The people of India have suffered tremendously since the past four years. Ultimately it is the electorate that holds the key to power. One thing is certain. 2019 will be a watershed year for the nation, opines Arshad Shaikh
“People with good intentions make promises. People with good character keep them” – Anonymous.
One of the many ways to bolster the true spirit of a thriving democracy is by evaluating governance and those in the highest echelons of power. It is therefore quite ritualistic for civil society and the media in free societies to check the performance of a government that is at the twilight of its elected term. On the other hand, the ruling dispensation also spells out its achievements spewing new promises with an eye on getting the people’s mandate once again. Let us therefore take up the arduous task of evaluating the present NDA government in India that came to power in May 2014. Calling it the NDA government is a misnomer as for all practical purposes it is in reality the “Modi regime” and is termed so by many in the media. “High hopes and broken promises” – just about sums up the performance of the “Modi Sarkar” and it is an incontrovertible fact that history is never kind to those who are offered a window to glory and exaltation but end up in failure and ignominy.
development front
Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, nailed it by saying: “Development is about more than money, or machines, or good policies – it’s about real people and the lives they lead.” So if there is one singular disappointment among the people with the Modi government then it is on the development front. The common man (aam aadmi) of India did not feel any positive change in his life and kept waiting for the promised achche din (good days). The promises made by the BJP in 2014 turned out to be false assurances and it was seemingly sought to be normalised and forgotten as being chunavi jumalas (rhetorical slogans that all politicians make at the time of elections).
While the government may cite rural electrification, roads and highways construction, the Dhan-Jan Yojana for expanding banking access to the poor, the Mudra Yojana for startups with minimum collateral, subsidised LPG for the poor, as some of its achievements, the fact remains that India continues to stagnate year after year on the Human Development Index (HDI – a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators) with rankings like 130+ out of 188 countries being evaluated. The government spends only 1 per cent of GDP on health services, compared to the world average of 6 per cent and less than 3 per cent of GDP on education. With such meagre allocation, real development where it matters is bound to remain a pipe-dream. The BJP had promised to create 10 million jobs a year. However, its government has delivered only about a million jobs thus far. Farmers’ suicides continue unabated with the farmers agitating over getting their legitimate minimum support price (MSP).
Reforms and law making
The Modi government created a record of sorts in scrapping old, redundant and archaic laws from statute books. While previous governments could remove just 1,301 obsolete laws the Modi regime has managed to abolish as many as 1,200 Acts in just three years and 1,824 more obsolete central Acts have been identified for annulment. The Lokpal and Whistle Blowers Protection laws have already been passed by Parliament but there seems to be little action on the ground. The Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011 (GR Bill) was introduced in Parliament in 2011. Despite assurances the government is procrastinating on bringing about legislation for ensuring effective redressal of grievance of citizens related to non-delivery of entitled goods and services by the government.
By amending the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 in the year 2016 with regards to engagement of children in ‘family enterprises’, the government allowed factories / industries to engage children in out-sourced homes based assignments. Banning cryptocurrencies to prevent misuse of non-bank transactions and bringing about an insolvency and bankruptcy law to ease the liquidation process of assets will be touted as the government’s achievements but the bail-in clause of the FRDI bill is a sticking point and has been referred to a select committee. The biggest reform however undoubtedly remains the transformation of the indirect tax system with the implementation of the GST. However, it was not without teething problems which continue to plague small businesses and strain Centre-State relations.
colossal blunder
On November 8, 2016 the Prime Minister made an announcement by going live on media that all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes were no longer legal tender and people were given a 50-day period to exchange their cancelled cash for freshly issued 2,000 and 500 rupee notes or depositing them into their respective bank accounts. With 86% of existing cash in circulation to become suddenly demonetised resulted in giving a rude jolt to India’s economy, resulting in huge loss for the country and giving a southward turn to the GDP growth of India.
Demonetisation failed to curb black money as 99% of the withdrawn 500 and 1000 rupee notes were returned, according to the RBI. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, once said: “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” The sad part about the whole demonetisation drama was that the people were gullible and docile enough to swallow this colossal blunder in the name of “good intention but bad implementation”. No wonder those in power still brandish it as one of their glorious achievements and are quite unapologetic about it.
Hounding the minorities
The last four years have been the most trying for the minorities in India with the Muslims facing the maximum brunt of a systematic campaign to malign and harass them. The game plan is to pester and bully Muslims in the streets with the help of rogues and anti-social elements with an undeclared assurance that the police and administration will turn a Nelson’s eye to these crimes. The strategy is not to engineer large scale riots but administer low intensity high impact targeted killings in the form of lynching in the name of gau-raksha, etc.
Then through the bogey of “triple talaq” there was legislation and the incessant media blitz against Muslims as being anti-women and clinging to archaic laws and shunning modernity. Targeting minority status of AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia, passing the Enemy Property Bill, vilifying Muslim kings of India as conquerors and anti-Hindu, tainting Muslim seminaries as hotbeds of terror, blaming Muslim youth for waging love-jihad and leaving no stone unturned for branding them as lacking patriotism and being “anti-national” sent a strong message to the minorities that they would have to reconcile themselves to live as “second class” citizens in this country and forgo their inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The inept handling of minorities has maligned India’s name internationally and even face censure by global human rights watch groups.
Democracy in danger
It is now acknowledged by political scientists that democracy can be subverted into quasi-dictatorship or as we call it into an “undeclared emergency” by taking control of the judiciary and security agencies, sidelining political opponents and civil society and bringing electoral reform to gain unfair advantage at the polls. A look at four years of Modi-Raj will demonstrate how this has been attempted with the head of state trying to control all the levers of power single-handedly.
Apart from the well accepted fact that we now have a completely subservient mainstream media that almost appears like being the spokesperson of the government, the judiciary too is being manipulated by the executive as can be seen in the standoff over the appointment of judges between the government and the Supreme Court.
Also we had an extraordinary event in the history of this nation in which four sitting senior judges of the Supreme Court called a press conference, citing numerous problems that they said were very damaging to the country’s apex court and warned it could destroy Indian democracy. The words of JFK ring loud in the present situation as he wisely said: “Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.”
uncertain future
Parliamentary elections are due in 2019. The Modi-Shah election juggernaut is all geared to face the electorate with some very sophisticated advertising blitz and gigantic rallies. They are confident of returning to power and are already in the campaign mode. However there is a whiff of opportunity for the opposition to hold back the NDA from returning to power only if they set aside their differences. They appear to be uniting under the threat of an existential crisis as can be seen in Karnataka and the by election of Kairana, Uttar Pradesh. But they have lots of ground to cover to show that they are strong enough to topple the NDA. The people of India have suffered tremendously since the past four years. Ultimately it is the electorate that holds the key to power. Will they punish Modi or reward him once again? One thing is certain. 2019 will be a watershed year for the nation.