Narendra Modi as PM: 5 achievements in 6 years and 5 challenges ahead
Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned 70 today. In the six years as prime minister, Narendra Modi is credited to have introduced some long-awaited reforms in the country. Here's a list of five of PM Modi's achievements and some of the challenges his government faces.
September 17, 2020
Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Photo: PTI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned 70 today. He is the only non-Congress prime minister to have won two consecutive majorities in Lok Sabha elections.
In the six years as prime minister, Narendra Modi is credited to have introduced some long-awaited reforms in the country. However, with four years still remaining in his second term, his government faces a plethora of challenges as well.
First, we list out five of PM Modi's achievements during the past six years.
GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was in the pipeline for 17 years before it became a major tax reform in 2017. For long, India was seen as a non-friendly country for business owing to its complicated tax laws.
The GST subsumed 17 existing indirect taxes to make compliance of taxation laws by the business world simple. The rollout of GST through a special session of Parliament three years ago remains a major highlight of the Modi government.
INSOLVENCY AND BANKRUPTCY CODE
The link between failed businesses and the consequent banking ailment was long seen as a problem area for economy growth and policy making. The Modi government enacted the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) law in 2016. The law was amended for the second time earlier this year to make it more attuned to ground realities.
It is described as the silver bullet to tackle India's chronic problem of non-performing assets. Banks have begun to recover debts that were earlier thought to be irretrievable.
SWACHH BHARAT
Though it has its origin in the Nirmal Gram mission -- under Raghuvansh Prasad Singh-led rural development ministry -- of the Manmohan Singh government, the Swachh Bharat campaign is one of the big socio-political achievements of the Modi government.
PM Modi's personal push in his speeches from the ramparts of the Red Fort and televised events has given the Swachh Bharat campaign a new dimension. He is the first prime minister to have successfully conveyed to the public that cleanliness has a direct correlation with their health status and economic well-being.
The toilet-construction programme under the Swachh Bharat campaign to make India an open-defecation free (ODF) country played a significant part in the Modi government being voted back to power with a greater majority.
CLEANER, HEALTHIER KITCHEN
Another highlight of the government in the last six years and the one that played an equal political role -- besides the toilet scheme -- in getting Narendra Modi back to the PMO is free distribution of the LPG cylinders.
It was done through the Ujjwala Yojana, under which women in villages get free one LPG cylinder connection per household. The scheme has been so popular that at the end of the last fiscal, it overshot its target of 8 crore LPG connection.
Official data show that Ujjwala Yojana accounts for over 70 per cent growth in total domestic LPG connections in the country.
POLITICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The Modi government fulfilled some long-standing demands of the BJP, the party that leads the NDA government at the Centre.
COVID-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has grabbed the world by its collar. India is currently the worst-affected country, not in terms of the total number of confirmed cases but as the biggest hotspot in the world.
The pandemic is spreading to more and more villages of the country where medical healthcare facilities are non-existent. The death toll has been rising with India recording maximum daily deaths in the world due to Covid-19.
Health experts have warned that the Covid-19 situation is unlikely to reverse any time soon. This remains the immediate biggest challenge for PM Modi and his government.
SAGGING ECONOMY
PM Modi came to the power in 2014 on the promise of "achchhe din" (better days ahead). The early years of his tenure saw India clocking high growth in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But for the past two years or more, the economy has been facing a slowdown.
The economic slowdown turned into the first contraction in several decades due to the Covid-19 situation. The Modi government needs money to fund its health and social welfare programmes. That money can only come from revenue or taxes deposited by businesses.
The Covid-19 lockdown shut all businesses and threw people out of their jobs. Now, the government has allowed opening of almost all business activities. But there are problems of labour, and where labour is available, the cases of Covid-19 are shooting up.
It is a Catch-22 situation for the Modi government. It needs people to work and get businesses running to boost the economy, while still wanting people to stay home and help reverse the Covid-19 curve.
JOBS
Lack of employment generation has been an area where the Modi government has faced major criticism. Even when the GDP growth rate was soaring, economy watchers called it jobless growth.
The government allegedly held back a survey that put the unemployment rate at a 42-year-high months ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The Covid-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown have made the unemployment situation worse. This remains the biggest headache for PM Modi as it affects not only the economy but also his politics.
CHINA
China had always been a challenge for India but previously it refrained from asserting itself on the borders so blatantly. That left the previous central governments -- post-Nehru -- dealing with Pakistan as the biggest foreign policy challenge.
Now, the Chinese challenge looms over the Modi government. China is challenging India on the borders, in the neighbourhood and also in potential markets for Indian businesses. The border challenge is immediate.
The soldiers of India and China are in a faceoff at multiple friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The situation is particularly worrisome in eastern Ladakh. Soldiers have died in a physical fight for the first time in decades. Shots have been for the first time, again, in several decades.
Diplomacy does not (yet) seemed to have worked unlike in 2017, when PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping offered to promise of a new era of friendship. China is the biggest international or foreign policy challenge to PM Modi.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
PM Modi is the biggest election-winning insurance for the BJP. His party faces key assembly elections over the second tenure of PM Modi. The Bihar Assembly election is around the corner.
The BJP is in power in the state with the Nitish Kumar-led JDU. Though PM Modi and Nitish Kumar have a conflicting political past, they buried it in 2017. The Bihar Assembly election is the first poll in the state where the Modi-Nitish pair would seek vote for re-election.
The next, and bigger, domestic challenge for PM Modi would be the West Bengal Assembly election due in April-May next year. Bengal has been a long-coveted state for the BJP. The Modi-mania seen in 2019 Lok Sabha elections gives the BJP hope that PM Modi's electoral appeal would help it win the state of its ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee.
But the biggest political challenge PM Modi will face during his second term is the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in 2022. That election may also decide who would be the BJP's future prime ministerial candidate.
PM Modi will turn 74 in 2024 when the next Lok Sabha election will take place. By 2022, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic may be over and post-Covid-19 politics may offer an entirely different political equation both for PM Modi and the country.
Live TV
ALSO READ | Narendra Modi turns 70: 15 facts you can't overlook about the 14th Prime Minister of India
Narendra Modi's five years in power: 10 most important achievements
Modi will be judged on his government’s performance. Here's how the report card reads.
MINHAZ MERCHANT @minhazmerchant
Most pollsters predict a hung Parliament in 2019. But if a week is a long time in politics, the 12 weeks that remain before the 2019 general election give Prime Minister Narendra Modi time to recover lost ground.
Modi will be judged on his government’s five year performance. How does his report card read? Underwhelming. Consider first, though the achievements. Ten stand out.
Flagship success
Ayushman Bharat: The health insurance scheme launched on September 23, 2018, has already benefited 10 lakh poor patients and could be an electoral game-changer. More than 500 million Indians who could not afford medical treatment for non-communicable illnesses like cancer and heart disease now have access to free healthcare.
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code: The legislation, enacted in December 2016, is the silver bullet to tackle India’s chronic problem of non-performing assets. Banks have begun to recover debts that had seemingly turned irretrievably bad. “Phone banking” has ground to a halt.
PM Modi will be judged on his government’s five-year performance.(Photo: India Today)
Rural electrification: The Modi government’s push to provide last-mile connectivity to hard-to-access rural clusters has been fairly successful. However, several villages cited as connected to the electrical grid still have households without power. Part of the problem is that some villages lie in areas controlled by Naxalites while in others the terrain makes access difficult.
Free LPG cylinders: Under the Ujjwala Yojana scheme, women in villages now have access to cooking gas. This has both health and economic benefits. Over 60 million free LPG connections have been given with nearly 50 per cent going to SC/ST households.
Sanitation: The Swachh Bharat Mission has built toilets at an unprecedented pace. Since October 2014, over 92 million toilets have been constructed, covering nearly 500 million households in one of the world’s largest operations of its kind. Cultural habits, however, mean that open-air defecation remains endemic. Many newly-built toilets lack sewage facilities; others are being used as storage rooms. Nonetheless, a beginning has been made.
Digital transfer of subsidies: This has cut out most (though not all) middlemen who routinely siphoned off large chunks of benefits due to the poor. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, had famously said in December 1985, while addressing the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Congress, that only 15 paise out of every rupee in subsidies reaches the poor. With digitised transfers that figure has probably risen to 75 paise.
However, lack of Internet connectivity in rural areas, combined with limited digital literacy among farmers and labourers, often leave them at the mercy of local officials to access their money electronically.
Infrastructure: There has been a steep rise in building roads, highways and metro networks as well as housing for the poor. These are long-term initiatives but the benefits are already visible. According to fact-checking sites, 12km of highways were constructed in 2013-14. This pace more than doubled to 27km per day in 2017-18. In Mumbai alone, coastal roads, a new airport and a large metro network could transform public transport in India’s richest city that has long been infrastructure-poor.
Modi has emerged as India’s best election campaigner and executor of important developmental schemes. (Photo: PTI)
Strong basics
Foreign policy: The government has repaired relations with China, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, built economic and geopolitical bridges to east Asia and west Asia and strengthened the strategic partnership with the US.
GST: The implementation of the goods and services tax was chaotic and its structure needlessly complex. Its benefits, though, are beginning to seep through the economy. Revenue is lower than expected but the removal of octroi, for example, has greatly helped the logistics and transport industries. The absence of state boundary checks means truckers save up to 30 per cent in fuel and time, raising productivity with quicker turnarounds.
All the PM’s men
Boosting India’s space programme: ISRO has proved that putting scientists and technocrats rather than bureaucrats in charge of key organisations pays dividends. The success of ISRO also highlights the government’s lacunae in other areas of institution building.
Failures of the government across domains have taken some of the sheen off its concrete achievements. The Centre has let key institutions wither. A Lok Pal has not been appointed. The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Reserve Bank of India have lacked strong, consistent leadership. A talent deficit is evident at all levels: the Cabinet, academic institutions and statutory bodies.
Tax laws lack certitude. The bureaucracy, in the defence and finance ministries in particular, has not distinguished itself. The Prime Minister’s Office maintains a sphinx-like silence on key issues, allowing disinformation full play.
Modi is India’s best election campaigner and executor of important developmental schemes. But as Prime Minister, you need to go beyond that and nurture talent.
The most successful leaders surround themselves with people smarter than themselves.
The Prime Minister, in contrast, is surrounded by people who are not smarter than him. That is, perhaps, the biggest failing of his prime ministership.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)
Also read: 5 reasons why Modi could end up as Leader of Opposition in 2019
BJP has its own chief minister in 12 states, while it rules another 5 states with its allies. There has never been a decade in Indian politics that the BJP
2021-2030: Why this will be the decade of the BJP
Amitabh Tiwari
·Columnist
6 January 2021·5-min read
As the new decade dawns, an important question with regards to the Indian political landscape is doing the rounds: will this be the decade of the Bharatiya Janata Party?
The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stormed the political scene of the county in 2014 general elections riding on corruption charges and anti-incumbency against the Congress-led UPA-2.
The BJP won state after state during the period 2014 to 2019 on the back of its development plank. It formed governments along with its allies in 11 states, while losing power in 4 during this period.
Today, the BJP has 303 MPs in the Lok Sabha, 93 in the Rajya Sabha and 1,374 MLAs across various states in India. It has its own chief minister in 12 states, while it rules another 5 states with its allies.
There has never been a decade in Indian politics that the BJP has fully dominated. During the decade 2001-10, the BJP lost power in 2004 and the Congress, along with its allies, dominated the latter part.
During 2011-2020, the BJP dominated Indian political scene during the second half.
However, the BJP juggernaut is now on a roll. In the 2021 state elections, the party is giving a serious threat to Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while it is fighting to retain Assam.
Even hardcore supporters of the Congress and other regional parties feel that they have no chance to win even in the 2024 general elections.
PM Modi’s popularity is high despite the ongoing farmer protests and the economic distress caused by the pandemic. This decade could well belong to the BJP and there are many factors working in favour of the party.
The BJP today is a very ambitious party with a clear goal of ruling at the Centre and in majority of the states. The men at the helm of the BJP -- Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda -- are 24x7 politicians, who never take a break and are always in the election campaign mode.
The party takes every election very seriously, irrespective of whether it is a gram panchayat or a state level or a national level poll.
Party bigwigs campaign even for local body polls. They are not afraid of a backlash from the media in case of an electoral loss. The party always gives its best with the clear intent of wanting to emerge victorious.
The BJP claims to have a strong network of 18 crore members. Even if one discounts this claim, the actual foot soldiers of the party are volunteers of its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). These selfless workers campaign relentlessly for the sake of ideology and are the BJP’s biggest asset.
The RSS has always stood for a casteless society. It, along with BJP, has successfully managed to unify the Hindu voters to a large extent, cutting across caste and class lines. Hindus account for roughly 80% of the country's population and even if the party succeeds in garnering support from half of this population, it would not lose any election at the national level.
Through a clearly crafted strategy, the BJP has managed to paint the Congress and many other regional parties with the same brush and convinced many that these parties are indulging in minority appeasement politics. This has led to a Hindu awakening of sorts.
The 'One Nation' project of the party fuses a more unitary, Hindu nationalist conception of the Indian identity which forms the ideological core of the BJP.
It has been able to bind people of the majority states into one identity, that of Indianness, which was missing earlier.
A weakened Congress is helping the BJP spread its wings even further. The current leadership of the Congress does not evoke any confidence. The party is going through an existential crisis and a section has revolted against the Gandhi family, the dynasts who continue to hold the Congress in their iron, and somewhat throttling, grip.
Rahul Gandhi’s ‘yes and no’ kind of politics does not augur well for the party.
Many regional parties are also witnessing a churn as leadership is being passed on to the younger generation. Several of these leaders, born with a silver spoon, lack the charisma of their elders and are unwilling to slog hard on the ground. The absence of leaders from the scene during the migrant crisis, in the midst of the raging pandemic, is a case in point.
The Congress as well as the regional parties in their current form are struggling to take on the might of the BJP’s relentless electoral machine.
However, the BJP is likely to face challenges as well, while it works towards dominating this decade. The party has been unsuccessful in making inroads into South India: without this, it will struggle to be called as a party with pan India appeal. However, the BJP will not be satisfied by its current victories and dominance and will not sit on its laurels. It will continue to find ways to get a toehold into southern India and spread its influence and power down South as well.
The party has a good track record while contesting state elections as the main opposition, but it does not have a similar record while defending its territory as an incumbent.
It needs to replicate the successful Gujarat model to other states where it is in power.
Somewhere during the middle of the decade, Narendra Modi could retire, if the unsaid rule of retirement age of 75 years in the BJP is applied to him as well.
What shape will the BJP take after Modi hangs up his boots? Is there a succession plan in place? Could the party face groupism or will the RSS ensure a smooth transition?
All of these exciting events to watch out for in this new decade, which, it appears, could well belong to the BJP.
0:14
5:38
BJP RSS meeting to be held in Ahmedabad; West Bengal Polls on top agenda
Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Photo: PTI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned 70 today. He is the only non-Congress prime minister to have won two consecutive majorities in Lok Sabha elections.
In the six years as prime minister, Narendra Modi is credited to have introduced some long-awaited reforms in the country. However, with four years still remaining in his second term, his government faces a plethora of challenges as well.
First, we list out five of PM Modi's achievements during the past six years.
GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was in the pipeline for 17 years before it became a major tax reform in 2017. For long, India was seen as a non-friendly country for business owing to its complicated tax laws.
The GST subsumed 17 existing indirect taxes to make compliance of taxation laws by the business world simple. The rollout of GST through a special session of Parliament three years ago remains a major highlight of the Modi government.
INSOLVENCY AND BANKRUPTCY CODE
The link between failed businesses and the consequent banking ailment was long seen as a problem area for economy growth and policy making. The Modi government enacted the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) law in 2016. The law was amended for the second time earlier this year to make it more attuned to ground realities.
It is described as the silver bullet to tackle India's chronic problem of non-performing assets. Banks have begun to recover debts that were earlier thought to be irretrievable.
SWACHH BHARAT
Though it has its origin in the Nirmal Gram mission -- under Raghuvansh Prasad Singh-led rural development ministry -- of the Manmohan Singh government, the Swachh Bharat campaign is one of the big socio-political achievements of the Modi government.
PM Modi's personal push in his speeches from the ramparts of the Red Fort and televised events has given the Swachh Bharat campaign a new dimension. He is the first prime minister to have successfully conveyed to the public that cleanliness has a direct correlation with their health status and economic well-being.
The toilet-construction programme under the Swachh Bharat campaign to make India an open-defecation free (ODF) country played a significant part in the Modi government being voted back to power with a greater majority.
CLEANER, HEALTHIER KITCHEN
Another highlight of the government in the last six years and the one that played an equal political role -- besides the toilet scheme -- in getting Narendra Modi back to the PMO is free distribution of the LPG cylinders.
It was done through the Ujjwala Yojana, under which women in villages get free one LPG cylinder connection per household. The scheme has been so popular that at the end of the last fiscal, it overshot its target of 8 crore LPG connection.
Official data show that Ujjwala Yojana accounts for over 70 per cent growth in total domestic LPG connections in the country.
POLITICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The Modi government fulfilled some long-standing demands of the BJP, the party that leads the NDA government at the Centre.
These include revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370, construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya -- PM Modi led the groundbreaking ceremony following a Supreme Court ruling, abolition of triple talaq -- a step seen largely forwarding the goal of bringing in a uniform civil code.
Yet, PM Modi faces a host of challenges for the remaining four years of his second tenure in the PMO.
Yet, PM Modi faces a host of challenges for the remaining four years of his second tenure in the PMO.
COVID-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has grabbed the world by its collar. India is currently the worst-affected country, not in terms of the total number of confirmed cases but as the biggest hotspot in the world.
The pandemic is spreading to more and more villages of the country where medical healthcare facilities are non-existent. The death toll has been rising with India recording maximum daily deaths in the world due to Covid-19.
Health experts have warned that the Covid-19 situation is unlikely to reverse any time soon. This remains the immediate biggest challenge for PM Modi and his government.
SAGGING ECONOMY
PM Modi came to the power in 2014 on the promise of "achchhe din" (better days ahead). The early years of his tenure saw India clocking high growth in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But for the past two years or more, the economy has been facing a slowdown.
The economic slowdown turned into the first contraction in several decades due to the Covid-19 situation. The Modi government needs money to fund its health and social welfare programmes. That money can only come from revenue or taxes deposited by businesses.
The Covid-19 lockdown shut all businesses and threw people out of their jobs. Now, the government has allowed opening of almost all business activities. But there are problems of labour, and where labour is available, the cases of Covid-19 are shooting up.
It is a Catch-22 situation for the Modi government. It needs people to work and get businesses running to boost the economy, while still wanting people to stay home and help reverse the Covid-19 curve.
JOBS
Lack of employment generation has been an area where the Modi government has faced major criticism. Even when the GDP growth rate was soaring, economy watchers called it jobless growth.
The government allegedly held back a survey that put the unemployment rate at a 42-year-high months ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The Covid-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown have made the unemployment situation worse. This remains the biggest headache for PM Modi as it affects not only the economy but also his politics.
CHINA
China had always been a challenge for India but previously it refrained from asserting itself on the borders so blatantly. That left the previous central governments -- post-Nehru -- dealing with Pakistan as the biggest foreign policy challenge.
Now, the Chinese challenge looms over the Modi government. China is challenging India on the borders, in the neighbourhood and also in potential markets for Indian businesses. The border challenge is immediate.
The soldiers of India and China are in a faceoff at multiple friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The situation is particularly worrisome in eastern Ladakh. Soldiers have died in a physical fight for the first time in decades. Shots have been for the first time, again, in several decades.
Diplomacy does not (yet) seemed to have worked unlike in 2017, when PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping offered to promise of a new era of friendship. China is the biggest international or foreign policy challenge to PM Modi.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
PM Modi is the biggest election-winning insurance for the BJP. His party faces key assembly elections over the second tenure of PM Modi. The Bihar Assembly election is around the corner.
The BJP is in power in the state with the Nitish Kumar-led JDU. Though PM Modi and Nitish Kumar have a conflicting political past, they buried it in 2017. The Bihar Assembly election is the first poll in the state where the Modi-Nitish pair would seek vote for re-election.
The next, and bigger, domestic challenge for PM Modi would be the West Bengal Assembly election due in April-May next year. Bengal has been a long-coveted state for the BJP. The Modi-mania seen in 2019 Lok Sabha elections gives the BJP hope that PM Modi's electoral appeal would help it win the state of its ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee.
But the biggest political challenge PM Modi will face during his second term is the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in 2022. That election may also decide who would be the BJP's future prime ministerial candidate.
PM Modi will turn 74 in 2024 when the next Lok Sabha election will take place. By 2022, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic may be over and post-Covid-19 politics may offer an entirely different political equation both for PM Modi and the country.
Live TV
ALSO READ | Narendra Modi turns 70: 15 facts you can't overlook about the 14th Prime Minister of India
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Modi will be judged on his government’s performance. Here's how the report card reads.
Narendra Modi's five years in power: 10 most important achievements
Modi will be judged on his government’s performance. Here's how the report card reads.
| 4-minute read | 09-02-2019
MINHAZ MERCHANT @minhazmerchant
Most pollsters predict a hung Parliament in 2019. But if a week is a long time in politics, the 12 weeks that remain before the 2019 general election give Prime Minister Narendra Modi time to recover lost ground.
Modi will be judged on his government’s five year performance. How does his report card read? Underwhelming. Consider first, though the achievements. Ten stand out.
Flagship success
Ayushman Bharat: The health insurance scheme launched on September 23, 2018, has already benefited 10 lakh poor patients and could be an electoral game-changer. More than 500 million Indians who could not afford medical treatment for non-communicable illnesses like cancer and heart disease now have access to free healthcare.
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code: The legislation, enacted in December 2016, is the silver bullet to tackle India’s chronic problem of non-performing assets. Banks have begun to recover debts that had seemingly turned irretrievably bad. “Phone banking” has ground to a halt.
PM Modi will be judged on his government’s five-year performance.(Photo: India Today)Rural electrification: The Modi government’s push to provide last-mile connectivity to hard-to-access rural clusters has been fairly successful. However, several villages cited as connected to the electrical grid still have households without power. Part of the problem is that some villages lie in areas controlled by Naxalites while in others the terrain makes access difficult.
Free LPG cylinders: Under the Ujjwala Yojana scheme, women in villages now have access to cooking gas. This has both health and economic benefits. Over 60 million free LPG connections have been given with nearly 50 per cent going to SC/ST households.
Sanitation: The Swachh Bharat Mission has built toilets at an unprecedented pace. Since October 2014, over 92 million toilets have been constructed, covering nearly 500 million households in one of the world’s largest operations of its kind. Cultural habits, however, mean that open-air defecation remains endemic. Many newly-built toilets lack sewage facilities; others are being used as storage rooms. Nonetheless, a beginning has been made.
Digital transfer of subsidies: This has cut out most (though not all) middlemen who routinely siphoned off large chunks of benefits due to the poor. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, had famously said in December 1985, while addressing the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Congress, that only 15 paise out of every rupee in subsidies reaches the poor. With digitised transfers that figure has probably risen to 75 paise.
However, lack of Internet connectivity in rural areas, combined with limited digital literacy among farmers and labourers, often leave them at the mercy of local officials to access their money electronically.
Infrastructure: There has been a steep rise in building roads, highways and metro networks as well as housing for the poor. These are long-term initiatives but the benefits are already visible. According to fact-checking sites, 12km of highways were constructed in 2013-14. This pace more than doubled to 27km per day in 2017-18. In Mumbai alone, coastal roads, a new airport and a large metro network could transform public transport in India’s richest city that has long been infrastructure-poor.
Modi has emerged as India’s best election campaigner and executor of important developmental schemes. (Photo: PTI)Strong basics
Foreign policy: The government has repaired relations with China, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, built economic and geopolitical bridges to east Asia and west Asia and strengthened the strategic partnership with the US.
GST: The implementation of the goods and services tax was chaotic and its structure needlessly complex. Its benefits, though, are beginning to seep through the economy. Revenue is lower than expected but the removal of octroi, for example, has greatly helped the logistics and transport industries. The absence of state boundary checks means truckers save up to 30 per cent in fuel and time, raising productivity with quicker turnarounds.
All the PM’s men
Boosting India’s space programme: ISRO has proved that putting scientists and technocrats rather than bureaucrats in charge of key organisations pays dividends. The success of ISRO also highlights the government’s lacunae in other areas of institution building.
Failures of the government across domains have taken some of the sheen off its concrete achievements. The Centre has let key institutions wither. A Lok Pal has not been appointed. The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Reserve Bank of India have lacked strong, consistent leadership. A talent deficit is evident at all levels: the Cabinet, academic institutions and statutory bodies.
Tax laws lack certitude. The bureaucracy, in the defence and finance ministries in particular, has not distinguished itself. The Prime Minister’s Office maintains a sphinx-like silence on key issues, allowing disinformation full play.
Modi is India’s best election campaigner and executor of important developmental schemes. But as Prime Minister, you need to go beyond that and nurture talent.
The most successful leaders surround themselves with people smarter than themselves.
The Prime Minister, in contrast, is surrounded by people who are not smarter than him. That is, perhaps, the biggest failing of his prime ministership.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)
Also read: 5 reasons why Modi could end up as Leader of Opposition in 2019
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19th Feb 2021
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Amitabh Tiwari
·Columnist
6 January 2021·5-min read
As the new decade dawns, an important question with regards to the Indian political landscape is doing the rounds: will this be the decade of the Bharatiya Janata Party?
The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stormed the political scene of the county in 2014 general elections riding on corruption charges and anti-incumbency against the Congress-led UPA-2.
The BJP won state after state during the period 2014 to 2019 on the back of its development plank. It formed governments along with its allies in 11 states, while losing power in 4 during this period.
Today, the BJP has 303 MPs in the Lok Sabha, 93 in the Rajya Sabha and 1,374 MLAs across various states in India. It has its own chief minister in 12 states, while it rules another 5 states with its allies.
There has never been a decade in Indian politics that the BJP has fully dominated. During the decade 2001-10, the BJP lost power in 2004 and the Congress, along with its allies, dominated the latter part.
During 2011-2020, the BJP dominated Indian political scene during the second half.
However, the BJP juggernaut is now on a roll. In the 2021 state elections, the party is giving a serious threat to Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while it is fighting to retain Assam.
Even hardcore supporters of the Congress and other regional parties feel that they have no chance to win even in the 2024 general elections.
PM Modi’s popularity is high despite the ongoing farmer protests and the economic distress caused by the pandemic. This decade could well belong to the BJP and there are many factors working in favour of the party.
The BJP today is a very ambitious party with a clear goal of ruling at the Centre and in majority of the states. The men at the helm of the BJP -- Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda -- are 24x7 politicians, who never take a break and are always in the election campaign mode.
The party takes every election very seriously, irrespective of whether it is a gram panchayat or a state level or a national level poll.
Party bigwigs campaign even for local body polls. They are not afraid of a backlash from the media in case of an electoral loss. The party always gives its best with the clear intent of wanting to emerge victorious.
The BJP claims to have a strong network of 18 crore members. Even if one discounts this claim, the actual foot soldiers of the party are volunteers of its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). These selfless workers campaign relentlessly for the sake of ideology and are the BJP’s biggest asset.
The RSS has always stood for a casteless society. It, along with BJP, has successfully managed to unify the Hindu voters to a large extent, cutting across caste and class lines. Hindus account for roughly 80% of the country's population and even if the party succeeds in garnering support from half of this population, it would not lose any election at the national level.
Through a clearly crafted strategy, the BJP has managed to paint the Congress and many other regional parties with the same brush and convinced many that these parties are indulging in minority appeasement politics. This has led to a Hindu awakening of sorts.
The 'One Nation' project of the party fuses a more unitary, Hindu nationalist conception of the Indian identity which forms the ideological core of the BJP.
It has been able to bind people of the majority states into one identity, that of Indianness, which was missing earlier.
A weakened Congress is helping the BJP spread its wings even further. The current leadership of the Congress does not evoke any confidence. The party is going through an existential crisis and a section has revolted against the Gandhi family, the dynasts who continue to hold the Congress in their iron, and somewhat throttling, grip.
Rahul Gandhi’s ‘yes and no’ kind of politics does not augur well for the party.
Many regional parties are also witnessing a churn as leadership is being passed on to the younger generation. Several of these leaders, born with a silver spoon, lack the charisma of their elders and are unwilling to slog hard on the ground. The absence of leaders from the scene during the migrant crisis, in the midst of the raging pandemic, is a case in point.
The Congress as well as the regional parties in their current form are struggling to take on the might of the BJP’s relentless electoral machine.
However, the BJP is likely to face challenges as well, while it works towards dominating this decade. The party has been unsuccessful in making inroads into South India: without this, it will struggle to be called as a party with pan India appeal. However, the BJP will not be satisfied by its current victories and dominance and will not sit on its laurels. It will continue to find ways to get a toehold into southern India and spread its influence and power down South as well.
The party has a good track record while contesting state elections as the main opposition, but it does not have a similar record while defending its territory as an incumbent.
It needs to replicate the successful Gujarat model to other states where it is in power.
Somewhere during the middle of the decade, Narendra Modi could retire, if the unsaid rule of retirement age of 75 years in the BJP is applied to him as well.
What shape will the BJP take after Modi hangs up his boots? Is there a succession plan in place? Could the party face groupism or will the RSS ensure a smooth transition?
All of these exciting events to watch out for in this new decade, which, it appears, could well belong to the BJP.
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BJP RSS meeting to be held in Ahmedabad; West Bengal Polls on top agenda
