John Cassidy — Modi’s Role Model: Margaret Thatcher Or Lee Kuan Yew?

Seems like a pretty fair analysis to me. Don't look for huge Thatcher-like changes in India.

In broad terms, his campaign message was very similar to the one Mrs. T. peddled thirty-five years ago: the old way of doing things is holding us back, so let’s sweep much of it away and unleash enterprise.

There, though, the similarities between Modi and Thatcher may end. In terms of economic policy, Mrs. Thatcher was a Manchester School liberal: a fervent believer in the free market, free trade, and small government. She revered Adam Smith, she was mentored by Sir Keith Joseph, England’s version of Barry Goldwater, and she invited Milton Friedman to Downing Street. Given the political environment at the time, there was a limit to how far she could go in dismantling the postwar welfare state. But in breaking the power of the trade unions, privatizing nationalized industries, and encouraging a culture of naked individualism, she thoroughly changed Britain, and served as a role model for conservative reformers elsewhere.

Modi, despite his embrace of business, comes from a very different intellectual tradition. In seeking to modernize Gujarat, his role models were Asian strongmen, such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and China’s Deng Xiaoping, rather than Anglo-American economists. In the “Asian tiger” model of development, which Lee and Deng, along with South Korea’s Park Chung-hee, helped to popularize, markets and foreign investment play an important role, but so does the state—by directing industrialization, building infrastructure, and distributing the proceeds. As Modi seeks to revive India’s economy, which has stalled in recent years, it’s likely that he will look to Seoul and Beijing for inspiration, rather than to London and Washington.

Institutional constraints will also determine how far Modi can go in the Thatcherite direction. Britain is a small place with a strong central government; India is a sprawling federal democracy, which places limits on how much the administration in New Delhi can do.

The real challenge in India is harmonizing politics and economics with social realities in a highly disparate and contentious environment. Western analysis tends to look mostly at the economics and ignore the social and political environment that limit what can be accomplished politically.
 
The New Yorker — Rational Irrationality
Modi’s Role Model: Margaret Thatcher Or Lee Kuan Yew?
John Cassid
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)