Learning from the pioneer

SECOND acts are the norm in Indian political lives. After a judge in May overturned her conviction for corruption, Jayaram Jayalalitha, an ex-actress-ex-prisoner-politician, this week began her fifth spell as chief minister of Tamil Nadu, a southern state of 69m people. She celebrated by giving goats to the needy. Arvind Kejriwal, an anti-graft activist reborn as a populist politician, managed just 49 chaotic days as chief minister of the state of Delhi last year. He came back in February to win a landslide election victory, and has since run the state while plotting a grander campaign to become the leader of Punjab. But the most striking tale of political recovery concerns the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who marked a year in office on May 26th. A little over a decade ago he was a pariah, shunned internationally and isolated in his own party after religious pogroms early in his rule in Gujarat state. Now he has no serious rival for the leadership of India and is widely fawned upon.