The four years of NAMO and the run up

Four words changed the political mood in 2015  “Suit-boot ki Sarkar”.

Rahul Gandhi, still mocked as lacking in political acumen, had struck a nerve. Till than, whether as Gujarat chief minister or one year as prime minister, Modi was regarded as a business friendly .

The suit-boot ki sarkar taunt from Rahul Gandhi made Modi take a sharp Left turn in 2015.

That taunt changed the things overnight. The suits gave way to cotton Nehru jackets

• Big business was shunned
• Economic policies were increasingly aimed at the poor
• The middle-class and small traders, the BJP’s core vote base, were sidelined

Modi had taken a sharp Left turn.the goal Post was changed

·      Leftist politics, which was mastered by Indira Gandhi was back. 

·      Privatisation of PSUs? Off the table. 

·      Tax reform for the salaried middle-class No longer a priority. 

·      Less bureaucracy , More.

Turning Left on economic policy didn’t mean Modi had entirely abandoned his natural reformist instincts. 

• FDI was liberalised across sectors
• start-ups encouraged
• Big global defence deals signed. 

But These policies have yet to see the results on ground as they will bear results in long term that too if implemented properly

Next month, Modi completes four years as prime minister. Here’s my assessment of the government’s achievements, failures and works-in-progress.

Achievements

·      Rural electrification has been a major policy success. the pace of rural electrification has been quickest in India’s history

·      The pace of road building has been another outstanding success. Currently, over 40 km of roads are being constructed daily.

·      The National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) is quite a bold initiatives of the Modi government. It aims to provide medical insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh to 500 million low-income Indians. The scheme is budgeted to cost around Rs 10,000 crore annually (though critics say the cost could exceed Rs 80,000 crore).Set to roll out on October 2, 2018, it is a long overdue step towards providing universal medical care. It is a very ambitious plan and the obvious challenge the government faces given the rudimentary health clinics in rural areas and the shortage of qualified doctors.

·      The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) was legislated in 2016. By taking bank NPAs head-on, the IBC can prove to be a game-changer. This is also debatable as it has stalled all business processes and there is a General mood of fear in the entrepreneurial and banking professionals.

·      Another key achievement is Mudra Yojana, under which loans are given to small entrepreneurs with little or no collateral. The scheme is designed to produce an army of self-employed who in turn will create employment through their entrepreneurial ventures.

Other achievements have been

·       the Jan Dhan Yojana

·      The direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme, which has significantly cut pilferage

·      Ujjwala Yojana and subsidised LPG cylinders for the poor vastly improving the living conditions of women in that strata

Beyond these a major achievement is the absence of corruption in the higher echelons of the government.

That’s where the good news ends. 

Corruption at lower levels remains endemic. It proliferates at state and local levels

Failures

·      A slew of governance failures have meanwhile taken the sheen off the Modi government. 

·      India’s defence budget has not kept pace with the country’s need to be prepared for a two-front war. majority of the defence budget goes towards pensions, salaries and overheads to run a military of nearly two million men and women.

·      Demonetisation was poorly executed resulting in stalling of economy for two months and affecting a lot of businesses

·      GST is burdened by an unnecessarily complex architecture. 

·      New income-tax forms require details never sought before. 

·      The raid raj is back. 

The result: an alienated middle-class, aggrieved traders and unhappy businessmen. All this would have a silver lining if tax collections rose sharply ,which is hardly the case .

The Make in India scheme has at best been a mixed bag .To get things moving, the government is focusing on defence JVs in India, beginning with the Rafale deal but they have Yet to see any physical changes on ground

Most of the government’s other schemes have been stalled by bureaucratic inertia. Some of the most poorly conceived policies are : 

·      Smart cities project

·      The regressive long-term capital gains tax (which has slowed inflows into mutual funds)

·      Skill development programs

·      Ganga action plan

·      Ministry of urban development

·      Hardly any policy implementation in ministry of HRD to change the rotting education system

·      Most of the other ministries are also in same state,be it fertiliser and chemical , civil aviation , health etc 

 The reason I can see is poor bench strength of ministers and over reliance on bureaucrats

Works in progress:

·      Aadhaar, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and the Ganga clean-up are three critical missions. Each has suffered a setback

·      Railway modernisation too is gathering pace. 

Several other initiatives remain to be activated: 

·      an enhanced MSP for farmers

·      Housing for EWS has also not taken off

·      job creation is quite dismal

·      social inclusiveness

·      law and order is an ongoing and daily issue but since BJP is ruling in more than 20+ states now so cannot pass on the bucks to state centre conflict 

And to top it all certain law makers are making comments which at best can be described as “Stupid”

In its last year in office, the government must re-jig its communications strategy. It should utilise it’s pool of talented professionals like M J Akbar , Arun Jaitley , Sushma Swaraj ,Rajnath Singh , Piyush goyal , Nirmala Sitaraman , Ravi Shankar Prasad, Swapan Das gupta etc to address PC on regular basis .

Also there have been a lot of subdued voices of descent due to arrogance of certain people in posts giving a negative impression to the workers more so at state levels . One cannot expect everybody to be satisfied but that’s one of the biggest perils of being in power is that worker expect empowerment when in power and if he feels otherwise than it starts with disenchantment and later in switching loyalties. 

Overall, the Modi government has done well in patches, but has also failed in significant areas. More so because it had come to power on very tall promises

Its electoral machinery of BJP looks quite formidable at this time but the situation can change faster than one can imagine . after four years, judicial and police reforms remain in limbo, Lokpal is only now half-heartedly being put into place. Were it not for a fractured Opposition, the Modi government would likely be voted out in 2019.

It will take the combined efforts of Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee ,Sitaram Yechuri,Akhilesh, mayawati  and other regional satraps to help the BJP escape that fate next year.