Ten years after Narendra Modi was first elected prime minister, India’s economy is roughly twice as large. That is what happens when a country grows at 7 percent a year, as India has been doing, on average, since it opened its markets to international competition in 1991.
That steady growth has been skillfully repackaged to promote an image of one man’s leadership making it all happen. Along with nationalism and Hindu pride, the idea that Mr. Modi can make the economy move has been central to his appeal since the beginning.
And Mr. Modi has burnished India’s economy in ways that count the most with voters: He made visible infrastructure expansions and distributed welfare benefits to the majority of Indians, who remain poor by global standards even as the country’s higher-income groups learn to flex their spending power.
Most of the rest of the world — especially the United…
