Narendra Modi has always been ahead of his times. During the 1995 elections to Gujarat's legislative assembly which he oversaw as organizing secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi wanted catchy pictures of BJP campaign events in rural outposts, especially in neglected but colourful tribal pockets, to be delivered at lightning speed to media outlets across the state.
Lack of access to modern technology came in the way of his plans. Mofussil news photographers did not have digital cameras. They used films, which have now completely gone out of fashion, processed their work in dark rooms, and sent prints to their news organizations. So an event in a far-flung constituency, even if it was a momentous mass rally, would be featured pictorially in a Gujarati newspaper three or four days later. Modi was impatient.
One day, when Modi rang up two non-resident Indians living in the United Kingdom, he talked about his frustrations. They were both physicians from Gujarat. Modi had already built a network of devoted friends and admirers abroad through his travels, his infectious energy, and his vision of India which found ready takers among NRIs. The two doctors dropped everything and arrived in Gujarat three days later to help Modi with his campaign.
They brought with them a video camera each. Although P.V. Narasimha Rao had become prime minister and his finance minister, Manmohan Singh, had initiated economic reforms four and a half years earlier, import restrictions were still in place. Baggage allowances for travellers were measly. Modi advised his two NRI friends to notify customs at their entry point into India that the video cameras were being brought in as "TBRE", a common term then in international airport parlance across India. The acronym stands for Tourist Baggage Re-export.
Under TBRE, items such as video cameras, which attract big duty or are disallowed for import because they are "luxury goods", can be brought in provided travellers fill up a designated form and details of such goods are entered in their passports. While returning to their adopted countries, NRIs have to keep TBRE items in their hand baggage, show these to customs officials as proof of re-export, and have the entries in passports duly cancelled.
Modi, unsurprisingly, was familiar with the working of these video cameras. On multiple occasions, I saw him personally handle them and transmit campaign pictures directly into newsrooms of leading newspapers in Gujarat which promptly printed them the very next day. He ended the practice of newspapers publishing three-or four-day-old rural campaign photos. The BJP's rivals simply could not cope with his tech-savvy style of campaign organizing.
The use of new technology, entirely a well-thought-out campaign tool by the BJP's Gujarat organizing secretary, was a factor which helped the BJP win the 1995 Vidhan Sabha polls. The BJP in the state has never looked back. Since then, the party has been in power in Gandhinagar for 21 continuous years.
Just as in 1995, Modi's pronouncements this month about child mortality in a part of Kerala and an adverse reference to Somalia by way of comparison in the course of his campaign for assembly elections in the southern state are ahead of the times.
Visitors to Kerala often marvel that unlike in most parts of India, beggars are hard to find. Driving from prosperous Kottayam to civil servant-populated and middle class Thiruvananthapuram, you pass Bentleys, BMWs and Audis every now and then. You may even come across a rare Maserati or an even rarer Lamborghini.
Whenever visitors narrate such experiences, I recall what Saif al Ghurair, emerging Dubai's biggest employer in the 1980s and a pioneer in local private sector industrialization, used to say about the future of the Gulf. "My father and grandfather travelled across the desert on camels. I ride in a Lincoln towncar. My son will go across the Atlantic on Concorde. But I fear my grandsons will travel again on camels." His lament was that most Gulf states were not planning for the day when oil runs out or industrialized countries discover a substitute fuel that will make the only natural resource in kingdoms like Saudi Arabia lose its value.
Kerala's economy, its quality of life and its standard of living are not the products of any planned use of the conventional factors of production. They are primarily sustained by remittances from emigrants to the Gulf. Estimates of the number of such emigrants vary from 10 to 15 per cent of Kerala's working population.
It is no longer a question of "what if" but "when" a large chunk of expatriates in the Gulf are forced to return to Kerala for good. The fall in oil prices and creeping unrest in that region because of the ideology of the Islamic State/Daesh - not so much the physical presence of these groups - are already beginning to cast shadows over the large Indian population in oil-fuelled economies, shadows that may prove to be long and disturbing for Kerala.
If there is a return of Keralites from the Gulf on a big scale, the state's economy will decline to the depressing depths of the 1960s and 1970s. Its standard of living could precipitously fall - not just fall, but decline below the national average. Modi may not have been thinking on these lines when he was campaigning in recent days in Kerala, but his words about child mortality and Somalia have a chilling and prophetic tone to them.
The government, which will be sworn into office in Thiruvananthapuram after the results on May 19, must not dismiss the prime minister's words as the result of his foot being in his mouth or as a product of wrong information having been fed by his speech-writers. The next government should plan to deal with this eventuality as a top priority.
Memories of emigrants from Kuwait returning to Kerala after Saddam Hussein invaded the prosperous emirate in 1990 are a nightmarish reminder of what could happen again. The circumstances of any future exodus from the Gulf may be peacefully different and not panicky as it was 26 years ago.
When Malayalis came home from Kuwait penniless and deprived of their possessions, those at home did not welcome the returnees like brethren who needed succour. I was at a railway platform when a train full of victims of Saddam's misadventure chugged in. Every shop on the platform shut down because their owners were worried that the famished and weary 'refugees' will ask for tea, biscuits or other items from their stocks, but may not be able to pay for the merchandise. Sadly, that is human nature, especially in a society where the market and capitalist values are taking over.
When campaigning for the assembly poll in Kerala was in full swing, I re-read a book which lucidly deals with the state's economic prospects, devoid of the pedantic style of many economists. Kerala's Economy: Crouching Tiger, Sacred Cows is edited in a format which anyone can grasp. The book is the product of a conference some years ago in Thiruvananthapuram organized by Stanford University's Center for International Development, The Indus Entrepreneurs, an entrepreneurial effort which began in Silicon Valley in 1992, the Kerala Global Support Network, a group of Keralites settled abroad and the Asian School of Business in the state capital.
Arun M. Kumar, who has written a 13-page introduction to 10 chapters in the book, has suggested five areas for attention to "take Kerala's economic dynamism to another level." Of these five areas, two deserve urgent attention if the next government has serious plans to secure the state's economic future: make Kerala more attractive for non-Keralites is Kumar's novel suggestion. There is opportunity here which should not be missed. As cities like Bangalore become more xenophobic, intolerant and conservative, Kerala ought to cash in and get out of its excessive reliance on its own people in the Gulf.
Kumar recalls that Zhou Enlai had set up preliminary links with Chinese expatriates around the world long before Deng Xiaoping opened up China. He suggests a similar initiative. Kerala taps its expatriates mostly to host visiting ministers in the Gulf and elsewhere. The state could make a fresh start by tapping the talent and experience of someone like Arun M. Kumar, for instance. In the second term of the American president, Barack Obama, Kumar has been director general of the United States Foreign Commercial Service, leading Washington's trade and investment promotion efforts in over 100 American cities and in 72 world markets. He is also Obama's assistant secretary of commerce for global markets. Like Zhou and Deng, Indian states like Kerala with global stakes should learn to tap the talent pool which it can access and not rely solely on the Indian Administrative Service.
