Narendra Modi, who turned 76 on September 17, remains Prime Minister in his third term, but the nature of his authority has changed and his aura is not what it was in 2014 and 2019. He remains formidable but is increasingly like the Lion in Winter, confronted by age, public fatigue, succession speculation and the limits of power.
Millions of oil lamps lit by BJP state governments in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal cannot bring back that aura. That the party resorts to such state-sponsored gimmicks, a first for any Indian Prime Minister, shows the anxiety involved in preserving it.
The inflection point came in 2024, when the BJP lost its single-party majority and needed allies to form a government. Modi remained central, but the arithmetic of power changed.
Fatigue with Mr Modi, within both the public and BJP, stems firstly from his longevity. He himself set an informal retirement age of 75 for his predecessors, to allow generational change. However, it has kept his age in focus now that he has crossed it. Public fatigue shows in gradually sliding approval ratings. A long-term national tracking poll showed Mr Modi’s popularity falling from 70 per cent in 2021 to 58% in 2026. A separate 2026 survey put approval at 49%, with younger voters cooler, and showed it could have been lower but for the BJP’s win in West Bengal.
Fatigue among supporters stems from his personalisation of the BJP. The question for the BJP or its parent organisation, the RSS, is not whether Mr Modi is good or bad; neither seems tired of him. But since his success rests on an unusually centralised and personalised leadership model, the question is how the vast structure of Hindutva built around cadre, ideology and institutional continuity will manage a political system increasingly identified with an individual in his absence.
This centralised leadership model has paid electoral dividends but troubles the RSS, whose institutional culture is older than Mr Modi’s age, yet his indispensability raises questions about sustainability. The RSS’s long-term interest is to preserve the BJP rather than defeat Mr Modi or prolong his tenure. The RSS would not only be asking who can replace Mr Modi, but also whether the Modi-era political machine can reproduce itself without him at its centre.
It would be erroneous to portray Mr Modi as powerless: he retains enormous institutional power despite the inevitable decline of his personal charisma. Yet the longer the lion makes himself indispensable, the harder it is for the pride to show it can survive without him.
Mr Modi’s weaknesses are becoming evident. India can boast high GDP growth (though economists question it, as with the latest 7.8% claims), but it is a kind of growth that has failed even after 12 years to convert aggregate growth into abundant, productive and reasonably paid employment.
The ILO’s India Employment Report 2024 shows youth unemployment rising with educational achievement, especially among technically qualified youth, and substantially higher among disadvantaged groups. One can reform the examination system, but without adequate jobs after graduation, what use is that education? Even if the lion still has teeth, the same roar is unlikely to persuade young India that he has the blueprint for its future.
“Make in India” and “Atmanirbhar Bharat” promised to make India a major manufacturing hub next only to China, creating millions of industrial jobs. That transformation remains incomplete: India’s dependence on Chinese supply chains is enormous, underlining the gap between rhetoric and achievement.
If economic criticism of Mr Modi arises from the yawning gap between growth claims and structural transformation, his diplomatic failures show a similar gap between India’s projected global stature and his inability to deliver any concrete strategic outcomes. After two decades of rhetoric and orchestrated NRI events, photo-opportunities with world leaders have not increased India’s influence. Clearly, visibility alone does not guarantee leverage.
The China problem remains unresolved: its structural advantage over India has neither disappeared nor reduced. Mr Modi’s strategy of isolating Pakistan has not worked and rather awkwardly for him, major powers are courting Pakistan today, puncturing India’s claims of regional supremacy.
Despite leaning towards the US, the India-US relationship has become more transactional than Mr Modi might have imagined. His government repeats the mantra of strategic autonomy, yet India will not displease Washington and bends at every command of Donald Trump. To get privileged access to the US market and technology, it must accommodate Washington’s strategic interests. None of these developments correspond to the high standards expected from a “Vishwaguru”.
In governance, Mr Modi has been extraordinarily successful in centralising decision making in the PMO. This may have brought speed, but it has reduced ministers to cyphers and left no institutional feedback. His pursuit of absolute control over politics has also weakened democratic institutions and impaired India’s vibrant civil society.
Such centralisation is effective when the leader is at his peak but becomes a weakness when the system must think of succession. Who decides when the leader is not in office? Does legitimacy belong to the leader or the office? Can a successor build independent authority comparable to the outgoing leader’s? More often, the successor inherits the machinery but not the authority. That is when Mr Modi’s stability can become the BJP’s fragility.
Because the architecture of power he built is highly personalised, based on loyalties and rewards, his departure could leave the system far more destabilised. The issue for the BJP will be not how to exercise power but how to transfer it without diminishing the institution’s authority. That is why a Modi walking into the sunset is likely to leave the BJP weaker.
Mr Modi’s greatest vulnerability though is non-economic: his Hindu majoritarian mobilisation has created permanent tension between his electoral strategy and the constitutional promise of equal citizenship. This has undermined his portrayal of India as a major global pole, since such a nation needs to demonstrate not just its economic power but also its social confidence and internal cohesion. Mr Modi has underperformed on both fronts.
At 76, Mr Modi is hardly a powerless lion. But as he inevitably heads towards the horizon, the question whether the system he created will outlive him remains open. His winter is not only about age. It is about diminishing returns from the rhetoric and structures of power he has created.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
