promising in India. But the problem is that a lot of these fundamental changes are like Ayurveda, right? Like versus the English medicine which shows result in long time. And that’s why we have seen during the first tenure of the UPA government 2004 to 2009, they fared very good on a lot of parameters. But those were largely the fallout of the good policies of the Atal government, right? In the second term, they did not fare well, right?

The Third Term: Critical for Manufacturing

So a lot of this manufacturing scheme which Narendra Modi also started more in the 2019 term rather than the first term, right? They will start bearing fruits now. And Indian bureaucracy, Indian system, the way the system is which Narendra keeps saying, right? So ease of doing business ranking, which was 150 and now we are in top 50. I think World Bank has stopped counting that ranking now. So we don’t know what is India’s exact status today. Only the informal sources are inclined. Our ratings from Moody’s to various other indicators keep increasing, even in a very distressed world. We are one of the few large economies which are growing with 6 to 7% and good ratings from Moody’s to international exchanges to IMF, everyone, right?

So to my understanding, these are changes which will give you gratification in long term. And I’m not saying 20, 30 years, right? In third term. That’s why the third term of Narendra Modi is far more consequential. And hopefully we will not get a major world calamity like a Corona or a world war where you have to adjust a lot of levers. So yeah, I think that’ll be my response that in third term you will see a lot of these fundamental changes of Make in India in defense sector, in chip making sector, in food processing sector, in mobile and mobile tech manufacturing. We are a tech services giant but very, very, very meek on the manufacturing of mobile. In third term we will see the effect of all those policies far more in third and the fourth term.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: I completely agree with you. When it comes to mobile phones, we’ve done a phenomenal job. But when we actually analyzed how successful Make in India has been with other sectors, it was not as promising as the mobile sector. And you know, critics often point out if you’re using one good case study as a marketing gimmick to tell people that Make in India is succeeding, because this number, that is 25% target, this was given, but this was given by the government itself.

SHANTANU GUPTA: I’m sure, I’m sure it is their…

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Own benchmark that they’re not able to match, and it’s okay even if the number is stable. But when the number is coming down, that is what is…

SHANTANU GUPTA: For sure, for sure. I’m saying anything in 2024 we should read it with the leakages of Corona, with the leakages of Ukraine war. That’s for sure. Even you are around that the previous number. Now I think the term is, are you back to the business of the post Covid era? Right? First of all you have to come up. So I think one is that. I lost a very interesting thought which was coming up. Hopefully it will come up.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Okay, cool. So the concluding statement that I need from you is from 2024 to 2029, what does the Modi government have to…

SHANTANU GUPTA: Do better, or what does the Modi…

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Government have to improve upon so that we can have a better India in 2030? What would your comment be like?

The Path Forward: Economic Growth and Cultural Restoration

SHANTANU GUPTA: I think I’ll divide this question into two parts, Ganesh. What should be the focus? My pay grade is too less to recommend someone like Narendra Modi what to do. But if I attempt, I’ll divide into two parts. One is the growth story of India and one is the cultural story of India.

Growth story of India: India is already on a good runway now with ease of doing business, with amazing airports, with amazing infrastructure, with very decent robust economy, with systems like GST. India is in a good set of stage. Take the advantage of this amazing takeoff that we have had in the last 10 years and go into multiple sectors very quickly, which China did in 1978-79. They started and within next 20 years they were the manufacturing hub for multiple things, even service hub for a lot of things.

So we are in an amazing takeoff point which can bifurcate in industries like chip making to semiconductors, to hardcore manufacturing, to medical equipment manufacturing. That’s being one, which gives me the confidence that when Narendra Modi keeps saying “in my third term I’ll be the third largest economy,” I’ll take the confidence from there.

On the cultural side, it’s very interesting. You will hear that lot of hardcore Modi fans will sometimes say that Narendra Modi has not done enough for the Hindu side, which is a very interesting criticism. Though you will see him going to Ayodhya temple and doing the Pran Pratishtha, giving a Gita to Barack Obama, working towards the Kashi corridor, two, three fundamental topics are still stuck.

Someone like the temple control. You know that all the mosques in India are controlled by the Waqf Board. All the churches are managed by Catholic organizations in Nirankari in Delhi. But most of the big large temples are largely managed by the respective state governments. Even the revenue comes from Tirupati, which is almost a thousand crore rupees industry, if I can use the word industry. The revenue goes to the government, to the endowment department, and they use it for whatever they want to use.

So Hindus want Hindu money for the Hindu cause. Temple should go back and roll back. The temple revenue should roll back to community. So the temple control should be given back to the community which was taken away from the community in the British time. That has come up in Odisha, in parts of Uttarakhand here and there. But there should be a blanket law. That’s one.

Some very draconian laws like Places of Worship Act should be removed or amended. Places of Worship Act technically says apart from Ayodhya, if any temple is broken and mosque being made, you can’t do anything about it. Really, you can’t. That’s Places of Worship Act, which is almost a Muslim appeasement act made by Congress. What is the status quo of any religious place in 1947? The status quo should remain even if there’s clear evidence. Even if Aurangzeb’s own biography says very clearly, even Islamic scholars say this, they say no, but Places of Worship. So such very stupid and draconian laws should be removed.

Last thing which I’m already seeing the symptoms of is what kind of history are children reading in college and school, which we talked about in NEP, in Indian knowledge system. There can be a minority Muslim school. There can be a minority Christian school with government funding. But there can only be a Hindu school without government funding. Ramayana, Mahabharata cannot be taught in a government funded school. But a Bible and Quran can be taught in a government funded or a partially government funded schools. So these lacunae should go.

I think on the cultural side and the economy side, I’m sure then the next five years will be fruitful, which I see a very bright light towards.

Closing Thoughts

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Thank you so much, sir. I will tell you why this podcast was very special for me. Number one, I could ask you very critical questions. Number two, you are very open about everything. And number three, you have lots of data. So that gives people like me the opportunity to ask you those questions that mainstream media is either not asking the politicians or is not able to ask the politicians. So thank you so much for being so open. I really appreciate that. And do you have any feedback for us? How did you find this experience to be?

SHANTANU GUPTA: This must be the longest podcast I have ever recorded. I know how much of this will go live. Hopefully most of it. This is the longest podcast I’ve ever recorded and the most detailed podcast. I hope you will find audience for such detailed analysis. Otherwise people will normally go for a very juicy, tasty, last night trending topic which you have refrained from. So I know how you avoided that temptation to not ask about a Kejriwal arrest or a Mukhtar Ansari being dead or electoral bonds.

That’s very rare. People rarely go to the grassroots. We used to go to the fishbone analysis. So I’m saying kudos to that. And if your audience is watching such long format detailed, so-called little boring videos, kudos to such audience.

GANESHPRASAD SRIDHARAN: Thank you so much, sir. Thank you so much, guys.

SHANTANU GUPTA: Thank you.

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