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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  After the honeymoon, the real challenges begin for Modi govt
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After the honeymoon, the real challenges begin for Modi govt

The core decision-making of this government suffers from a potentially fatal flawthis is not an NDA or a BJP government

Photo: Pradeep Gaur/MintPremium
Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

Be fair, especially to those you oppose. This advice of my father to his school debater son comes back to me as I assess one year of the Modi sarkar.

A fair assessment of the Modi government must begin by making a couple of concessions. First of all, one year is too short a time to expect solid and visible outcomes. In the first year you can expect 5 Ps: a coherent Policy direction, a clear list of Priorities, a concrete Plan of action and a sense of Procedures and Personnel of a new government. By the same token, the first year is too short a period to grasp the deeper harm a government may have caused the country. It takes three years or more for the audit cycle to be completed and for reliable evidence of big corruption to emerge. So, let’s not rush into a positive or a negative judgment as yet.

Let us also not judge the performance of this government by its own irresponsible electoral promises and the hyperbolic expectations that it gave rise to. Not because it would be unfair to the government. Political parties and governments must be held to account for what they promise during elections. Achchhe din is already a joke. Amit Shah has already conceded that Modi used poetic licence to promise everything to everyone. So, there is not much to be judged if we use this yardstick to assess the Modi government.

At the same time, let us not judge this first year by comparing it with the last year of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) II. Towards the end of his second term, Manmohan Singh’s government was in a policy and political coma. It would be hard for any government to stoop lower than that.

Let us therefore judge this government not by what it promised or what its predecessor delivered but by what one should reasonably expect of a good government in its first year.

Let’s begin with foreign policy, hailed as this government’s biggest achievement. No doubt there has been a lot of energy here and many of the Prime Minister’s foreign visits have enthused the non-resident Indian and persons of Indian origin communities and have generally helped India’s power perception abroad—certainly a plus over the UPA’s lacklustre ways. There is a definite improvement in India’s relations with some of its neighbours and East Asia. But it is hard to see exact foreign policy achievements beyond these. The substantial gains from the PM’s visit to the US and China are not quite clear yet. The flip-flop over Pakistan has left everyone unsure of what our Pakistan policy is. The PM’s desire to play a Nehru at the global stage cannot be faulted. But he faces two challenges. One, unlike Nehru, he has a foreign minister. Two, foreign policy requires an understanding of a complex and rapidly changing world. Have we finally said goodbye to solidarity with the global South? Have we abandoned our long-standing position on the Palestine question? How exactly are we to tackle China in the long run? Some of these questions need an answer before we can claim to have arrived on the global stage.

Back home, the real test of the Modi government was in its handling of the economy. At the moment, the inflation numbers and other macroeconomic indicators look respectable, thanks to the drastic fall in crude oil prices in the international markets. But we have not seen a revival of any of the key manufacturing sectors. Expected investment has not materialized. The story of jobless growth continues. Outcomes are no doubt hard to achieve in this short period. But we have not had a clear sense of priorities. Or, worse, the people do not figure in this government’s priority.

This government’s economic philosophy is best summed up as catching up with China in its pursuit of one-dimensional economic growth at all cost. The UPA’s pursuit of the same objective was occasionally tempered by half-hearted forays into social welfare and determined undermining via large-scale corruption. The Modi government is evidently free of any sense of social guilt. Although businessmen and investors are unhappy with the pace of ‘economic reforms’, they have and are likely to get much more from this government than its predecessors. The real casualties are social sector expenditure and environment. The expenditure cuts on schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan are already telling. On the environment, this government threatens to roll back many of the ecological safeguards built over the last four decades.

The government’s biggest failure is its mishandling of the agrarian crisis. The green revolution has reached a dead end. Farming continues to be a non-profit venture. A single crop failure can push farmers into a spiral of poverty, indebtedness and suicide. This structural problem was worsened this year by a policy-induced shortage of urea, a drop in crop prices, failure to offer decent support prices and natural calamities in many parts of the country. Instead of responding to that, the government was busy in virtually annulling the land acquisition law though the back-door of ordinance. There are no takers, not even within the Sangh parivar’s own farmer’s outfit, for the government’s claim that the land ordinance is in the interest of farmers.

No wonder the government has earned an ‘anti-farmer’ tag that could seriously erode its political and policy space.

On education, the real problem with this government is not saffronization. To be fair, all the moves at ‘Indianization’ of education were perfunctory and largely for public consumption. Dinanath Batra and his ilk have so far had little effect on the curricula of school and higher education. The real challenge for this government is that it has no idea of what the challenge of education is all about. So far, it has shown little willingness to learn. Hence the assembly line production solutions for higher education and lack of any direction for school education reforms. The public education system is crumbling. Parents are voting with their feet against government schools. Learning outcomes in rural schools are alarmingly low. The political class is indifferent. The UPA enacted the right to education without the political will to ever implement it. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seems to wish to annul this act with little idea of what to put in its place.

Similarly, the problem on the communal front is not a rapid rise in communal violence all over the country. In this regard, the secularist fears were misplaced. The real challenge was not overt violence but covert subordination of the minorities. The danger was not of any anti-minority legislation but that of a quiet shift in the middle ground. The fear was not that the PM would incite mobs but that his colleagues would indulge in irresponsible public rhetoric and get away with it. Come to think of it, some of these fears have come true. At least this is how it looks from the vantage point of Christians and Muslims. And the government has done little to address their anxieties. These are policy flaws and failures. In principle, there is no reason why these cannot be addressed in the remaining four years. Its governance record could improve in many respects. But the DNA of this government is unlikely to change. The core decision-making of this government suffers from an inherent and potentially fatal flaw. This is not an NDA or a Bharatiya Janata Party government. This is a Modi government.

The impulse for centralization of power is at work everywhere. The government wants to control every autonomous space outside the state. There is subtle and not-so-subtle pressure on the media. Unfriendly civil society organizations are threatened. There is no recognition of any autonomous state institution. Even the judiciary and the Comptroller and Auditor General are given signals to fall in line. The executive seeks to bypass the Parliament, especially the Rajya Sabha. And the Prime Minister’s Office seeks to control and micro-manage everything within the executive. The trouble with this model of governance is not just that it is authoritarian. It is also inefficient and counterproductive. Gradually it chokes the leadership of any independent inputs and imprisons political executive into a bubble of its own making.

Leadership communication and publicity go a long way in winning and sustaining power in modern mass democracies. But it cannot substitute for real work. This is the challenge the Modi government faces now. The honeymoon is over, though it may still score electoral victories in some of the state elections to come. Now it needs to deliver. The danger for the country is not that the Modi government may fail to deliver. The real danger is that there is no alternative at hand. Disillusionment with the existing regime without a credible alternative can lead to cynicism.

The author is with Swaraj Abhiyan, a movement for alternative politics.

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Published: 24 May 2015, 11:24 PM IST
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