India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, says he has been denied the "honeymoon" period that new governments traditionally enjoy. Just one month after taking office, he has also asserted that he has defied expectations and secured a firm grip on India's sprawling government.
Given the groundswell of expectation and anxiety surrounding Modi's ascent, there's been unusual attention given to his first 30 days. His decisive victory came despite controversial allegations that he stood by as Hindu-Muslim riots engulfed parts of the western state of Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister.
"Forget [a] hundred days; the series of allegations began in less than a hundred hours," Modi rued in his blog marking his first four weeks.
Indian Express opinion editor Vandita Mishra says Modi's no-honeymoon lament suggests he's carried over "a sense of siege and conspiracies" nurtured in his 12 years as Gujarat chief minister. Mishra says, "Antagonistic relations between Modi and the media are still a work in progress."
However, there is no disputing that Modi has taken the reins of power with gusto, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, who was thought to have suffered from acute indecisiveness.
Modi has issued a 10-point agenda to improve everything from the economy, transparency and confidence in India's ordinarily truculent bureaucracy. The proposed changes have been cheered by the Indian public tired of a rudderless government and yearning for "Acche Din," or the "Good Days," which Modi promised to bring about in his campaign.
Modi began with housekeeping — literally. The prime minister, as fastidious in his dress as his daily regimen, targeted slovenliness in government offices.
Flea-ridden monkeys frequently grace the windowsills and staircases of ministry buildings. Discarded furniture, rotting files and dirty bathrooms often line the corridors. Complying with Modi's orders to clean up, bureaucrats have snapped to, with old computers, broken chairs and steel cabinets piled high and hauled off to the junk yard.
Surveying a table stacked with files, one reluctant senior bureaucrat said, "There is a fear that I may lose a document, which could prove fatal."
Modi's blistering pace also has ministerial secretaries — the top-ranking civil servants — rushing to keep up. His preference for using Hindi has some bureaucrats burning the midnight oil to please the boss and perfect the language. While English remains well-entrenched in Indian officialdom, many Hindu nationalists have a visceral loathing of English and identify it with India's colonial past.
But mandating Hindi is emotionally charged in India, and Modi's government has touched off a furor in a country where 22 languages are recognized in the constitution. The government has beaten a diplomatic retreat.
With neighboring Pakistan, Modi and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif bonded on day one over their mothers. The two men exchanged a shawl and a sari for their mothers to the delight of Twitter-sphere that gushed about the "sari diplomacy" between the two nuclear-armed rivals in the hopes it would reset relations.
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