First, he snubbed the pesky Subramanian Swamy. Now, he has ousted the preening damsel, Smriti Irani, from the high-profile human resource development ministry to humdrum textiles to set certain standards of behaviour.

Apart from his newness to Delhi, another reason why he took his time to draw the lines in the sand is perhaps that he expected good sense to prevail among those who were trying to chart their own course. Or he expected party president Amit Shah and seniors like Arun Jaitley to enforce discipline via behind-the-scene advice and admonition.

To an extent, these tactics did work. For instance, Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj and other fiery saffronites have piped down. Even the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has not reiterated his thesis that all Indians are Hindus. Modi’s latest disciplinary steps are expected, therefore, to usher in a period when fewer people in the Hindutva camp will fall out of line.

With the opposition not in the pink of health as is evident from the Congress’s dithering about fielding Priyanka Gandhi as a major campaigner in Uttar Pradesh, and the Aam Admi Party’s various travails, a tenure free of controversy will be a godsend to Modi.

If the economy picks up, notwithstanding Washington’s doubts about the 7.5 per cent growth rate, the stage will be set for the run-up not only to next year’s crucial U.P. polls but also to the general election of 2019 if the ministers learn their lessons from the fates of Swamy and Irani.

In a roundabout way, the latter’s discomfiture will also be a lesson to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), whose belligerence on the campuses of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was behind Irani’s hasty interventions in aid of the BJP’s student wing into these “dens” of anti-national activity.

While the economic and trade union wings of the Sangh parivar like the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh have been largely silent even after the announcement of sizeable inflows of foreign investment, the ABVP has been particularly active as it apparently felt that the time had come for it after the BJP’s Lok Sabha victory to spread its wings in the bastions of Leftism in HCU and JNU.

Irani apparently played into the ABVP’s hands because of her lack of experience in dealing with campus “politics” since she had never studied in a college or university. It was only after Rohith Vemula’s suicide in HCU following a stand-off between his supporters and the ABVP, and the levelling of sedition charges against the JNU’s Kanhaiya Kumar, that she beat a retreat, but not before she found a solution to the “problems” of Marxism and sedition in the flying of an oversized tricolour in all universities. It is such childish antics, compounded by a perceived arrogance, which spelt her doom.

It is odd, however, that a party which once took pride in its organizational discipline had to experience considerable turbulence before the prime minister’s began calling the shots. A possible reason is that Modi is the only person who is capable playing the headmaster. There is no one else by his side – neither Amit Shah nor Jaitley – who has the stature to command unalloyed loyalty of the party men on their own.

Moreover, Modi is hamstrung by the needling of former and present BJP members like Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha, which cannot but undermine the prime minister’s dignity and authority. Shourie’s observation, for instance, about Modi’s Casanova-type narcissism and Yashwant Sinha’s criticism of economic policies are proof that a secure parliamentary majority and high popular ratings do not make a leader invulnerable in India’s “noisy” democracy, to quote Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan.

How the two outsiders - not to mention the silently disapproving L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi - react to Modi’s latest assertion of authority will be keenly watched. For these “losers”, the BJP is embarking on a course under Modi which is likely to take the party further away from its old Hindutva moorings to the path of development.

That the old prejudices have not subsided is evident from the comments emanating from the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, the women’s wing of the RSS, that the Muslims create problems wherever they are in a majority because “Islam is not a religion, it’s political aggression”.

It is to be hoped that elements such as these will retreat into the background as Modi tries to ensure that the party and the government will act with restraint and focus on economic growth. (IPA Service)