Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. On an early morning this January, hundreds of Indian politicians, world leaders, business moguls, and journalists gathered in a huge convention center in the western Indian state of Gujarat. They came here for the Vibrant Gujarat Summit, a business event that draws investment pledges
worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Leaders from some of the world's biggest companies showed up, including Microsoft, in Nvidia, and on stage, speaker after speaker praised one man.
When foreigners think of new India, they think of a new Gujarat. How did this transformation happen because of one leader.
That's Mukesham Banni, the richest man in India and in Asia.
Our beloved leader was emerged as the greatest global leader of our times. And he is Sen NARENDR Vai Modi, the most successful prime minister in India's history.
One big reason on Banni can't stop singing Narandromodi's praises his own net worth. It is quintupled since Mody became Prime Minister. Ambani is now the eleventh richest person on the planet, right behind Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison and Bonnie was also one of the first business heavyweights that came to support this summit. Vibrant Gujarat. It was Mody's brainchild while he was Chief Minister of the state and it's no coincidence that this summit first took place in
two thousand and three. That's just a year after riots in Gujarat left more than one thousand people dead and brought criticism of the state and its leader Mody. Welcome to The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wan Ha. Each week we bring you one big story from Asia, taking you deeper into some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and businesses that
drive this fast changing region. Today the second episode in our two part series on India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We look at how Mody emerged even stronger after the riots and how he used his relationships with billionaires to
propel his power and India to new heights. After more than one thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed in violent riots in Gujarat in two thousand and two, Modi came under immediate pressure the Indian Supreme Court would eventually clear Modi of any wrongdoing years later, but in two thousand
and two, he was besieged with accusations from all over India. Critics, including members of his own party, accused him of failing to do enough to stop the violence, and amid the criticism, Modi saw an opportunity to cement his political support in Gujarat, a state were Hindu's outnumber Muslims by a wide margin. Just five months after the riots, Modi called an early election and ran on a defiantly pro Hindu campaign.
So Moodi ran a campaign which was actually very provocated.
That's Nilanjan Mokopati Hai, a journalist based in Delhi and author of a Modi biography, Narendra Modi the man the times.
He actually called, you know, in one of his speeches, said that I have shocked all these refugee camps.
Those refugee camps had been set up for tens of thousands of Muslims. They lost their homes in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots.
Is preferred to the refugee camp, says baby manufacturing factories.
If you didn't catch that, Klanjan said that Modi called these refugee camps baby making factories. This stirred up unfounded fears that Muslims in India, who only make up about fourteen percent of the population, would soon overtake Hindus in numbers.
A certain amount of Gujati majoritarian sentiment was unleashed by mister.
Moody and it worked.
So that is how mister Moody suddenly became from the leader of a government and a party which was not very sure whether they will win the elections, to somebody who became the Hindu ride Samat, the emperor of Hindu hearts.
The riots galvanized the Hindu nationalist movement and made Modi an unapologetic Hindu leader only more popular. Modi's BJP ended up winning seventy percent of seats, the biggest victory for any party in Gujarat in nearly two decades, but still had a problem. The reputations of both Mody and his home state were in tatters, particularly on the international stage.
He decided, or he also realized, because ultimately you have to improve the image of the state. Also the only way is by projecting the image of a very peaceful state.
But how Modi's strategy win over India's biggest tycoons. Mody personally called the country's leading entrepreneurs and convinced them to come and invest in the state. He implemented a slew of pro business measures, cutting layers and layers of bureaucracy, and sped up investment approvals. Listen to how excited the crowd was to see Mody at a festival tied to the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in two thousand and four.
I'll say, let me raise your hands and say Gujarati's will.
In a short period of time, Librant Gujat became a very important event for which people would flood.
And they didn't just show up. They invested money, lots of money. Banni says his company, Reliance Industries, has invested one hundred and fifty billion US dollars in India in the last ten years and that a third of that has gone to Gujarat alone. And Guta Madani, who is now India's second richest man, invested in big dollar projects such as power plants. One of Adani's power plants in
the state can power millions of rural homes. Those projects created thousands of jobs in Mody's home state and fed right back into growing public support for Mody.
What we can very definitely say is that business loves him and he's also made every possible gesture reached out for them to come and invest an inn set of shop in India.
Bloomberg Sudi ran Jansen has been covering India for nearly three decades.
So vibrant gujard and his friendship with billionnaires and Gujarat riots are all kind of intertwined.
And in the almost thirteen years Mody was in charge of the state, Gujrat's economy grew an average of nearly ten percent each year, higher than the country overall. Mody's record on the state economy, combined with his charisma on the campaign trail, catapulted him onto the national stage. He rose to become the Prime Minister candidate of his party, the Baratiya Janta Party or the BJP. And in May twenty fourteen.
We begin with the biggest exercise in democracy ever. Narendra Moody has won a landslide victory in India's election. The long dominant Congress party has conceded defeat and has headed for its worst loss and it's head to Mumbai.
You can hear how excited his supporters are in this video posted on Modi's official YouTube channel. After the break, Modi focuses on helping the poor before carrying out his Hindu First agenda, passing measures that stoke further tension between Hindus and religious minorities in India, all the while winning praise from world leaders and business titans like Elon Musk. After savoring the biggest election win in India in thirty years,
Mody took quick action to quiet critics. They accused him of focusing on pleasing Hindu conservatives rather than improving the lives of the country's poorest people. So Mody pledged to focus on toilets, first temples. Later, here's him talking about it in a speech in twenty thirteen.
Friends, I'm known to be a Hindu nationalist leader. I have said this with a lot of courage in my state, and I keep repeating. My image does not permit me to say so, but I dare to say that my real thought is first pill, toilets, ten temples.
Modi's government launched a series of programs. Beyond providing toilets, It provided the poor with cheap cooking gas, running water, electricity, and on top of that, gave hundreds of millions of Indians new bank accounts, allowing them to directly access government subsidies instead of having to go through middlemen who often took a cut.
With you know, being able to bank the unbanked. He's been able to largely, not completely, but largely in some areas, do away with, you know, the corruption that was there in between in the delivery systems. That has really worked.
And as he grew in power, Modi and the BJP sought to unify the Hindu vote by seeking to convince the majority of Indians to identify more as Hindus than by caste. Now, India's cast system is an ancient system of social hierarchy based on birth, and it's one of the traditional dividing lines politically. Although cast discrimination is officially banned, the system is still a big factor in deciding everything
from education and healthcare to job opportunities. Under Modi, the BJP has brought in more Hindus into the party, effectively building a bigger coalition of Hindu voters across cast lines. The party's membership more than tripled in twenty nineteen, with Modi at the helm.
What we see that the BJP has excelled in is being able to kind of bring in more or less all casts and smaller groups within the Hindu in the religon. So why are you pushing the Hindu first agenda front and center. You're also taking care of the different divisions that are there in society and trying to say that innaded us who can take care of you, Therefore you need to follow us. Therefore you need to support us.
During his first term, Mody largely focused on economic issues. A second landslide election win in twenty nineteen prompted him to move full steam ahead with some long standing goals of Hindu conservatives. A few months into Modi's second term, his government scrapped the special status of Jamu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state. The status had allowed the state to make its own laws and gave it autonomy
in nearly all matters. India also passed a law that fast tracked citizenship rights for immigrants from neighboring nations, except for those who identify as Muslim. The law, called the Citizenship Amendment Act, sparked protests and sporadic communal violence. Muslims who had immigrated to India years ago fear that they might be deported or placed in detention camps. We are protest or.
We are the most chasing against a law which is parsed by the Indian woman, which is based on the religion, which discim anerica an artist. For the first time, you have a very popular leader who is anabashedly a Hindu leader. India has seen Hindu leaders earlier who have always been very mindful, sensitive about other communities. In this case, it is just the opposite. You have a very you know of muscular show of religion.
Since Modi came to power in twenty fourteen, the representation of Muslim lawmakers in Parliament has been dropping and pro Hindu pop songs are growing in popularity. And while some in the West may think this would be bad for Mody, none of that has turned off his voting base. Sudi says that's because of the growth he's delivered and the
lack of big corruption scandals under his watch. The more Modi and the BJP can unify the Hindu vote, the greater the likelihood they can rule India for decades to come.
So it doesn't hurt his popularity just because of the numbers. If you look at the Hindu population, it is the majority population and the Muslim population is a minority. It's about only fourteen percent. So it really doesn't affect you know, Prime Minister more the other BJP's electoral fortunes, so to say.
And just a few months after Modi and the BJP won a second term, a Supreme Court ruling gave them
even more room to push their Hindu first agenda. Remember that mosque that was destroyed by Hindu mob in nineteen ninety two, While in twenty nineteen, the Supreme Court announced a verdict that essentially handed Hindu's control of the area and that meant Mody was finally able to deliver on a long standing promise, the promise to build a Hindu temple in a Yodia where a mosque had stood for centuries.
The sounds that you're hearing are from the inauguration ceremony this January of the Ram Temple in the northern city of a Yodia. And at the center of this big celebration is Narendra Modi. He's dressed in a traditional kurta almost as white as his beard and in his hands he holds a red cushion with a large silver ornament,
and during the ceremony, prostrates himself before a statue of ram. Now, the temple's actually not going to be fully completed until this December, but Mody planned for the opening ceremony to take place just several months before he's up for re election.
Haimae from today, from this sacred moment, we must lay the foundation for the next thousand years.
With millions of people joining the middle class each year, India could see annual growth rates reaching eight percent over the next decade. A Bloomberg analysis estimated that India could overtake China as the world's fastest growing economy as early as twenty twenty eight, and globally, India is in a sweet spot right now as tensions grow between the US
and China, India is benefiting from the fallout. It's now the world's most populous country and it's a huge and potentially lucrative market for companies looking to diversify away from US slowing China companies like Tesla. You can hear how passionate Elon Musk is in this video after he met Mody last year.
Well, I'm actually incredibly excited about the future of India. I think India has more promise than any large country in the world.
I am a fan of Mody.
So and here's JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond.
Modi has done an unbelieving job in India. He's taken four hundred million people of poverty. They've gone umbling education system, umblieing infrastructure. They're lifting up that whole country because this one man is just ased off.
Meanwhile, religious tensions and accusations of unfair treatment of minorities in India have not gone away. The problem got new light last year when Hardeep sing Najar was shot dead in Canada this past June. He was a Canadian and a prominent Sikh separatist leader who was labeled a terrorist by India. Here's Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking about the killing.
Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh.
Canadian police charged four Indian nationals with first degree murder in the killing of the Sikh activists. They also said officers are actively investigating links to Mody's government, which has dismissed the allegations as absurd. After the allegations emerged, Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln said the US does bring up human rights issues with India, but he also praised Mody's remarkable achievements. Here's Blinken at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
Well, we see an extraordinary success stories. We also see a relationship between our countries that is in a new place, at a new level, and that's been I think the very deliberate effort of both Prime Minister and President Biden.
And right now it looks like Mody and the BJP are set for another term. I asked Sudy, what would India look like if Mody wins big yet again.
If this government comes back as it claims, it is coming back with larger numbers, So you can expect a lot of stability in economic policy, foreign policy, you can expect a lot of stability. On the other hand, the darker or the difficult parts of that would be when you push a unified way of living. You know that is perhaps in a diverse, multicultural country, like India, could lead to major problems.
On the campaign trail, Mody has gotten questions about how long he plans to stay in power, and he's avoided giving a clear answer. In an interview with a local media outlet this month, he said no country should run on one man. Yet he gave a very different answer two months earlier at a public forum hosted by local media India Today. Listen to how he frames his answer when asked whether he is already looking ahead to elections in twenty twenty.
Nine twenty nine, You're stuck in twenty twenty nine. I'm preparing and planning for twenty five twenty forty seven.
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wan Ha. This episode was produced by Young Young and Naomi Un. It was edited by Caitlin Kenney, Daniel ten Kate, Emma O'Brien, Nishantahia and Jeanette Rodriguez. It was mixed by Alex Suguiera, Jessica Beck and Blake Maples, who also wrote our theme music. The story was fact checked by Thomas Leu and David Fox. Special thanks to Sunjai pr Supriya Batra, Tamur Soban Naomi Shaven, Currian Abraham, Elizabeth Ponso, and the
Bloomberg Originals team. Nicole Beemster Bower is our executive producer, and Sage Bowman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening to The Big Take, Asia, Please follow this show wherever you listen to podcasts.
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