They say Narendra Modi's stark popularity around 2013-14 actually stemmed from the image of an outsider who courts the masses.
On June 10, 2026 PM Narendra Modi will become India’s longest-serving democratically elected Prime Minister.
The global media often said:
"The boy who once sold tea at a railway station has become the most influential Indian leader in generations, winning a landslide in election results...".
Or so goes the story that has become the core of Narendra Modi’s extraordinary appeal.
The Guardian said in a piece in 2018: "Modi was born to a poor family in western India’s Gujarat state, where he developed a strong dislike for the ruling Congress party as a result of hanging around a political office near his father’s tea stall".
In 2013, UCA News reported that the "fungus of corruption has eaten into all spheres of life in India".
Then it was Manmohan Singh government.
True, the scandals then had definitely nosedived the credibility of the then prime minister Dr Singh, who was credited till the other day for honesty.
The international press were not far off.
'Time' magazine rated Manmohan Singh as an “under achiever” and 'The Washington Post' had called him a “tragic figure".
In 2024, it was reported that Modi had in the run up to the palls boasted that he would win a third full majority in the world’s largest democracy.
In terms of numbers, – the Modi camp suggested that his party would win as many as 400 seats.
Instead there was a rebuke.
Far from winning a landslide, the BJP seats fell from 303 to 240, leaving him reliant on political allies - the JD(U) and the TDP.
"The BJP had made a major push in the south and managed to take a seat in Kerala. But Mr Modi’s vote slumped in his own constituency of Varanasi, in the north. Indian electors have humbled the strongman," went an edit by London's 'The Guardian'.
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| A newspaper headline in Arunachal Pradesh : 'writing on the poster' - 2014 |
In 2013 (under Manmohan-Sonia rule; .... yet again)
"From the top down, the country has been rocked by this latest slew of allegations of kickbacks and nepotism on an unprecedented scale.
In a report released in mid-August, the nation’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) estimates a loss to the state exchequer that could amount to US$37 billion. The report states that the government “did not follow” transparent and objective methods.
The government defended itself by saying the CAG estimate of the possible loss is only a guess.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram (2013) went further to say there was “no loss” as no mining of coal has been done yet. The case centers around the government’s allocation of coal deposits suitable for mining, known as coal blocks.
The government made the allocation of several coal blocks without auction, resulting in spectacular windfalls for some private operators. The opposition is keen to point out that Manmohan Singh himself was closely involved at the time on a ministerial level.
“The truth is, the corruption and gross impropriety in the coal blocks allocation will end at the prime minister’s doorstep. He has to quit,” said the then leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, Late Arun Jaitley.
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| Manmohan Singh as FM : 1991 (When he liberalised India's economy) |
Tracing History .... and Tracking Politics
"Hindu nationalists were sidelined by India’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, whose vision of India was of a secular nation at ease with its bewildering plurality," wrote Michael Safi.
Their parties, including Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), struggled to win more than 10% of the national vote for decades until the 1990s, when they started to expand on the back of a national campaign to demolish a 16th-century Mughal mosque and replace it with a Hindu temple.
This was a critical phase.
That push culminated in the 'destruction' of a disputed structure in 1992 at Ayodhya (or the mosque) by a mob of 150,000 Hindu activists, which had triggered rioting across India that killed an estimated 2,000 people.
Not to forget, the then Narasimha Rao Govt dismissed three BJP-ruled states Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. The then UP chief minister Kalyan Singh had resigned on his own ... but by then either the mission was accomplished or the damage done.
Till then ... the BJP’s support was limited to wealthier Hindus in the country’s north and west, with resistance to the party from poor, marginalised Hindus, Muslims and south Indians thought to be permanent hurdles to Hindu nationalist domination.
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| Blogger - Field Duty |
What has to be admitted is that Modi’s magnetism, especially his personal branding as a tea boy who climbed to the country’s highest ranks, has changed many socio-political calculations.
"Young Indians had grown up being told their country was on the cusp of becoming a superpower. In Modi here they had a leader who spoke as if it already was," -- ran another commentary.
In May 2026 after West Bengal mandate came; - BBC could not help reporting -
"Modi's BJP conquers Bengal, one of India's toughest political frontiers"
For years, India's West Bengal state was the great exception to Narendra Modi's political advance.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had swept through India's Hindi-speaking heartland, expanded into the west and north-east, and overwhelmed once-formidable regional rivals. Yet Bengal - argumentative and steeped in a self-image of cultural exceptionalism - remained stubbornly resistant.
This transition is now is huge. The Hindutva that seemed working only in lab called 'Gujarat' .. has now spread and even taken in former red-bastion.
Moreover, Muslims are still in sizable numbers in this province.
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