At this soul-destroying moment in the history of our nation, fomented by the malevolent governance of the last decade, we are being taunted by the over-the-top, fatuous celebration earlier this month of Narendra Modi becoming the longest serving “elected” prime minister, surpassing the elected tenure of 4398 days of Jawaharlal Nehru. Leaving aside the humbug of expunging Nehru’s leadership during the seminal period between 1947 and 1952 following the Partition of the country, there’s a lot more that is repugnant about the commemoration of this dubious achievement.To start with, longevity in itself is no virtue. The Fuhrer, the original archetype of the Vishwaguru, was in power for 4470 days from January 30, 1933 to April 30,1945. The worth of a public figure, in particular, is not measured by his staying power but by what he has done to make the world a better place.No doubt, the apologists and spin doctors of the regime are mindful of this obvious truth when committing the ultimate blasphemy of sizing up the tenures of the consummate scholar-statesman Nehru and the demagogue pracharak Modi whose academic qualification itself is of uncertain provenance (And he has the gumption to author a book titled Exam Warriors on dealing with academics and exam stress.)It is an odious comparison but what’s truly reprehensible is the disingenuity of the flurry of comparative analyses appearing in the mainstream media. In the blinkered view of the godi hacks and ‘political analysts’ seeking to curry favours with the powers that be, Modi is being paraded as our greatest prime minister, miles ahead of Nehru. Even two played-out political leaders, H.D. Deve Gowda and Nitish Kumar, have joined the chorus of obsequious admirers. These critics are impervious to facts, steeped in bigotry and can’t be bothered to factor in the starkly different worlds that these two leaders have had to contend with. Yes, we live in a dystopian world where chalk scores over cheese.The typical gushing evaluation of Modi contrasts his modest beginnings as a tea seller with Nehru’s “golden spoon in his mouth” upbringing. Modi is portrayed as the leader of the masses whereas Nehru is characterised as an aristocrat cut off from the grassroots. Forgotten is the nine years that Nehru spent in British jails fighting for India’s independence and the years spent traversing India’s villages for the same cause. Only a man whose heart beat to the pulse of his country and people could have written The Discovery of India, a profound critique of India’s rich history, philosophical traditions, composite culture and fraught colonial engagement. On the other hand, up until he was installed as the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, Modi was an undistinguished Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary. But once he captured the political limelight, the spin doctors conjured stories of ‘Bal Narendra’ fearlessly catching a baby crocodile, staging a play to mobilise funds for repairing the broken wall of his school, serving hot tea and refreshments to transiting jawans during the 1965 war, et al. His shadowy role as a fugitive from the law during the Emergency has been embellished with his own version of his subversive activities at that treacherous time. Modi acolytes accuse Nehru of fostering economic policies that that produced what economist Raj Krishna disparagingly termed ‘the Hindu rate of growth’ by creating a licence raj, discouraging private investment and promoting grossly inefficient public sector behemoths. In contrast, Modi is seen as a visionary who gave a boost to the economy by eliminating outdated laws, strengthening infrastructure, particularly the road network, privatising loss-making PSUs and encouraging start-ups and unicorns.But this bland assessment purely in terms of outcomes does not tell the real story. The two leaders operated in starkly different worlds. Nehru confronted an economy crippled by colonisation, the trauma of Partition that led to the influx of over 14 million refugees, recalcitrant princely states, a non-existent industrial base, primitive agricultural methods, widespread poverty and hunger. He had to start from scratch, and given the forbidding challenges, did a splendid job by the country.On the other hand, Modi inherited a booming economy that in 2014 was poised to become the fastest growing economy in the world. But his government’s blunders have set the country back by at least a decade. According to experts, India lost 1.5 million jobs in the aftermath of the demonetisation of 2016. Almost as catastrophic was the hasty and flawed implementation of the GST that dealt a body blow to the informal sector from which it is yet to recover.A cold, heartless capitalistic ethic reigns behind the veneer of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas socialism. Modi’s economic policies have focussed on the corporates and the well-to-do for whom the government has provided extensive tax benefits and incentives, even writing off their humungous debts, while the common man is anaesthetised with free ration, subsidised gas and the mirage of a pucca house and an open-defecation-free world. As a former railwayman, particularly galling has been the lopsided focus on the glitzy Vande Bharat trains and upper-class passengers, and the criminal abandonment of the common man’s needs, reflected in the number of ordinary class passengers across all categories plummeting from 792 crore in 2013-14 to 586 crore in 2023-24.The elitist policies of the regime have exacerbated inequality. The mind-boggling wealth concentration is reflected in the statistic that the country’s richest 1% control over 40% of the national wealth whereas the bottom 50% own a meagre 3%, a frightening level of inequality that surpasses the disparities that existed in the colonial era. The obscene wealth of the few has to be viewed against India’s Hunger Index rank which has slipped from 55 in 2014 to an abysmal 102 in 2025.Look what’s happened to us on the international stage. Nehru was the most respected statesman of his time, refusing to take sides in the Cold War, spearheading the Non-Aligned Movement and acting as a crucial mediator in the Korean War. On Kashmir, Nehru consciously chose the plebiscite route so as not to compound the blood-letting let loose by Partition for an uncertain outcome, whereas Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, focussed on Junagarh and Hyderabad, was more than willing to hand over Kashmir.In contrast, the Vishwaguru has made one blunder after another, the latest being his embrace of the mass killer Benjamin Netanyahu who has been arraigned by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal. Meanwhile, our bete noir Pakistan has emerged as the peace maker in the war on Iran initiated by US and Israel and achieved the impossible of establishing the best of relations with USA, China, Russia, Iran and the Gulf States. Modi, on the other hand, has ensured that we have no friend in our neighbourhood and is otherwise treated with cautious suspicion by the international community. Of course, Afghanistan is on our side. There is something terribly wrong with our country today. The widespread poverty, unemployment, income inequality and infrastructure deficits are dreadful but not the most critical problem confronting the country. Our greatest predicament is our diminished humanity, the loss of the nation’s soul. A visible manifestation of this atrophy of the spirit is observable in the dumbing down of our seats of learning and culture. What does one make of a society where students, instead of studying and having fun, are out on the streets protesting against an iniquitous education system? Today our notion of popular art is The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story. We are now spiritually crippled.It has finally boiled down to a choice between Nehru’s vision for the country expressed in his Tryst with Destiny speech at the dawn of Independence and Modi’s exclusionary majoritarian project that seeks to impose a single cultural and religious identity on the nation. In those historic 10 minutes, perched atop the Red Fort, Nehru laid out his idea of India based on political, economic and social justice. He warned that the greatest threat to the country was sectarian divisiveness: “All of us to whatever religion we may belong are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness…in thought or in action.”Until Modi came onto the scene in 2014, Nehru’s idea of India as a secular democracy prevailed. The template had been provided by the Mahatma who began his prayer meetings with Ishwar Allah Tera Naam, emphasising our multi-hued culture. But this gospel of collaborative fraternity has been forgotten, drowned out by the strident Jai Shree Ram chant. Our democracy has been disfigured beyond recognition, our freedoms circumscribed and secularism – the animating creed of our Republic – swamped by the Hindutva canon and its cultish kingpin. He has degraded and diminished us all!God help us.Mathew John is a former civil servant.