Biography of Mr Narendra Modi, Chief Minister, Gujarat
Chief Minister of Gujarat since October 2001, Mr Narendra Modi was born to a middle class family in the Mehsana district of Gujarat in 1950. He displayed decisive leadership qualities during his student life itself, when he successfully set up a new chapter of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a powerful
national student body. A post-graduate in political science, he entered social life right at the beginning of his career, in the early seventies.
He started with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a socio-cultural organisation that has always been, and continues to be, focussed upon social and cultural development of India and her citizens. RSS imparts the crucial spirits of selflessness, social responsibility, dedication and nationalism to its cadres and participates in politics only occasionally, most often by deputing its pracharaks (apparatchiks) to BJP and other supplementary organisations. India’s former (1998-2004) Prime Minister Mr Vajpayee and the former Dy Prime Minister Mr Advani were among those deputed to politics (i.e. the BJP) by the RSS.
During his years with the RSS, Mr Modi played an important role on several occasions, including the 1974 anti-corruption agitation and during the harrowing 19 month (from June 1975 to January 1977) long ‘emergency’ when fundamental rights of Indian citizens were suspended. Mr Modi kept the spirit of democracy live by staying underground for the entire period and fighting a spirited battle against the fascist ways of the then government.
After serving the RSS for about a decade-and-a-half, in 1988, Mr Modi was made the General Secretary of the BJP’s Gujarat unit. By that time he had already acquired the reputation of being a highly efficient organiser. He took up the challenging task of energising the
party cadres in right earnest. The party started earning political gains and formed a coalition government in April 1990. The partnership fell apart within a few months but the BJP came to power with a two-third majority on it’s own in 1995. Since then, the BJP has been the ruling party in the state of Gujarat.
Between 1988 and 1995, Mr Modi was recognised as the master strategist who had successfully carried out the necessary ground work for making the Gujarat BJP the ruling party of the state. During this period, Mr Modi was entrusted with the responsibility of organising two crucial national events also - the Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra (a very long march) of Mr Advani and a similar march from Kanyakumari (the southern most part of India) to the troubled Kashmir in north. Most historians have attributed the coming of the BJP to power at New Delhi in 1998 to these two highly successful events, the nitty-gritty of which was handled by Mr Narendra Modi.
In 1995 Mr Modi was asked by his party to play a role at the national level – he was appointed as Secretary of the BJP’s national unit at New Delhi. He was promoted as General Secretary (Organisation) in 1998, a post he held until October 2001, when he was chosen to be the chief minister of one of India’s most prosperous
states, Gujarat.
During his stint at the national level, Mr Modi was asked to oversee the affairs of several state level units, including the sensitive and crucial states like Jammu & Kashmir and the equally sensitive north-eastern states. He was responsible, and credited for, having successfully revamped the party organisation in several states. While working at the national level, Mr Modi emerged as an important spokesman for the party and played a key role on several important occasions.
In October 2001, he was asked by the party to head the government in Gujarat. In the first year of the new millennium, though a relatively prosperous state, Gujarat was facing problems because of several natural calamities having struck in the preceding years, including the massive earthquake in January 2001. Once again Mr Modi took the bull by the horns and decided to convert the adversities into an opportunity. He developed a clear vision of his own for the future of the state, re-organised the government’s administrative structure, embarked upon a massive cost-cutting exercise and successfully put Gujarat on the road to growth in a short period of three years. Last year, Gujarat registered a GDP growth rate of over 10%, which was the highest growth rate among all the states in India.
Mr Narendra Modi has, during the first three years of his tenure (October 2001 to December 2004) as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, successfully reduced the fiscal deficit of the state exchequer by fifty per cent and has slashed the losses of the huge public utility (Gujarat Electricity Board), besides making available electricity for domestic consumption in over 5,000 villages.