In September the University of Toronto Press will publish my next book. It’s titled Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t. These four are among the questions to which the book provides answers. First, what are our rewards for following? Second, what are our punishments for not following? Third, what are our rewards for not following? Fourth, what are our punishments for following?
What’s happened in India in recent weeks testifies to the subtitle of my first book on followership – How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders* An example: Indians, especially young, middle-class Indians, who by the tens of thousands took to the streets in recent weeks to protest not just the lack of jobs but, as they see it, the government’s woefully underfunded and ineffective system of education.
Recent evidence of follower power in India has been even more striking than in Ukraine (see my previous post). This is for the good and simple reason that unlike Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is a democrat, India’s leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is an autocrat. Modi is a strongman who for more than a decade has governed India with something akin to an iron fist.
Which is why recent events in India have come as nothing so much as a surprise or even a shock. Indians themselves have been stunned by the size of the protests and by the daring and perseverance of the protesters. They have been struck by what seemed overnight to morph into a demonstrably powerful political movement with the evocative name of “Cockroach.”** The so-called Cockroach Janta Party deliberately parodied and satirized the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party with what turned out stunning effectiveness.
Instead of being stymied my Modi’s longstanding grip not just on Indian politics but on the digital narrative, the protesters, the cockroaches, circumvented it. Fueled by their outrage they came up with slogans and signs, videos and memes, jokes, taunts, sneers and jeers – all of which challenged not just the ruling regime but the dignity and, importantly, the heretofore infallibility of the prime minister.
In the last 24 hours Modi caved. Remarkably but not really, he succumbed to those who ostensibly he ruled by offering concessions including the resignation of India’s education minister. The cockroaches’ immediate response was to give Modi some breathing room. They called off their protests. But cockroaches are known for their extreme survival skills – and these are unlikely to prove an exception.
To Modi this presents a problem unlikely to go away anytime soon. For once a chink appears in the leader’s armor, the leader’s armor appears to his followers to be permeable.
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*The title of the book is Followership (Harvard Business School Press, 2008).
**Some weeks ago India’s Chief Justice made the mistake of comparing some political activists and unemployed youth to “cockroaches.”
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