Narendra Modi has been Prime Minister for a year, and it’s really been eventful.
Thanks to cartoonists Tanmaya Tyagi, Satish Acharya, Manjul, and Neelabh Banerjee we take a light-hearted look back at Modi’s first year in power.
Modi the ‘omni-present’, the man who replaced his Party as the face of the BJP’s biggest ever political victory. His election campaign was nothing like India had ever seen before. It was a one man show that had the news cameras following him everywhere, broadcasting him 24/7:
Typically, the financial markets did not bother to wait for Counting Day. As opinion polls started to show that the business-friendly Modi would come to power with a decisive mandate, the stock market saw a bull run. Though someone wished that hadn’t happened:
Once Modi had won, he quit as Gujarat Chief Minister after 12 dominant years, and headed to Delhi to become India’s Prime Minister on 26 May, 2014:
On 15 August 2014, with the mood of the nation still upbeat, Modi gave an Independence Day speech that promised a lot and no doubt gave many, much hope for the future:
The BJP remained upbeat winning the Haryana state election for the first time, even becoming the single largest party in Maharashtra for the first time - both victories attributed to Modi’s personal popularity. The Congress’s stock hitting rock-bottom...
....though there were some unsettling surprises in the UP and Bihar by-elections:
Of course, they’ve been controversies along the way.
Some thought that Modi was making the bureaucracy work too hard....
........others felt he was taking the easy way out with his Ordinances:
In 2015, there was the Delhi shocker, as AAP gave the BJP its first severe political drubbing since Modi came to power:
Modi has been a PM on the move. The globetrotter PM has made himself the mascot and CEO of a resurgent India, every international trip has been a PR success. Of course, this did invite comment that he may occasionally have taken his eyes off local issues:
The other big political skid for the Modi government has been the Land Bill. Unseasonal rains have hurt India’s farmers, and a resurgent Rahul Gandhi has been projecting the PM as ‘anti-farmer’. Genuine debate on the Land Bill has sadly, taken a back seat:
While Modi’s almost ‘infallible’ persona does not allow India’s leading cartoonists to truly revel in spoofing our year-old PM, here at The Quint, we believe they should just hang in there. Indian politics and humor, in the long run, are ‘made for each other’ !
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