FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Our May 19, 2014 cover story, ‘The Modi Onslaught’, featured a bespectacled, clean-shaven young man in jeans and tee walking in lockstep with Narendra Modi. Prashant Kishor was then a key campaign manager leading a small army of nearly 1,000 tech-savvy volunteers launching an unprecedented electoral blitzkrieg—3D rallies, caller tunes, ‘chai pe charcha’ discussions—fuelling a US-presidential style referendum that propelled candidate Modi to power. Kishor told us back then that the electronic campaign had “taken the Modi wave many miles further”. Appropriately for the backroom strategist, his picture appeared on the last page of our story.

Seven and a half years later, the Modi government has crossed