To say Narendra Modi is the consummate politician would not cut it. There have been several very wily politicians in India before. India has also had a raft of hard-working politicians before Modi.

But Narendra Modi the politician is in a different league because he has turned the wisdom — the imagery — of the average politician in India.

Modi the politician takes no holidays. He sleeps little. And he works hard. In the past five years, we have seen him returning from an overseas trip and jump right into a meeting with bureaucrats or into an election rally. Few politicians in India, even the world, have shown this capacity for gruelling long hours and toil.

In contrast, Modi’s main opponent, the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, is known to take breaks from work. Though Gandhi has reduced vacationing and launched a punishing campaign himself, he has been unable to match Modi’s reputation as a politician singularly focussed on politicking.

Much to the dismay of journalists, Modi does not even take the weekends off. He actually devotes big-box announcements or the launch of a government program to a weekend.

In the run-up to the elections, several surveys predicted that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP) alliance will just win a parliamentary majority. The commanding mandate he won five years ago will see a dramatic drop, they said.

But his government’s inability to create a million jobs every month, and ease farmers’ distress over low product prices, has taken the shine off what is still the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

Indeed, the economy had lost shine because of farmer distress and a jobs crisis. In December, alarm bells rang for the BJP after it lost three key states to the main opposition Congress and its allies, led by Rahul Gandhi.

But a surge in tension with traditional foe Pakistan in February and subsequent air strikes pushed Modi ahead. The PM was quick to project himself as a defender of national security and painted his rivals as weak-kneed, sometimes even questioning their patriotism. This he did, as is his wont, with a relentless campaign.

Modi began his political rise as a teenager in Gujarat, joining Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which modelled itself in the 1930s after fascist Italy and which is regarded as the ideological parent of the BJP.

Speaking at rallies, Modi built a reputation as a powerful orator and political strategist, and in the late 1980s was tapped as a general secretary of the BJP in Gujarat. He rose quickly through the party's ranks and, by October 2001, was running the state as chief minister.

Besides the unlikely rise to power, it is the punishing schedule that he keeps that also endeared Modi to voters.

First Published:May 23, 2019 8:31 PM IST