Narendra Modi needs to upgrade to 2.0 Running India is not the same as running Gujarat;

The next two months should be exciting as it would be interesting to see how Narendra Modi would re-invent himself in his prime ministerial role and change the tone and tenor of his political and administrative functioning to suit the situation.

Modi will have to dramatically change his style of functioning

All the exit polls can’t be wrong. So we can safely assume that Narendra Modi is going to be the next Prime Minister of India. Among all the exit poll results I saw, the lowest number of seats predicted to be going to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was 249, and the highest was 340.

At 249, the NDA would need the support of another 23 members of Parliament (MPs) to reach the magic figure of 272, which should not be difficult. At 340 (which seems to me to be way on the higher side), it’s assured of a five-year term and can push through its policies without any problem. If we take the mean of the two figures, the NDA will get about 295, which is also a comfortable majority.

So here comes Modi’s greatest challenge. Running India is not the same as running Gujarat. He will have to dramatically change his style of functioning.

In the Gujarat government, Modi held most of the important portfolios such as home, industry, information, ports, general administration, science and technology, climate change and Narmada. In fact, most of the other departments were also headed by just a clutch of Modi’s trusted aides. For instance, Nitin Patel was finance minister, in addition to being in charge of health and family welfare and medical education. Anandi Patel was revenue minister as well as for road and buildings, and urban development.Bhupendrasinh Chudasama looked after education, law and food and civil supplies. Saurabh Patel, in addition to energy and petrochemicals, held the portfolios of planning, tourism and labour and employment.

This won’t work in the Union government. Modi will have to delegate responsibilities far more broadly, and to do that, he has to find enough bright and committed men and women who will, most importantly, accept his leadership. Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) choice of Modi as its prime ministerial candidate was hardly met with unanimous cries of joy within the party. Several leaders who were cabinet ministers in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government opposed his elevation, more or less publicly. Modi will have to take these people along. But more importantly, he will have to first learn the art of delegation. He will have to accept that the highly centralized command-and-control structure, which he created in Gujarat and has been comfortable with, will have to be replaced by a different model.

He will come to power riding a powerful wave of expectations. The people of India have voted for change and for growth and development. Modi has been promising these four times a day for the last three months. However, he has been quite vague about how he is going to achieve growth and development, avoiding all specifics, other than constantly citing the much-debated Gujarat model. The point is that however weak or strong Modi’s Gujarat model is, the state was doing quite well even before Modi became chief minister. His real achievement has been to sustain that growth and keep the state on the fast track. Exactly the opposite of what the Left Front did so successfully in West Bengal.

The same is not the case with India as a whole. As far as I know, Modi has never claimed to be a brilliant economist, so he will need some fine economic minds to come on board. I have already heard a couple of respected names from industry being bandied about as potential finance minister, but they are only rumours as of now.

But one thing is certain: Modi will have to hit the ground running. The sort of expectations he has been able to generate among big business, the middle class and the young can be a double-edged sword. He will have to start delivering visibly within his first 60 days in power. He will have to do something to encourage industrial production, especially in manufacturing, create employment opportunities and fight consumer inflation. He will also have to deal with the massive dole schemes that he will inherit from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), such as the rural job guarantee scheme and the food security law.

The BJP has already been making noises about reaching out to as many political parties it can and make them informal allies. Bipartisan politics is the new phrase, borrowed from US President Barack Obama’s first term, which is making the rounds. This is in order to, one, appear to be an inclusive party and government; two, be able to push through policies without excessive acrimony; three, manage votes, especially in the Rajya Sabha; four, squeeze and isolate the Congress as far as possible.

I will not be surprised if special packages for Odisha and West Bengal are announced in the next few months. This is also with an eye to the long-term future. If the BJP can emerge the second-largest party in Odisha, and the third-largest in West Bengal, that will be a reward in itself. In Odisha at least, Naveen Patnaik has no succession plan in sight (not that he seems to be going anywhere soon), and after him, BJP could actually come to rule the state for the first time in history.

Poor Nitish Kumar. After all the good work he has done in Bihar, one miscalculation, one political mistake, has cost him very dearly indeed.

The next two months should be exciting times. But I am most interested in how Modi will re-invent himself in his prime ministerial role and change the tone and tenor of his political and administrative functioning to suit the situation. For the last few months, he has been hectoring, bullying, rabble-rousing, painting dreams from hundreds of pulpits. He has to now recreate himself as a humbler, kinder, softer leader. He has to trade in his jackboots for Hush Puppies without losing that air of tough decisiveness that he has always carried.

And he has to immediately—right now—stop referring to himself in the third person.