Modi's "famous" Gujarat model not working in Delhi: USA's top neoconservative think-tank scholar comments

Sadanand Dhume

By A Representative
America’s top business daily, “The Wall Street Journal” (WSJ), has warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the Union budget that he should realize, “the famous Gujarat model is not working in Delhi”, adding, “A vast country cannot be run like a relatively homogenous state.”
In an opinion piece by a right-wing columnist based in Washington DC, Sadanand Dhume, WSJ recalls Modi’s days as Gujarat chief minister saying, “A chief minister can succeed as a hand-on manager, but a prime minister needs to set a broad policy agenda and trust his colleagues to execute it.”
Dhume is currently attached with the Washington DC-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI), considered in the US as “one of the most influential pro-business right-wing think tanks” researching on public policy issues and the “country’s main bastions of neoconservatism.”
Dhume says, “Modi often slows down decisions. A chief minister can succeed as a hand-on manager, but a prime minister needs to set a broad policy agenda and trust his colleagues to execute it.”
Accusing Modi of having “frozen in his old job” of Gujarat chief minister, Dhume — who has been a strong Modi supporter — says that Modi “hasn’t grappled with the central question facing India of rolling back the role of the state in the national economy.”
He says, Modi refuses to “accept that the national media must be engaged professionally and won’t just regurgitate facts sheets and press releases”, as he is known to have done in Gujarat, adding, “Rather than hire a provisional media advisor, he treats the press with disdain.”
Pointing towards why governing India is different from Gujarat, Dhume says, “When Modi became prime minister, the challenge was to adapt the ethos that powered the Gujarat model — efficiency, ambition and business-friendliness — to the vastly more complex of running India.”
Dhume notes, the only thing in which he has succeeded in transferring the Gujarat model is his “willingness to woo investors and efforts to make doing business easier”, adding, this has helped foreign direct investment rise by 24% to $42 billion in 2015 despite global slowdown.
Yet, he says, India is different from Gujarat, as seen by what Christophe Jaffrelot, well-known political scientist at Ceri-Sciences Po in Paris, said – that “only about 1% of Gujaratis work for the government, compared to 16% in leftist-dominated Kerala.”
Titled “Mr Modi, You’re Not in Gujarat Anymore”, the WSJ article says, “Though wooing business is a fine idea, and a welcome change from the country’s recent past, the parallels with Vibrant Gujarat … as seen in the Make in India summit in Mumbai earlier this month ... revealed a problem.”
“Nearly two years after taking office, a Prime Minister famed for his administrative skills has yet to show he can run a federal government. Instead of setting a broad policy agenda and hiring the right people to execute it, he has been focused on micromanaging the day-to-day administration”, he says.
While conceding that Arun Jaitley’s budget on February 29 is an “opportunity” to show that his government stands for a “market-oriented approach to the economy”, Dhume suggests, there appear to be little signs that Modi will move in that direction.
“For now, Modi appears to believe he can run India the same way he ran Gujarat. He has centralized authority … and prefers working directly with bureaucrats rather than delegating to his Cabinet colleagues. He often runs through checklists of stalled infrastructure and industrial projects himself”, Dhume concludes.

Comments

Stronger India–Russia partnership highlights a missed energy breakthrough

By N.S. Venkataraman* The recent visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to India was widely publicized across several countries and has attracted significant global attention. The warmth with which Mr. Putin was received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was particularly noted, prompting policy planners worldwide to examine the implications of this cordial relationship for the global economy and political climate. India–Russia relations have stood on a strong foundation for decades and have consistently withstood geopolitical shifts. This is in marked contrast to India’s ties with the United States, which have experienced fluctuations under different U.S. administrations.

From natural farming to fair prices: Young entrepreneurs show a new path

By Bharat Dogra There have been frequent debates on agro-business companies not showing adequate concern for the livelihoods of small farmers. Farmers’ unions have often protested—generally with good reason—that while they do not receive fair returns despite high risks and hard work, corporate interests that merely process the crops produced by farmers earn disproportionately high profits. Hence, there is a growing demand for alternative models of agro-business development that demonstrate genuine commitment to protecting farmer livelihoods.

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

The Vande Mataram debate and the politics of manufactured controversy

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The recent Vande Mataram debate in Parliament was never meant to foster genuine dialogue. Each political party spoke past the other, addressing its own constituency, ensuring that clips went viral rather than contributing to meaningful deliberation. The objective was clear: to construct a Hindutva narrative ahead of the Bengal elections. Predictably, the Lok Sabha will likely expunge the opposition’s “controversial” remarks while retaining blatant inaccuracies voiced by ministers and ruling-party members. The BJP has mastered the art of inserting distortions into parliamentary records to provide them with a veneer of historical legitimacy.

The cost of being Indian: How inequality and market logic redefine rights

By Vikas Gupta We, the people of India, are engaged in a daily tryst—read: struggle—for basic human rights. For the seemingly well-to-do, the wish list includes constant water supply, clean air, safe roads, punctual public transportation, and crime-free neighbourhoods. For those further down the ladder, the struggle is starker: food that fills the stomach, water that doesn’t sicken, medicines that don’t kill, houses that don’t flood, habitats at safe distances from polluted streams or garbage piles, and exploitation-free environments in the public institutions they are compelled to navigate.

Why India must urgently strengthen its policies for an ageing population

By Bharat Dogra A quiet but far-reaching demographic transformation is reshaping much of the world. As life expectancy rises and birth rates fall, societies are witnessing a rapid increase in the proportion of older people. This shift has profound implications for public policy, and the need to strengthen frameworks for healthy and secure ageing has never been more urgent. India is among the countries where these pressures will intensify most sharply in the coming decades.

Thota Sitaramaiah: An internal pillar of an underground organisation

By Harsh Thakor* Thota Sitaramaiah was regarded within his circles as an example of the many individuals whose work in various underground movements remained largely unknown to the wider public. While some leaders become visible through organisational roles or media attention, many others contribute quietly, without public recognition. Sitaramaiah was considered one such figure. He passed away on December 8, 2025, at the age of 65.

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

New RTI draft rules inspired by citizen-unfriendly, overtly bureaucratic approach

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Department of Personnel and Training , Government of India has invited comments on a new set of Draft Rules (available in English only) to implement The Right to Information Act, 2005 . The RTI Rules were last amended in 2012 after a long period of consultation with various stakeholders. The Government’s move to put the draft RTI Rules out for people’s comments and suggestions for change is a welcome continuation of the tradition of public consultation. Positive aspects of the Draft RTI Rules While 60-65% of the Draft RTI Rules repeat the content of the 2012 RTI Rules, some new aspects deserve appreciation as they clarify the manner of implementation of key provisions of the RTI Act. These are: Provisions for dealing with non-compliance of the orders and directives of the Central Information Commission (CIC) by public authorities- this was missing in the 2012 RTI Rules. Non-compliance is increasingly becoming a major problem- two of my non-compliance cases are...

Search This Blog