Shekhar Gupta: Mandir done, miles to go

Modi's stature could be dented if India's economy doesn't break out of its chronic stall. He needs grand ideas to end the slide or risk more emotional populism

Even the most incorrigible critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi would struggle to find fault with his short and sweet address to the nation after the Ayodhya judgment. 

It had three strands. One, that the Supreme Court had settled a festering, divisive issue and now there was time to move on, forgetting the “fear, bitterness and negativity” of the past.

Second, that the date, 9 November, was particularly significant, as it was the anniversary (30th, actually) of the fall of the Berlin Wall that divided the world during the Cold War. He invoked this Berlin Wall comparison not necessarily for