Vishwaguru vs who in 2024 oppn has multiple answers if it chooses to look beyond rahul gandhi

Vishwaguru vs who in 2024 oppn has multiple answers if it chooses to look beyond rahul gandhi

At the Quad meeting in Hiroshima Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered to host the next summit in India. After a potentially eventful 2023 when India would be hosting global bigwigs, including the P5, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in July and the G20 in September, the Quad summit in 2024 would reaffirm India’s global stature in an election year. Think of the United States President and the Japanese and Australian Prime Ministers returning to India within a year for the Quad meet.

The Modi government worked hard to host the 2023 G20 summit. India was to take over the group’s rotational presidency and host the summit in 2021, but it swapped with Italy so as to host it in 2022 — its 75th year of Independence. Later, it swapped once more with Indonesia to host the G20 in 2023.

As for the Quad summit, Australia was supposed to be the host this year, but it had to be held on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan as US President Joe Biden had to return home for debt-cap negotiations. The Quad venue could have shifted to Australia for 2024, but PM Modi took the opportunity to make the offer to host it in India.

This gives the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a perfect opportunity to develop a new poll plank in the 2024 Lok Sabha election — the Vishwaguru or world leader. The description can be equally applicable to India’s global stature and that of PM Modi. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, it was about a ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ replacing a ‘weak’ Prime Minister and replicating the Gujarat model of development across the country. In 2019, it was about a strong and decisive Prime Minister who wouldn’t hesitate to strike across the border in Pakistan as also about a kind-hearted, welfarist PM who would give LPG cylinders to poor people, provide villages with electricity, transfer money directly into their bank accounts, build toilets for them, and insure their health.

In 2024, the BJP would be seeking votes for a Prime Minister who has made India the Vishwaguru, with the heads of most powerful nations flying thousands of miles to rub shoulders with him. Think of the contrast the BJP would draw, citing how opposition leaders ‘denigrate’ India abroad by seeking foreign intervention to restore democracy, while PM Modi has taken India’s global stature to unprecedented heights. It would be a call for Indians to vote for national pride, not for mundane matters concerning their day-to-day lives. Voters may become increasingly transactional, but a prime minister who has taken a public stand against ‘revadi’ (freebie) culture may hope to secure a fresh mandate for national pride.