“The thing that is most misunderstood about Narendra Modi”, The Sunday Guardian Live, September 21, 2025:
“To understand why Narendra Modi will win again, if he chooses to contest, in 2029, you have to look at what is failing across Europe, the US, and especially the UK. Reams have been written about the unbeaten track record of India’s now three-term Prime Minister but the analysis has mostly focused either on social and ideological campaigns or astute construction of an electoral machinery that is agile and responsive. But this is only one part of the story.
The part that remains under-studied is the construction of a new welfare state by Modi which has emerged as an alternative to the Western welfare state model. In 2019, I wrote the first paper on this for the Observer Research Foundation (“The economic mind of Narendra Modi”), and since then the argument has become exponentially stronger.
As the Western welfare model that sustained Western democracies since the end of the Second World War when the term “welfare state” spearheaded by the Labour Party post-war government and the Beveridge Report (which created the National Health Service) crumbles, India is showing the future of what a new welfare model could look like……..”
Read the full article at Sundayguardianlive.com
