Leaders of the 21st century often appear most unqualified for the enormous challenges we face — or perhaps, the challenges we face because of them.
Take two of the most prominent: PM Narendra Modi and President Donald J. Trump.
Modi Trump same cloth different continents — contrasting styles, yet identical in what truly matters.
Both are masters of image over substance. One through carefully curated silence, grand optics, and relentless PR. The other through constant chaos, controversy, and entertainment.
Both rose promising to challenge the elite, yet centralize power aggressively. Both fear losing it more than anything else.
Both thrive on majoritarianism, cultural nationalism, and fear — dividing societies while selling dreams of glory. One through religion, tradition, taxes, and spectacle; the other through borders, tariffs, and relentless disruption.
Education, depth, and statesmanship take a backseat. Spectacle reigns: mega events, election theatrics, and playing tourism minister on one side; trade wars, distractions, and endless tirades on a daily basis.
Both run governance like an NGO charity show — staged crowds, choreographed emotion, manufactured perception. People are rounded up, positioned, and dismissed once the cameras leave. The real work is extracting funds from public coffers and keeping the illusion of a grounded leader alive.
One tours temples, launches schemes in remote villages, hands picked beneficiaries cheques and gas cylinders on camera, then blankets the country with government-funded advertising of that very moment. The other lands at factories, stands beside CEOs at signing ceremonies, announces thousands of artificial jobs saved or created — deals that quietly unravel long after the press conference ends.
They treat democracy as a ladder, not a sacred responsibility. Personal loyalty over institutions. Short-term wins over long-term strength. One does nothing for the present; the other rarely thinks beyond the next headline.
Both have presided over a quiet, systematic transfer of national wealth to a carefully chosen few — favoured industrialists, loyal donors, and trusted allies. The rhetoric stays relentlessly pro-people; the balance sheets tell a different story. Billionaires multiply, monopolies deepen, and the gap widens — while the crowd cheers the very leaders accelerating their own economic irrelevance.
Both excel at creating jobless and futureless generations — one at home, the other with global ripple effects.
Arrogance defines their rule. They govern social media and its algorithms more than countries. Dissent is managed, truth is controlled, narratives are engineered.
In the age of AI, climate change, inequality, and nuclear risks, we’re left with leaders brilliant at doing everything for power and personal interests — yet dangerously incapable of building peaceful, inclusive, and sustainable futures.
There is no left or right here for partisans to go mad over. It’s a toxic global trend: personality cults replacing genuine leadership and governance. And it’s happening in broad daylight.
I picked these two because of their stark contradictions and striking similarities. The list, unfortunately, is much longer.
The world desperately deserves better. It needs Awakened Leadership and Awakened Governance.
What do you think — are these unawakened leaders mere symptoms of democracy’s decay, or its primary cause?
Lead Awakened
SunDeep Mehra
Pioneering Awakened Leadership and Governance
