A brand new Ahmedabad airport welcomes foreigners to Gujarat. Comfortable cabs, with air conditioning drive foreigners through the newly paved roads of the state’s financial capital. A luxurious 5 star hotel opens its doors for foreign investors, offering them continental breakfast with a nice “colonial touch.” You do not feel yourself in India anymore, its rather Westernized for foreign investors, that are looking for a place to maximize their profits. If you are looking for a place where it’s easy to do business, there is no better place than Gujarat. Modi promises you a high return on investment with no bureaucratic delay and corruption, which prevents investment projects elsewhere in India. However, is it real development, or just a simulated model of development, provided by a chief minister, who is charmingly looking at you from billboards in Ahmedabad?

A huge question for me in Gujarat is the reality of the “Gujarat model of development,” or, better, the “Modi model,” that perfectly suits the interests of corporate India and of foreign investors. And I find the response to that in Boudrilliard’s model of simulacrum and simulation. According Jean Boudrilliard, what has happened in postmodern culture is that our society has become so reliant on models and symbols that “the current” lost all contact with the real world that preceded that reality. Reality itself has begun simply to imitate the model, which now precedes and determines the real world. Modi’s model of development is what we, as foreigners, perceive as development. Simply ask yourself: what do you imagine as development? The first images that comes to my mind are not images of schools and hospitals but, bridges, roads, factories, power stations, dams, traffic, hotels, concrete riverbanks, etc, which are all symbols of development, that in reality lost any connection with reality.

Modi effectively operates with the images and symbols of development, he replaces reality by imitating the symbols of the neoliberal model of development that exists in the western mindset. There is no longer any distinction between reality and its representation; there is only the simulacrum. Modi develops the cities, not the villages, he provides electricity to foreigners, and electricity cuts to tribes, divides communities and unites investors. The “Modi’s model” benefits investors, and brings violence to people of Gujarat.

Kirill