Seven Years of ‘Achhe Din’

On 26 May 2021, Narendra Modi completed seven years as the Prime Minister of India. He catapulted himself and his party to power with the promise of ‘achhe din’ (good days). It is customary for the media to evaluate the performance of governments as they complete their nth year in power. Rulers tout their achievements while the opposition highlights the failures and broken promises of the government.

An interesting report by Robert Thomson and Heinz Brandenburg for Democratic Audit, a UK-based independent research unit at the Public Policy Group in the LSE’s Government Department, asks – “Are citizens good judges of government performance?”

After extensive surveys and analyses, their conclusion is: “Citizens are therefore good judges of government performance, capable of accurately assessing both promise keeping and breaking. This ability to judge accurately is important because it means that citizens as voters have the capacity to reward and punish parties for keeping or breaking their campaign promises. However, their assessments are also significantly affected by pre-existing levels of trust or distrust. The effect of trust is important because it acts as one of the heuristics that inform citizens’ assessments of what governments do and achieve when they evaluate performance.”

Assuming that the ability of the Indian voter to evaluate the performance of governments is the same if not better as his/her British counterpart, it would then be fair to say that the Modi government has achieved most of its poll promises and has delivered a solid performance on the political front and the management of the economy. One testimony to this possibility is the return to power of Modi in 2019 with an even bigger majority in Parliament than 2014.

However, is that the case? Has India really progressed at a pace it traditionally did in the last decade under the UPA government? Let us, therefore, look at the economy and the state of our polity to analyse the performance of Modi Sarkar. Moreover, why do many rue the promised ‘good days’ and sarcastically ask for the return of the ‘bad days’?

THE PROMISE OF ACHHE DIN

Modi won the confidence of the Indian voter by promising development and prosperity. He coined the popular election slogan in 2014 –“Achhe Din Aane Waale Hain” (the good days are coming).

The election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014 listed the failures of the then incumbent UPA government under Manmohan Singh. Its many accusations include: “UPA has shown Governance of Enactment, not Action. It has given an Administration of Entitlement without Delivery. We have become a polity of Promises, and not Performance. We represent an economy of deficits, a work culture of delays and an asset base of deficiency.

“Worse, Congress-led UPA has made India a global synonym of Corruption, Scandal and Stagnation. To make it even worse, today, we are passing through total Decision and Policy Paralysis. Sluggish economic growth, unprecedented price rise and unstable Currency are its most visible facets”.

Naturally, it was expected that the Modi government would reverse this situation. Fast-forward 2018, in a document prepared by the NITI Aayog in November 2018 titled – “Strategy for New India @ 75”, the government laid out some very aggressive targets for itself to be achieved by 2022.

Some of them include:  GDP growth rate of 9% to 10%, investment rate of 36%, all citizens to have a bank account, life insurance, accident insurance, pension and ‘retirement planning, doubling of farmers’ incomes, every Indian will own a house with its own toilet, water connection and LPG cylinder along with 24×7 electricity and broadband internet.

The list is long with India aiming to single-use plastic, reduction in the imports of oil and gas by 10%.

More importantly, the government set itself a target to “achieve a doctor-population ratio of at least 1:1400 (WHO norm 1:1000) and the nurse-population ratio of at least 1:500 (WHO norm 1:400) by 2022-23.” However, according to the NHP 2018 data, there is just one allopathic doctor available for around 11,082 people across the country.

PROMISES TO KEEP

We all have a gut feeling about the performance of our government for the last seven years. We all saw and experienced the decline in GDP, the demonetisation fiasco, the GST mess, growing unemployment, and the alienation of the minorities through actions in Kashmir, enactment of the CAA, NRC, and triple talaq legislations.

Accusations of the blatant misuse of state institutions like the CBI, NIA, EC and ED appear serious and events reported by the media seem to corroborate that suspicion. The Centre-States relations are strained, damaging the federalism of our polity.

India’s worrisome position and sometimes dismal slide in internationally accepted indices such as: life expectancy, infant mortality, global hunger index, health expenditure per capita, literacy rate, human capital, education index, world happiness report, human development index, social progress index, per capita GDP, GNI per capita and press freedom index is proof that the government has not delivered on its promises of making “Ek Bharat – Shresht Bharat” (One India – Great India).

In his opening statement at a recent press conference, the Indian National Congress leader P Chidambaram, painted an extremely bleak picture about our economy, saying – “The current state of the economy is no doubt largely due to the impact of the pandemic, but it has been compounded by the ineptitude and incompetent economic management of the BJP-led NDA government.

Good advice by distinguished economists and renowned institutions has been rebuffed. World-wide experience has been ignored.  Suggestions on fiscal expansion and cash transfers have been turned down. Hollow packages like Atmanirbhar have fallen flat.

We are glad that the two leading chambers of business and industry – CII and FICCI have, in  the  last  few  days,  echoed  our  views  and  pleaded  for  fiscal  expansion,  including  cash transfers to the poor.  The RBI’s monthly review has flagged the ‘demand shock’ and its consequences. The CMIE report on loss of jobs and growing unemployment is alarming. The research and survey reports of Aziz Premji University have concluded that 23 crore people have been pushed below the poverty line and into indebtedness. If 2021-22 should not go the same way as 2020-21 did, the government must wake up, admit its errors of commission and omission, reverse its policies and heed the advice of economists and the Opposition.

ACCHE DIN TO CONTINUE

There was a very interesting survey carried out by India Today in the run up to the general elections in 2019. It was called the ‘Mood of the Nation (MOTN)’ Survey and tabulated answers to the question – “Do you think Ache Din, as promised by Narendra Modi during the 2014 elections, have arrived for you”? The results were also compared to the data obtained through the same question asked to respondents in earlier times. The answers in percentage terms are shown in the table.

However, even with a satisfaction rate of just 33% in the MOTN survey, Narendra Modi still managed to pull off his biggest electoral victory at the hustings. Going by the popularity that our Prime Minister enjoys with his core voter base, we can easily conclude that no matter what scores the Modi Sarkar gets in the performance evaluations of his government, they are quite inconsequential to the political fortunes of our Prime Minister. In other words, ‘achhe din’ to continue for many more years to come. Period!