Narendra Modi thundered to victory May 16 in India’s election, trouncing the ruling Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in a seismic political shift that gives the Hindu nationalist a mandate for sweeping economic reform.

    NARENDRA MODI fought back tears in an emotional first address to his party in India’s colonnaded parliament house Tuesday, after the Hindu nationalist swept to power in an election that has changed the face of politics in the country.

    Modi will be India’s next prime minister after leading the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a historic victory in a ballot that ended May 16.

    The win handed the BJP its first parliamentary majority and reduced the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s ruling Congress Party to 44 seats, the lowest-ever tally for a party that won India’s independence and has ruled for most of the 67 years since.

    Modi, 63, choked up and paused his speech to take a drink of water during his inaugural appearance.

    He addressed BJP lawmakers, who filled more than half the seats of the lower house, with uplifting words that commentators immediately contrasted with the often wooden addresses of his predecessor Manmohan Singh.

    “It is proof of the strength of our Constitution that a man from a poor family is standing here today,” said Modi, who sold tea on a railway platform as a child. For the past 12 years, he has governed the state of Gujarat.

    “This government [will be] one which thinks of the poor, which listens to the poor, a government which lives for the people,” said Modi.

    Modi’s swearing in ceremony will take place Monday.

    After the government of Afghanistan and Sri Lanka confirmed the presence of their presidents at the ceremony, indications came from Islamabad yesterday that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will also be attending the event.

    The country’s prime minister-in-waiting is a deeply polarizing figure and an unproven commodity on the international stage.

    Analysts predict his arrival in the country’s top office will bring a marked change in direction for the world’s most populous democracy, a nation whose modern character has been defined by the inclusive, secular and liberal approach of the Congress Party, which has governed for most of the post-independence era.

    The former tea seller’s immense popularity — a Pew survey ahead of the elections found nearly 80 percent of respondents held a positive view of him — stems in large part from his reputation as a tough, “can-do” administrator, the man with the medicine to kickstart India’s stuttering economy.

    The so-called “Gujarat model” of development means a focus on infrastructure, urbanization and eradicating red tape — seen as a much-needed tonic for a country ranked 179th in the world by the World Bank in terms of ease of starting a business.

    A sharp contrast to the traditional approach of the outgoing Congress Party — which has focused on promoting inclusive growth involving a raft of welfare schemes — it’s proven highly attractive to business. India stocks have risen almost 18 percent this year at the prospect of a Modi-led government.

    The promise of economic development is just as enticing to the public, and resonates particularly with the increasingly strident aspirations of the 100 million young voters who were eligible to cast their ballots for the first time in 2014, said Dilip Dutta, director of the South Asian Studies Group at the University of Sydney.

    “These young voters are exposed through electronic media to the whole world, and have a dream of moving forward — not lagging behind as their fathers and grandfathers have for decades.”

    But not everyone is convinced about Modi’s economic prescription.

    Mohan Guruswamy, a political analyst at Delhi’s Center for Policy Alternatives, said that Modi’s record in Gujarat has been overhyped.

    “There is no ‘Gujarat model,’ and there are other states with faster economic growth,” he said during an interview in the build-up to the election.

    But journalist Arati Jerath believed Modi’s leadership would see an increase in foreign and domestic investment; his corporate agenda would also likely lead to conflict with India’s vocal civil society groups.

    “I see a rise in social tension because people have become much more conscious and they don’t want to to give up their land so easily just because Modi wants to clear the way forward for business,” she said.

    “There will be tension over forest land, there will be tension over agricultural land... It will be a very interesting thing to see how he manages the challenges.”

    Modi’s hard-nosed, occasionally abrasive leadership style will also present a marked departure for a country accustomed to a more consensus-driven approach, analysts believe.

    “I see Modi as an extraordinarily ambitious man, quite ruthless in the pursuit of his ambition,” said Jerath.

    His track record with India’s 180 million-strong Muslim community, the country’s second-largest religious group, has come under intense scrutiny.

    Less than a year after Modi assumed office in Gujarat in late 2001, the state was wracked with anti-Muslim violence, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.

    Modi was criticized for not doing enough to halt the violence, but a Supreme Court-ordered investigation absolved him of blame last year.

    Modi subsequently expressed regret over the riots but was criticized for not apologizing.

    The U.S. State Department denied Modi a visa in 2005 over the issue, but after his win, U.S. President Barack Obama called Modi to congratulate him and invite him to Washington, according to the White House.

    Modi’s nationalist outlook — informed by “a sense of victimhood, that we’ve been victimized by foreigners” — would also likely be reflected in India’s foreign policy, Guruswamy, who knows Modi personally, said.

    “Internationally, he would be a little more hardline on everything — Pakistan, China, America. Indian interests would be aggressively asserted,” he said.

    Modi was born on Sept. 17, 1950, at Vadnagar in Gujarat’s Mehsana district.

    He is the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and his wife Heeraben.

    The Modis home was a lower middle-class household.

    His initiation into the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Organization, was reportedly incidental and not the result of any specific plan. According to his biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, as a child he began attending bal shakhas, training workshops for children, and soon took a fancy to its “disciplined” structure.

    At the age of 12, Modi would go to the local railway station to meet soldiers heading for the Sino-Indian border for the war.

    Modi reportedly flirted with the idea of becoming a sanyasi (an Indian religious mendicant) and joining the Ramakrishna Mission after staying briefly at its headquarters in Belur.

    Not a graduate, he was rejected admission.

    At 17, he was made to marry Jashodaben.

    Modi graduated from Delhi University and MA (Political Science) from Gujarat University.

    Narendra Modi’s entry into active politics began at the age of 37, when he joined the BJP in 1987.

    (SD-Agencies)