"Born in poverty, Modi has lived with its gross reality and subtle nuances, and knows how it degrades the human agency and compromises the material and moral self of the poor.
Poverty eradication for him is not merely a constitutional or political obligation but an emotional and moral imperative," writes West Bengal Governor R N Ravi.
In an article in Kolkata-based 'The Telegraph', the Governor says "While Nehru unsuccessfully sought to mitigate poverty through his socialist policies and State patronage, Modi creates an enabling environment for the poor so that they rise above poverty with a sense of dignity and self-enterprise."
Ravi, a former IPS officer and who took to writing columns post-retirement for a while, notes:
"There is a tendency to compare Modi with Nehru since he broke the first Prime Minister’s record that had stood for over half a century.
The comparison, however, is often confined to the prevailing state of the nation and the geopolitical situations then and now.
They miss the fundamental difference between them: their emotional orientation to the nation.
"Pandit Nehru as the first Prime Minister began the nation-building enterprise as if independent Bharat had started with a clean slate. He ignored the civilisational resilience and cultural continuum of Bharatiya Society.
"He (Nehru) sought to build a modern state inspired by British parliamentary democracy, European secularism, Soviet-style centralised planning and State-controlled development," says Ravi.
Ravi, who handled Naga peace talks and also served as Governor in Nagaland and Tamil Nadu, writes:
"Narendra Modi is the longest serving elected Prime Minister of Bharat. He recently beat the record of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He remains as strong as he was on day one and his undented popularity beats the conventional anti-incumbency logic.
"Many have been seeking to decode the secret of his success".
Ravi has been critical of Nehru and says,
"As if to overcome his sense of moral defeat at the communal partition of the country and spite Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pandit Nehru courted the Muslims who had not migrated to Pakistan with demonstrative appeasement and took ostensible measures to distance himself from Hindu religious institutions.
"He (Nehru) seemed convinced that the long-enslaved people of Bharat, lacking in Western education and orientation, could not be trusted to undertake a modern enterprise.
"Using the inherited colonial institutions of governance, he tried to build a secular modern state on the foundation of European individualism and rationalism in a traditional and profoundly religious society with an integral view of life and creation; a view that held life sacred and believed that the individual and society existed in inseparable symbiosis."
The Governor maintains :
"The modern State that Pandit Nehru sought to build was at odds with the civilisational consciousness of Bharat.
"The dissonance between the modern secular State of Nehru and the civilisational society of Bharat generated unpredictable centrifugal social entropy turning diversities into differences.
People living for long in harmonious coexistence began seeking separation from each other.
"More and more linguistic, ethnic, tribal and communal states, districts and administrative councils were created to satisfy the increasing demands for exclusive identity-based homelands.
The number of castes and tribes multiplied in every census.
"The nation was put in a centrifuge. Hindu religious institutions became suspect and textbooks were purged of all references to the epics of Bharat," he laments.
Ravi says, "He (Nehru) did not resonate with the civilisational consciousness of Bharat and could not connect with its ethos.
"Modi, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the civilisational soul of Bharat. His unique personality has been forged by the circumstances of the life that he chose from the days of his youth.
He is the only Prime Minister who, as an RSS pracharak, has lived in at least one village for one night in all 800 districts of the country.
"His (Modi's) intimate and granular understanding of the socio-cultural-economic and geographic landscape of the country and the travails and tribulations of the ordinary people in their everyday life is unparalleled.
"His parivarbodh (familyhood) for Bharat — that all the citizens of the country are children of Bharat Mata and constitute one family — is an everyday lived reality for him."
The Governor also says:
"Unlike Nehru who governed Bharat with State institutions, Modi leads the nation like running a family with the cooperation, effort and trust of all the citizens and for all."
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