Whatever you might say about Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- and plenty of people have had a lot to say in the past -- not even his critics have called him an uninspiring speaker. He has held spectators at vast election rallies spellbound, even groups of overseas Indians in arenas like Wembley Stadium. He is a big room, big occasion speaker, always able to spark a response in his audience, to dazzle them with the audacity of his vision.
But little of that was on display when Modi took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. He had a big act to follow; at the same conference last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping caught the attention of the world when he essentially sought to take up the mantle of global leadership that the U.S., under President Donald Trump, seemed to have carelessly discarded. Xi's speech was a bravura defense of globalization, not one whit less impressive for the fact that his regime is not precisely the sort of global leader that much of the world would wholeheartedly welcome.
Modi, too, spoke of the fear that the tides of anti-globalization were rising, and that countries were becoming more "self-centered." But he didn't seem to be offering Indian leadership in response. Certainly, he correctly identified three worldwide problems -- climate change, terrorism and anti-globalization -- and committed India to the fight against them. But it wasn't clear what, concretely, India would do to persuade or win over waverers; how it would forge new alliances and blaze new trails to progress.
This was particularly disappointing when, to Indian ears, much else in Modi's speech struck precisely the right note. Like all Indian leaders before him, he spoke of his country's diversity, of how democracy was its strength, of how it sought consensus and unity in politics at home and abroad.
