Modi has completed eleven years of his tenure as Prime Minister. Peans of praise are being offered by one group of our citizenry who are clapping their hands in unison to state how we are on the verge of becoming the fourth-largest economy and how Operation Sindhoor has left Pakistan with a bloody nose. On the other end of the spectrum are those who see few achievements in this long an inning. They believe communal hatred, self-promotion and deception have come to mark the leitmotif of Modi’s reign.

Rather than take a bird’s view of the dramatic transformation that has taken place in these eleven years, I thought it would be interesting to cull out from all this verbiage what this era has meant for the average citizen. In this case, the common person being none other than a middle class, liberal like myself.

In March 2014, I was in Assi Ghat, Varanasi, and I still remember the sense of enthusiasm and optimism that had gripped this town, which genuinely believed that this “Ma Ganga ka Putra” would usher in “Achche Din” for this country. I was back in Varanasi five years later. In March 2019. Groups of chai-drinking young boys were still hanging around the chai shops, but their enthusiasm for Modi had diminished considerably. The question they were then asking was, “If there was a strong opposition leader, we would have voted for him, but there is nobody else.” Five years later, in 2024, the mood had changed to a sense of foreboding and distrust. These youngsters would all look over their shoulders before they spoke. It was obvious that they felt if they spoke out freely, they could end up being........

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