Narendra Modi came to power on May 26, 2014. Since then, these questions have been asked incessantly: can Modi change India? Can he do what Manmohan Singh could not? Can Modi take India to superpower status? But the critical point is this: these questions are completely contradictory to the ethos of a democracy. It is the inability to rise above them that is the greatest crisis in Indian politics: the lag between the formal shell of democracy and its practice, the republic and its language.