, Columnist
Modi's Revolutionary Dreams
India's Prime Minister is trying to forge a new nation from sacrifice and pain.
The plan to pull notes from circulation has drawn support among the poor.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Back in 2014, Narendra Modi’s landslide victory was hailed by columnists in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, who predicted that he would prove to be India’s Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, modernizing India’s economy with a revolutionary program of deregulation and privatization.
Abruptly withdrawing more than 80 percent of the cash in circulation in India, Modi appears today a very different kind of revolutionary: the type that emerged in many non-Western countries in the previous century.