In 2023, The Economist reported that Narendra Modi was “the world’s most popular elected leader.” The son of a chaiwala (tea-seller), and largely self-taught, Modi represented a change from the Anglophone, Oxford-educated ministers of the past. In the 10 years since he was first elected in 2014, India’s economy has overtaken Britain’s to become the fifth largest in the world, and is projected to rise to third by 2027. But outside of his well-crafted narrative as the populist harbinger of economic success, Modi has a darker side. A member of the right-wing RSS party since the age of eight, the prime minister is a frontman for a chauvinist, Islamaphobic brand of Hindu nationalism. On the heels of The Economist’s remarkable podcast The Prince, which investigated the rise of the Chinese president Xi Jinping, a new podcast hosted by Avantika Chilkoti conducts an equally revelatory deep dive into one of the world’s most powerful leaders. —Paulina Prosnitz