May 2015

One Year of the Modi Government: A Compilation of Critiques

AICC Research and Coordination Committee

Modi Has Underwhelmed India 1The Bloomberg

2 Promises UnmetKapil Sibal, The Hindu

Slogans Vs. Reality: 12 Simple Facts on Modiji’s 12 Months 4Dr. Shashi Tharoor, NDTV

5 The A-Z of ‘Acche Din’Dr. Mani Shankar Aiyer, NDTV

How Modi Let India in Just One Year 7Sanjay Jha, Huffington Post

9 Mr. Modi’s War on WelfareG. Sampath, The Hindu

Farm and Factory 11Hartosh Singh Bal, The Caravan

14 Wasting 282Mihir S Sharma, Business Standard

Narendra Modi’s Popularity Wanes in India as First Year Nears End 16Rahul Bedhi, The Irish Times

18 After a Year of Outsize Expectations, Narendra Modi Adjusts his Plan for IndiaEllen Barry, New York Times

The One Thing That has Saved Modi from Being a Complete Flop This Year 24Girish Sahane, Scroll.in

25 India Wants Delivery, Not Just IntentIndia Today

The Most Visible Part of the India Growth Story Has Been Modi’s Increasing Ability to Laud Himself 27Monobina Gupta

29 Modi’s One Year Anniversary: Where are the ‘Good Days’ he Promised?Shashank Shukla, Oped Space

Modi’s 1-Year Report Card: Anti-farmer and Pro-corporate Sarkar 30Kavita Chowdhary, Business Standard

31 A Promise Broken: PM Modi’s Maximum Failure on Minimum Government

Seetha, First Post

Doordarshan Singing Praises Won’t do Any Good 33Sandipan Sharma, First Post

34 After a Year in Office the Real Modi Needs to Stand UpDheeraj Nayyar, dna

22 One Year of Narendra Modi Sarkar: Expectations Were Unrealistically HighPratap Bhanu Mehta, The Financial Express

Promises That he Can’t Deliver 20First Post

Fishing for Compliments: Modi Govt’s Publicity Blitzkrieg Smacks of Desperation 38Akshaya Misra, First Post

40 One Year on, Modi has Battered Many Constitutional Principles – But the Biggest Victim is Fraternity

Harsh Mander, Scroll.in

One Year of Narendra Modi Sarkar: Not a Good Year for the Farmer 42Ashok Gulati, Financial Express

43 Healthcare Under Modi: In Need of Critical AttentionDinesh C Sharma, dna

An Education in Acronyms 45Anjali Mody, The Hindu

47 India’s One-man BandThe Economist

In Service of Corporates and Hindutva – Modi’s Disastrous First Year 49Praful Bidwai, Kashmir Times

37 One Year on, Modi Government has Proved its Critics WrongAakar Patel, Scroll.in

After One Year, India Expects Modi to Deliver 35Sanjay Kumar, The Diplomat

1

Modi Has Underwhelmed India Bloomberg

When Narendra Modi swept to power in India a year ago, critics said they feared his strongman tendencies. They needn't have worried. In his approach to eco-nomic reform, he's been anything but forceful.

In 2014, voters gave Modi a mandate for radical re-form and a big parliamentary majority to carry it out. Granted, his government hasn't been idle -- it's done a lot of smallish things, many of them valuable -- but it hasn't been bold. That is what India needed Modi to be. Now, at the end of his precious first year as prime minister, it might be too late.

The government calls its approach "creative incre-mentalism," which is more apology than rallying cry. Officials count off their achievements: milder restric-tions on foreign direct investment, cuts to fuel subsi-dies, more planned spending on infrastructure, moves to curb corruption and inefficiency in government. That's all fine. The drift and malaise that marked the last years of the previous, Congress-led administration have gone, and there's more optimism about growth. Even so, it's all a bit disappointing.

Measures like this aren't going to get India growing as quickly as it should. New forecasts say the econo-my will expand by almost 8 percent next year -- faster than China -- but they're flattered by cheap oil and based on a questionable new methodology. Profits and industrial production are down. Exports have fallen for five months running. Job growth is slow. After outperforming other emerging markets in the first six months of Modi's tenure, Indian stocks have returned to earth.

More and stronger economic reform is needed, but Modi doesn't seem eager. It would be within his pow-er, for instance, to restructure and privatize inefficient state-owned enterprises and banks. It isn't happening.The window for such actions is closing. The opposi-tion was cowed and disorganized after its trouncing last May; it has since regrouped, and smells blood.

Lately, the long-ruling Congress Party has stymied Modi's efforts to amend a restrictive land-acquisition law, and stalled a bill to create a nationwide goods-and-services tax (a measure it once pushed, by the way). Favorable macroeconomic conditions could easily shift, narrowing Modi's options still further. His moment may already have passed.

What can he do to prove otherwise? For a start, deep-en and extend the changes he's already made. The rules on foreign direct investment should be relaxed further. Rather than trying to convince investors that they won't be ambushed by the taxman, the govern-ment should make such assaults impossible by sim-plifying the corporate code and lowering rates. Banks aren't lending and private infrastructure companies aren't investing because of an overhang of bad debt: The government should address this directly, by creat-ing a "bad bank" to get those loans off the books.

If radicalism at the center is hard, Modi can do more to encourage radicalism in the states. He's said he wants them to compete to attract investment by amending the land and labor laws that stifle enterprise. Good idea. Yet states governed by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party already account for almost half of India's GDP. They need a push. A more concerted effort to press forward needn't stop reforming states such as Rajas-than from going even further. Modi, who dominates the BJP, could do more to prod the laggards.

Distracted by details, the prime minister has failed to act as an effective campaigner for further reform, a vi-tal role that only he can play. His successes have most-ly been piecemeal and have relied on his own close in-volvement. Individual measures wait for his attention and everything slows down. The jolt of energy that the rest of the government needs is never applied.

In his first year, Modi has spent too much political capital to no coherent purpose. Before it's too late, that needs to change.

Date: 24 May, 2015Courtesy: Bloombergview

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2

Promises UnmetKapil Sibal

Mr. Modi sold promises and dreams during his cam-paign speeches but the reality has been vastly differ-ent.

Narendra Modi believes he has transformed India in the last one year. In his speeches abroad, especially to NRIs, he has repeatedly made this point, though he chooses not to do so in India. Mr. Modi catapulted to the position of Prime Minister by selling a dream of bringing succour to the lives of the marginalised millions. At the end of one year, we need to assess the transformation he promised.

Business as usual

Mr. Modi promised that when he came to power, the economy would grow at 10 per cent or more. He prom-ised to put in place procedures to ensure ease of doing business. After one year, it is business as usual. In fact, a recent study reveals that profitability of 2,941 major companies in the quarter ending December 2014 de-clined by 16.9 per cent compared to the correspond-ing quarter of the previous year. Indeed, key drivers of corporate profitability, namely investment, household consumption and corporate dividends, continue to be weak. Many analysts have in fact downgraded the earnings forecast all the way till March 2016.

Latest figures from the Finance Ministry (March 2015) indicate that 2,099 mega projects involving an outlay of 18.13 lakh crore are stalled with the Proj-ect Management Group directly under the control of the Prime Minister. The government’s claim about reversal in the economic fortunes of India is hollow. It is because of the abysmal performance of the cor-porate sector and the non professional way in which state owned banks give loans that PSU banks are deep-ly crisis ridden with bad loans and restricted assets reaching a gigantic Rs. 7,12,000 crore (13.2 per cent of total advances), a figure higher than our fiscal deficit.

Mr. Modi, instead of making outlandish statements beyond our borders, should focus on, or at least have his Finance Minister deal with, the reality of econom-

ic stagflation that is bleeding us.

Before the elections when inflation was a real prob-lem, Mr. Modi continuously proclaimed that when in power, he would ensure inflation was controlled and households did not struggle. His government was fortunate to see the crude oil price fall. From $108 a barrel in May 2014, it is now $60. This helped the Fi-nance Minister reduce the deficit and the wholesale price index came down. Unfortunately, the inflation that touches the aam aadmi was not addressed. The average price of select items consumed daily by peo-ple is higher today than a year ago. The price per kilo of wheat flour, pulses, milk, mustard oil, vanaspa-ti, onions and potatoes has increased, in some cases by 10 15 per cent. In September 2013, when the ru-pee depreciated to Rs. 66 a dollar, Mr. Modi had said, “[Due to] the failure of Manmohan Singh, the rupee has landed in hospital, where it is battling for life on a ventilator.” Today, it continues to be on a ventilator, hovering around Rs. 64 to a dollar.

Mr. Modi made promises knowing that fulfilling them would be a tall order. Amit Shah has now admitted that the vow to bring back billions of dollars of black money was just a chunavi jumla (electoral gimmick). Statements like these shake people’s confidence in the credibility of politicians. There are huge procedural wrangles in bringing back black money. The promise to put Rs. 15 lakh in every citizen’s bank account from the recovered black money was an unethical and dis-honest attempt to garner votes. Now that they are in government, both the Finance Minister and Mr. Modi realise the difficulties and no longer talk about it.

Mr. Modi also promised to remove corruption. On April 21, 2014, he said he would personally ensure the removal of criminals from Parliament. We are yet to see that happen. In fact, the Lokpal Bill, an emo-tive issue that caught the attention of the people, saw the BJP supporting the Aam Aadmi Party to up the ante against the United Progressive Alliance. Now, the Prime Minister appears to have forgotten about it and is even silent about its introduction in Parliament.

Date: 24 May, 2015Courtesy: The Hindu

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Foreign policy failures

Despite the hype, on ground delivery is not visible here. Mr. Modi’s policy on Pakistan has been a failure; he does not know how to deal with Pakistan. He would have us believe that all is quiet despite the fact that incidences of cross border intrusions have increased and Nawaz Sharif has expressed anguish and alleged that the Prime Minister has let him down. There is no change on the ground and yet our Foreign Secretary went to Pakistan in March under the garb of a SAARC meeting. No breakthroughs followed.

Mr. Modi recently returned from China. In his elec-tion campaign, he had said it was shameful for the Ex-ternal Affairs Minister to go to China despite repeated Chinese incursions across the border. The incursions continue, but Mr. Modi himself happily visited China, despite the Chinese reaction to Mr. Modi’s Arunachal Pradesh tour in February. On the issue of incursions, the Finance Minister said recently, “As far as China is concerned, on the line of actual control, China has a different perception on what the line of actual control is, India has a different perception.”

It seems that incursions by Chinese are no longer an issue, legitimised because the perceptions of the two countries on the line of actual control are different. In China, Mr. Modi unilaterally made a statement that e visas would be granted to Chinese tourists, despite the Foreign Secretary stating the opposite a few hours earlier. Mr. Modi has lost a great opportunity to use the e visa as a bargaining chip to settle our concerns qua Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

As for the U.S., Mr. Modi suggests there has been a transformation in relations since President Barack Obama accepted the invitation to be a Guest of Hon-our on Republic Day. Relations between countries are not transformed through ceremonial visits. It is only when Americans invest in our economy that the rela-tionship will be considered transformative. From the U.S. standpoint, road blocks to investments in India

remain. Unless bold policy decisions are taken, real transformation will not happen.Social sector setback

The real failure of this government has been its com-plete disregard of the social sectors. Agriculture, edu-cation, health, and the concerns of small traders, who represent the backbone of the economy, have all been sidelined. Allocations on education and health have been drastically reduced. Agriculture is in distress. The growth rate in agriculture has come down to 1.1 per cent from 3.7 per cent in 2014. More farmers are committing suicide than ever before.

The average debt of 52 per cent of all agricultural households is Rs. 47,000, of which 26 per cent is owed to private moneylenders — the root cause of farmer suicides. There has been no attempt to have a crop insurance scheme. Mr. Modi should know that 80 85 per cent of all farmers own less than 1 hectare of land, which means that land is their only source of liveli-hood. If they lose that, they will be deprived of their livelihood and, in the absence of skills, they cannot be absorbed in non agricultural sectors. Therefore, the amendments to the Land Bill are ill timed. This legisla-tion should only move forward when there is enough capacity created in the non agricultural sectors and enough skills imparted for surplus rural labour. It is clear, therefore, that this government has no clue how to deal with the endemic problems that confront the agricultural community. Mr. Modi is instead shower-ing benefits on a few industrialists, which is the worst form of crony capitalism.

There is also a sinister transformation taking place in India; a silent but sure footed saffronising of both poli-ty and institutions, particularly in education. This does not augur well for our democracy. Vicious attempts by the saffron brigade to create conflicts through ‘love jihad’ and ‘ghar vapasi’ are matters of deep concern. The essence of India must be protected at any cost. The government by fair means and foul is attempting to destroy what our civilisation has always stood for.

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4

Slogans vs Reality: 12 Simple Facts on Modiji’s 12 Months

Dr Shashi Tharoor

The media is full of anniversary retrospectives, and since I've been early off the starting gate with my own assessment of the Prime Minister and his regime (as far back as December 2014), I am reluctant to repeat myself in mellifluous analytical prose all over again. Since my point of view is well-known already, I would prefer not to belabour my readers with further com-mentary. Instead, here is a simple recital of bare facts - one for each of Mr Modi's months in office to date, juxtaposed with the related Moditva slogan: Slogan: "India First".Reality: The Prime Minister has delivered more speeches in Parliaments abroad, than in the Lok Sabha of which he is a member. Slogan: "No more tax terrorism".Reality: The government inflicted tax demands on entire new categories of victims, shaking investor con-fidence. Foreign funds have withdrawn $550 million from India in the first half of May alone, a dubious record. Slogan: "Responsible government".Reality: Despite draconian measures and targets, the Government missed the revised tax collection target for both direct and indirect taxes by Rs. 2,288 crore in the financial year 2014-15. Slogan: "Make in India".Reality: Manufacturing rate of growth under UPA, May 2014: 5.6%. Manufacturing rate of growth under NDA, April 2015: 2.1%. Slogan: "We will create jobs for our youth."Reality: Number of Indians entering the job market each month: 10 lakh. Number of new jobs created by UPA April-June 2014: 1.82 lakh. Number of new jobs created by Modi government October-December 2014: 1.17 lakh. Slogan: "Indian businesses will thrive."Reality: India's merchandise exports shrank for the

fifth consecutive month in April. Merchandise ex-ports last month were 14% lower than the $25.6 bil-lion in April last year, and imports fell 7.5% to $33 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $11 billion, according to commerce ministry data. Slogan: "We will build India."Reality: The total value of tenders issued in 2014-15 (across infrastructure sectors) stood at Rs. 395,300 crore, a 23 per cent decline from the previous year under UPA. The problem of weak tendering affected railways, highways, real estate, water supply and the irrigation sector. Slogan: "We will build roads that UPA couldn't."Reality: The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yoja-na (PMGSY) got a budgetary allocation of only Rs. 14,291 crore for 2015-16. According to the Ministry of Rural Development, the state governments require Rs. 57,206 crore just to complete pending road-building projects already sanctioned. The budget won't cover a quarter of that, let alone new roads. Slogan: "Jan Suraksha".Reality: Social-sector spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen to its low-est levels since 2010 - and that's not even taking into account five years of inflation since then. Budgets for health, education, sanitation and women's security - all major talking points of the BJP's election campaign - have been savagely slashed. Central schemes remain on paper but are now unfunded or grossly underfund-ed. Slogan: "Jan Dhan Yojana".Reality: 60% of the new Jan Dhan Yojana accounts have zero balance. Slogan: "Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas".Reality: India's minorities are daily being made to feel unwelcome by the majoritarian discourse flourishing under the BJP, with ruling party MPs, including two Ministers, uttering Hindu-chauvinist sentiments nev-

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: NDTV

5

er heard before from people in authority. Ghar wapasi, saffronization, statues of Godse, Ramzadein and Ha-ramzadein, have all entered into and seared our polit-ical discourse, while the Prime Minister has remained ostentatiously silent, refusing to discipline or dismiss his errant ministers. Slogan: "Our coal auctions made record sums of mon-ey."Reality: These are projections of what auctioned coal mines would make over thirty years of full and suc-

cessful production. It takes a level of chutzpah that only Mr Modi is capable of to claim credit in 2015 for accomplishments that won't actually occur till 2045.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. These are incontrovertible facts; the glowing polls being cited by Mr Modi's supporters are opinions. At this rate, the facts will continue to speak for themselves in the only poll that matters - the one that's coming in 2019.

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The A-Z of ‘Acche Din’Dr Mani Shankar Aiyer

A is for AAP: That stripped the BJP of its halo and showed up its Lok Sabha victory as a flash in the pan

A is also for Agrarian Distress: That is the chief out-come of One Year of Modi: agri growth is down now to under one per cent

B is for Black Money: That Modi promised to bring back at Rs.15 lakh a head, but which languishes still in foreign banks while domestic black swells and swells

B is also for Budgets cuts: That Modi's government has savagely imposed on social sectors like Health, Educa-tion, MNREGA and Child Nutrition

B is finally for Banks: Or perhaps "bankruptcy", since Non-Performing Assets have reached the highest point ever but credit off-take lags far behind alleged GDP growth

C is for Chai-wallah: That Modi never was; he helped out in a canteen at the State Transport Depot taken on contract by his family

D is for Development: Of the Gujarat kind, which means fattening the fat cat by grabbing land from in-nocent miceD is also for Dignity, Decorum, and Decency: That Modi throws to the winds every time he addresses NRIs abroad

E is for Environment: That is being ruthlessly wrecked with clearances fast-tracked without a care for the consequences

E is also for Exports: That continue to plummet, drag-ging the Rupee down to depths not plumbed before

Date: 25 May, 2015Courtesy: NDTV

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F is for FDI: That Modi hopes will bail him out, but which fights shy, seeking action not slogans

F is also for Ford Foundation: That Modi is hounding, little honouring its huge contribution to the consoli-dation of Development and Democracy in our land G is for Godhra: And all that followed, which Modi wants us to forget but which the nation cannot

G is also for Ghar Wapsi: That discredits Modi and calls into question his protestations

G is finally for Greenpeace: That Modi is going after for having the temerity to question him and his policies H is for Hindutva: Modi's badge of pride, even if it alarms all those who believe in the Idea of India

I is for Industrialists: The heartless crowd that within a year has turned on Modi

I is also for Indian Council of Historical Research: That is headed by a pracharak and is being packed with mythologists, not historians

J is for Jayalalithaa: That elusive will o' the wisp, who keeps Modi dangling in despairing hope

K is for Kisan: Whose very existence is being snuffed out because Modi considers them a nuisance and a roadblock to growth

L is for Land: That Modi wants to acquire with both hands to pass on to his "suited-booted" cronies

M is for Minorities: That Modi has ceaselessly failed to protect

M is also for Manufacturing: That adamantly refuses to pick up despite Modi's pleadings

N is for Nagpur: That dictates the BJP's every move

O is for Ordinances: That Modi spews like a fountain

P is for Panchayats: That Modi grossly neglects

P is for Parliament: That Modi is also grossly neglect-ing

Q is for Questions: That hang over Modi's acche din - aakhir, hain kahan?

R is for RSS: That rules the roost

R is also for Rafale: That has killed "Make in India"

S is for Swachch Bharat: That has left us as filthy as before

T is for Talkathons: That Modi loves treating himself to, forgetting the Gita's injunction that action is his duty

U is for Ubiquitous: That means Modi being every-where

U is also for Universities: Left headless while Modi's government seeks saffron ideologues to fill the vacan-cies

V is for Voter: Duped and abandoned

W is for Wife: Whose RTI petition is callously thrown in the dustbin

X is for Xmas: That Modi has obliterated as a holiday (also, see point M on Minorities)

Y is for YOU: You poor misled citizen

Z is for Zero: The mark awarded to One Year of Modi

*****

7

How Modi Let Down India In Just One YearSanjay Jha

Narendra Modi rode a rhapsodic wave to 7 Race Course Road amidst frenzied BJP supporters, media calisthenics, promotional blitz and mind-boggling promises of acchhe din. Twelve months later, it is es-tablished that Modi has no magic wand. Or a unique panacea for India's diverse challenges. In fact, he has come up woefully short. Despite being a Congress spokesperson, I shall attempt to be dispassionate and prejudice-free in this brief synopsis of a year that was annus horribilis for us.

Modi's only positive accomplishment was that he, at least temporarily, revived national sentiment on India, which paradoxically enough, was relentlessly smothered, slaughtered and singed by the BJP itself. But a painstaking analysis demonstrates that Modi remained in campaign mode and orchestrated atmo-spherics like the Madison Square Garden show dom-inated the rock-star politician's agenda. The actual performance though remained sub-par.

The institutionalisation of the RSS was formalized - its chief got official government approbation by being allowed broadcast his Hindutva philosophy on the state-run Doordarshan. Modi promptly tweeted his earnest endorsement of Mohan Bhagwat’s speech. Ex-pectedly, what followed were inflammatory outbursts from the likes of Sakshi Maharaj, Yogi Adityanath and Giriraj Singh. Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad, unheard of sectarian templates suddenly overwhelmed politi-cal discourse. Meanwhile, the RSS has imperceptibly penetrated some crucial institutions of India, like ed-ucation. It hardly portends well. Hate-spewing voices like Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti and Sadhvi Prachi gained prominence. Modi, a past-master at running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, found that his political stratagem had backfired. By the end of a year, people were asking probing questions. Modi’s convenient silence followed by a self-righteous tweet seemed trite.

Church attacks continued unabated, getting ex-top cop Julio Ribeiro to ruefully question his status as an Indian citizen. Earlier, just before he returned home after Modi’s bear-hugs and riveting tales of his croc-odile conquests following India’s Republic day, US President Barack Obama remained circumspect about

India’s secular credentials -- if Mahatma Gandhi was alive, he would be stunned to see Indian society rising communal intolerance.

The BJP/RSS have a pathological antipathy towards India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and it shows - from renaming schemes earlier named after him, to repeated attempts to mortify the world states-man. It reached a nadir when personal equations be-tween him and Sardar Patel and Netaji SC Bose were distorted mischievously through selective leaks.

Despite some heaven-sent economic tailwinds that had crude oil prices slump to below 50% of the levels prevalent during the UPA, Modi’s economy was slug-gish and slothful, with all crucial economic indicators such as job accretion, core sector growth, merchandise exports and agricultural productivity languishing. Despite massive ad spends for government branding of popular schemes (erstwhile UPA launches), there was little incremental momentum. Make in India, Digital India, Swachh Bharat, Jan Dhan Yojana etc re-mained just seductive slogans. Modi was peripatetic, a constant globetrotter but with nothing to show but his rock-star image, particularly to NRIs. India’s econom-ic performance has been unimpressive, despite GDP growth projected at 7.5%. Irrational obstinacy in the Land Bill by a recalcitrant Modi has led to increas-ing farmer resistance, and Gajendra Rajput’s death in scorching heat in Delhi was a macabre exhibition of farmer angst.

Modi’s arrogance can be best seen in his Scarlett O’Ha-ra attitude, with the ordinance route employed fla-grantly. But the opposition was resolute in its defiance of anti-poor legislative amendments being hurriedly pushed through. Arun Jaitley, who masterminded the parliamentary gridlock during UPA-II that held back crucial bills, now appeared distraught. No one was convinced. The BJP is like a Robin Hood gone rogue; it has slashed social sector allocations on pub-lic health, delayed MNREGA payments, allowed the Food Security Act to remain comatose and mocked at farmer-friendly provisions in the Land Ordinance. The poor are understandably disillusioned, and even the middle-class are feeling short-charged.

Date: 8 May, 2015Courtesy: Huffington Post

8

The promise to recover black money within 100 days was revealed to be mere electoral rhetoric by Amit Shah. It was the perfect example of the BJP's sleight of hand.

Foreign policy remained muddled, even as traditional adversaries Pakistan and China seem to be drawing even closer by sharing strategic military and econom-ic corridors (USD 46 billion investments) on crucial geographical terrain sensitive to Indian borders. And non-state actors given polite patronage by the Paki-stan establishment looked increasingly hostile. The bravado on capturing dreaded don Dawood Ibrahim has only caused acute embarrassment.

Opaqueness ruled as the RTI appears to be sidelined. And the Lokpal, an independent CBI, and related anti-corruption infrastructure bills remained in cold storage. For its political satire and self-deprecating humour, the AIB Roast found itself instead being tar-geted. In Maharashtra, the beef ban was symptomatic of religious polarisation getting whole-hearted en-couragement.

The Delhi elections results manifested the mid-dle-class's disillusionment with Modi. But it is the po-litically opportunistic alliance with the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir that has raised serious concerns on In-dia's national security.

Modi has even tarred NGOs, such as Greenpeace and those funded by the Ford Foundation, with the brush of suspicion. The government has looked waspish, ex-asperated with jholawalla activists. They apparently pose mountainous threats to India’s growth model. It sounded peevish and puerile and reeked of political insecurity.

The media has been generally indulgent of Modi, bar-ring the occasional castigation. This after Modi con-temptuously dismissed them as news traders (“baza-ru”). With General VK Singh branding the media as “presstitutes”, one expected Modi to do some damage control. Instead, he sounds embittered, sulking at their reluctance to appreciate his government.

Frankly, Modi’s honeymoon is over and the signs of disenchantment are clear. The party’s spokespersons have a standard answer for every question: “develop-ment” and a reminder of their brute force in Parlia-ment.

Returning rejuvenated from a brief sabbatical, Rahul Gandhi made a straightforward but bodacious attack: “Modi’s is a suit-boot ki Sarkar, it exists primarily for crony-capitalism”. He found innumerable takers, giv-en Modi’s brazenly demonstrated public proximity to his select favourites, who look equally thrilled to be in exotic foreign locations with their generous host.

As a Congressman, nothing lacerates my sensibili-ties more than when Modi talks of a “Congress Mukt Bharat”. It was the successful fight for Indian Indepen-dence in 1947 which ended European domination. The simultaneous Chinese Revolution of 1949 led to an Asian resurgence and the rise of two superpow-ers-driven bipolarity in the Soviet Union and USA. Modi and the BJP do not seem to know that the Con-gress-led freedom movement changed world history. He can do nothing to change that. Nothing.

They say a week is a long time in politics. A year, as Modi is probably discovering, is eternity. India is wait-ing. And is getting increasingly impatient.

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9

Mr. Modi’s War On Welfare G Sampath

The Modi government is determined to dismantle the two-pronged welfare paradigm.

It is now an established fact that one area where the Narendra Modi administration has acted with a sense of purpose, urgency and resolve is in slashing so-cial expenditure. Be it education, health, agriculture, livelihood security, food security, panchayati raj in-stitutions, drinking water or the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes sub-plan, central government funds earmarked for social protection have been cut.

The cutbacks have been so drastic that one of NDA’s own Cabinet members, Maneka Gandhi, the Minister for Women and Child Development, felt compelled to write a dissenting note to the Finance Minister. Ac-cording to the estimates doing the rounds, the overall reductions in social sector spending add up to about Rs. 1.75 lakh crore.

No Indian Prime Minister has ever launched such a full frontal attack on the welfare state that India, for a brief period, has tried to be, or some might say, pre-tended to be. Considering that the biggest beneficia-ries of these schemes were the poor and the marginal-ised — typically dismissed as vote banks responsible for the political nuisance of populism — Mr. Modi de-serves full credit for this achievement, the most note-worthy of his first year in office.

But these cuts in social spending tell only half the sto-ry. We need to look at the other half — what he wants to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Em-ployment Guarantee Act, the Public Distribution Sys-tem, and all the other existing social provisions with — to get the rest.

Social security that isn’t

The ruling party’s spokespersons, in response to the charges levelled by the Opposition that their govern-ment is anti-poor, have been pointing to the social security initiatives launched by the NDA including the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana and the Atal Pension Yojana.

If anyone wants to find out how pro-poor the NDA administration really is, all they need to do is to com-pare the provisions of the social expenditures it wants out, such as the MGNREGA, with the ones it is push-ing. The larger design becomes immediately apparent.The MGNREGA and the Food Security Act (which governs the Integrated Child Development Services, PDS and the Midday Meal programmes) are both rights-based social provisions. The MGNREGA legal-ly recognises the citizen’s right to demand work as a right, and if the state cannot deliver 100 days of work in a financial year, it has to provide unemployment allowance.

Similarly, while it may come as a shock to economists imported from Washington DC, many people in this country hold the bizarre belief that it would be diffi-cult to stay alive without food — which is why the FSA makes food a citizen’s right.

The NDA’s various Pradhan Mantri Yojanas, in con-trast, put the onus of social security on those who lack it the most — the poor themselves.

Launched by Mr. Modi on August 15 last year, the Jan Dhan Yojana has been touted as an initiative for finan-cial inclusion, a slippery term that can be spun to say one thing and mean another. It could mean real finan-cial empowerment, which is what it is being projected as. What it entails in reality is having your income, however meagre, made accessible (via the banking system) to global financial capital, which has run out of options in the economies that have finished emerg-ing and don’t know what to do.

Sections of the media have already begun writing glib-ly about the “success” of the Jan Dhan Yojana. What do they mean? Simply that a great number of bank accounts have been opened — 14.99 crore of them as of April 15, 2015. But as per the government’s own fig-ures, the majority of these accounts (58 per cent as of March 31, 2015) have no money in them. Thankful-ly, India has enough public sector banks that can be arm-twisted to take on the potentially ruinous burden of these lakhs of ‘no-frills’ accounts that are also, at the moment, ‘no money’ accounts.

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: Huffington Post

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But the Jan Dhan Yojana is at the heart of the NDA’s whole social security framework, such as it is, or will be. It is the basis for the life insurance, accident insur-ance, and pension schemes scheduled to commence from June this year.

While a detailed scrutiny of each of these schemes is beyond the scope of this essay, the broad contours can be summarised.

First of all, unlike the schemes on the NDA’s chopping block, none of these are rights-based, which means they can be wound up at any time, or the benefits de-nied on technical grounds (no Aadhar card, for in-stance).

Second, they are contributory, and earnings-linked. If the poor don’t have jobs, they won’t have an in-come, and if they don’t have an income, they won’t have money to put in the Jan Dhan accounts, (which is why 58 per cent of them are lying empty). And if they don’t have money to put into their accounts, they will default on their insurance premiums and pension payments — and if they default, well, there ends their social security from the Pradhan Manthri Yojanas.

All the three schemes — the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, and the Atal Pension Yojana — operate on an auto-debit basis from the Jan Dhan bank account. All three state categorically in their rules that if there is insufficient balance to keep the insurance/pension plan going, the benefits will cease.

Of course, on paper, the Jan Dhan account is where the subsidies, such as the cash equivalent of the food grain subsidy, are supposed to be transferred. But cash transfers alone, without jobs, will never be adequate to live on, let alone pay insurance premiums.

Put simply, the government’s intent behind these Yo-janas seems to be to disavow any responsibility for the socio-economically vulnerable.Welfare to paternalism

The very idea of social welfare in a modern, capital-ist, market economy has been informed by two essen-tial principles. One, because capitalism doesn’t work equally well for everyone, it requires some cushion-ing, achieved through income redistribution from the comparatively wealthy to the poor. This is accom-

plished via progressive taxation, and by setting up a public infrastructure of certain universal social bene-fits such as a free health service, or subsidised school-ing, or housing.

Two, a recognition that social entitlements are a polit-ical right, not a charity. The post-World War II golden era of capitalism — which lasted till the ascendancy of neo-liberal economics — was able to deliver a good life to so many only because of a strong welfare state premised on these two principles. The social democ-racies of the Scandinavian countries, which always top any global ranking for quality of life, still largely operate on this model.

It is precisely this two-pronged welfare paradigm — rights-based social provisions and redistribution of gross national income — that the Modi government is determined to dismantle.

Under so-called Modinomics, citizens shall have no right to work, no right to food, and no right to ask for what is their due by right (which might explain why the government hasn’t filled the post of the Central In-formation Commissioner for the past eight months).Of course, insurance-based schemes driven by contri-butions from the citizenry are also a widely employed social protection tool. But these are more suited to the developed economies with less acute poverty. Its role there has been to offer protection against economic risks such as unemployment or sickness. Social insur-ance is not a poverty alleviation measure — which is what India needs at present.

So, what does a social protection scheme that is also an effective poverty alleviation measure look like? This is what the radical communist organisation, the OECD, says in a report released this week, “India has one of the largest public works programme in the world in terms of coverage, the NREGS, which plays an important role in reducing short-term poverty and smooth employment and income throughout the year for rural labourers.” And it adds, for good measure, “The programme, however, remains little used, main-ly in poorer States, because of lack of funding”.

Unfortunately, for India’s rural labourers, Mr. Modi doesn’t think as highly of the MGNREGA. There is, however, a practical reason for this dislike of any rights-based welfare measures: by definition, and by law, a rights-based entitlement cannot be subjected to

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fiscal tyranny.

This is precisely why all of India’s rights-based legisla-tions — the right to work, the right to food, the right to education, and the right to information represent a huge achievement for Indian democracy. They sym-bolize the triumph of politics over blind monetarism. And today, they form the legislative edifice on which the social and economic aspirations of a vast majority of Indians rest.

But the Modi dispensation — like the one that pre-ceded it — is also under pressure to kowtow to the dogma of fiscal rectitude. Yet fiscal discipline is not the only agenda behind the savage spending cuts in its

very first year. The aim is also to prepare the ground for fundamentally altering the default settings of so-cial welfare in India — from a rights-based one that honours the dignity of the poor, to a paternalistic one that will push thousands more of the landless poor into a debt trap, depress rural wages, and make them ever more dependant on government charity, and at the brutal mercy of the unorganised labour market.At the end of the day, all that the average Indian asks of the state are basic amenities for a life of dignity, not life insurance. It is doubtful, however, if this expecta-tion will much impress our ‘tough love’ Prime Minis-ter.

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Farm And FactoryMr Hartosh Singh Bal

Arguing in support of the Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha in March, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley emphasised the need to reduce the number of people in the country who subsist on agriculture. “The share of GDP of agriculture is 15 percent, and 60 percent of the population shares that 15 percent,” he said. “So you have to bring people out of agriculture and create jobs in manufacturing.” This was as succinct a sum-mary as any of the government’s intentions with re-gard to agriculture and industry.

While the aim itself cannot be faulted, the concrete measures taken towards it so far suggest that Jaitley’s is a facile formulation, and one that conceals far more than it reveals. Jaitley’s assertion begins with an indis-putable fact, central to the challenge of India’s growth: if wealth is to be distributed more equitably, it will be vital to reduce the number of people who depend on farming. A great part of the wealth being generated in

this country is not reaching a large section of the pop-ulation; and farmers suffer most severely from this inequity, which is only increasing with time. In the 1994 financial year, agriculture generated 28 percent of the country’s GDP, and 62 percent of total employ-ment; by 2010, these figures had fallen to 15 percent and 53 percent respectively. Thus, the decrease in ag-riculture’s share of total GDP was far greater than the decrease in the number of people the sector supports.But Jaitley’s conclusion, that jobs in manufacturing offer a way out, does not follow from this. It is based on the premise that, in general, if more jobs become available in sectors such as manufacturing, people move out of agriculture in greater numbers, allowing those who remain in it levels of affluence comparable to those of their counterparts in urban India.A look at the evidence available suggests reality is more complicated. Consider the figures (in millions of people) for employment from 1999 to 2009:

Date: 1 May, 2015Courtesy: The Caravan

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Between 2004 and 2009, India witnessed a fall in the absolute number of people employed in agriculture. This was also the period of India’s highest rate of eco-nomic growth in modern history. Belying Jaitley’s rea-soning, however, the number of manufacturing jobs actually declined during these years; industrial growth was fuelled largely by increases in productivity, not labour participation. From the data, it’s clear there is only one sector that could have absorbed those who left farming: construction.

Looking at other demographic trends gives us a more complete picture of these changes. Census data show that India’s number of cultivators—those who have a supervisory role in agricultural work, whether on their own or on leased land—decreased from 127 mil-lion in 2001 to 119 million in 2011, even as the av-erage size of landholdings shrank and small holdings grew less profitable. Meanwhile, the number of farm labourers—those who work in the fields for wages—increased from 107 million to 144 million in the same period. Considered alongside the steady migration from villages to cities over the same time, these data suggest that many labourers migrate to cities to take up unskilled construction work—in many cases the only jobs they are equipped for.

Jaitley’s statement conceals the simple fact that the vast majority of those trying to move away from agri-culture are of no use to the manufacturing sector. The fact that most rural migrants to urban India end up

becoming construction workers suggests that, despite the drawbacks of village life, the decision to move is in most cases not voluntary, but born out of some degree of coercion.

One possible way of changing this, of course, is to im-prove the skills of those migrating to cities in search of jobs. Concomitantly, since a workforce is of little use if in poor health, we will also have to address the health-care needs of this population. So if, as the government suggests, its “Make in India” policy will lead to a vast increase in manufacturing jobs, shifting people into those jobs from farming would require it to invest in rural education and health.

That investment is not happening on the ground. This government has actually slashed its expenditure on health. As far as rural education is concerned, it has inherited a mess from its predecessor. While there has been a large expansion of educational opportunities since the implementation of the Right to Education Act in 2009, this has come with a very real fall in standards. The Annual Status of Education Reports, prepared by the NGO Pratham, do a commendable job of mapping the status of education across the country. What they reveal about rural government schools over the last few years makes for depressing reading. From 2010 to 2014, the proportion of class 5 students in these schools who could perform simple subtraction fell from 64 percent to 51 percent, while the percentage of class 8 students who could divide a

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three-digit number by a single digit fell from 67 to 44. Education of this quality is no preparation for even a basic manufacturing job.

Meanwhile, those who remain in agriculture are not receiving adequate support from the government. Be-tween the 2014 and 2015 financial years, the budget for agricultural research and extension has remained at Rs3,691 crore; spending on irrigation has come down from Rs1,900 crore to Rs600 crore; and fund-ing for rural development has dropped from Rs80,043 crore to Rs71,642 crore. The latest budget document states: “It may however be noted that despite reduc-tion in Central assistance to State Plan in respect of most programmes, overall outlay for the programme will remain unchanged with States pooling resources from their enhanced devolution”—or, that the overall outlay for rural development has not fallen. Of course, owing to inflation, an unchanged overall allotment is, in fact, a budget cut in real terms. This administration seems to believe that simply creating urban jobs will ameliorate rural problems; it fails to see the contradic-tions in offering workers urban jobs without strength-ening rural infrastructure and amenities.

Ironically, this neglect comes from a government whose political future may well depend on the rural economy ability to absorb a greater number of those seeking employment. A 2014 report by the research and analysis company CRISIL argues that, in the short term, the country has to depend on the agricultural economy’s ability to take on more people if unemploy-ment is to be stemmed. In view of the slowdown of the economy post 2010, the report says, “nonagricultur-al employment … could, at best, grow by 38 million from 2011–12 to 2018–19.”

This is insufficient to absorb India’s growing labour force—estimated to rise by 51 million over the same period. Thus, due to the lack of adequate opportuni-ties in industry and services sector, an additional 12 million will be forced to either depend on low pro-ductivity agriculture or remain unemployed. If some of these people do not resort to farm employment, In-dia’s unemployment rate will be seen to rise above its

current level of 2.2% (2011–12) in the years ahead.

The national crisis that lies ahead as a result of em-phasising urban over rural development has already played out at state level—in Andhra Pradesh, during the second chief ministerial term of Chandrababu Naidu, between 1999 and 2004. Earlier, Naidu had commissioned the consultancy McKinsey to draw up a blueprint for the state’s development. The doc-ument, titled “Vision 2020,” laid out a vision for the future very like that of the Modi government today. It spoke of “e-governance,” of using information tech-nology to provide better services in specially devel-oped cities, decentralisation, and involving the private sector in health care. It envisaged a rapid expansion of infrastructure and services to fuel growth and em-ployment, which, by 2020, was to reduce the share of the state’s population dependant on agriculture from 70 percent to 40 percent.

In practice, this approach resulted in a deterioration of rural infrastructure, as is likely to occur under the Modi government. By 2004, Naidu was voted out of power. He has learnt his lesson: in his current stint as chief minister, he speaks of making agriculture prof-itable through waiving farmers’ loans and appointing new extension workers. Nearly a year into Naidu’s cur-rent term, the proportion of Andhra Pradesh’s popu-lation dependent on agriculture still hovers at around 70 percent, even as farming’s share of the state’s gross domestic product has fallen from what it was during his previous stint in power.

The larger problem here is that electoral corrections in response to flawed policies often arrive too late. By investing in rural infrastructure and amenities in a sustained manner rather than merely occasionally, in order to gain votes ahead of elections, the government can gradually place skilled and educated migrants in jobs that provide a basic standard of living in ur-ban areas. This administration is taking the opposite tack—while paying lip service to equality, it is ensur-ing that cheap and easily exploitable labour remains available to aid urban growth.

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Wasting 282Mihir S Sharma

May 16, 2014, was supposed to be a watershed. As the results rolled in, and all of north and west India turned saffron on our television screens, it was im-possible not to believe that something special lay in our future. Indians had grown so used to the idea that all change would be incremental, consensual - limited by coalition bargaining, and by the careful husbandry and expenditure of dribs and drabs of political capital. Thus, when Narendra Modi's 282 victories shattered the coalition era, it was only fair to expect that some-thing deep would change.

In the storm of ineffectual rationalisation that marks Mr Modi's first anniversary as prime minister, let us not forget May 16, 2014. Let us not forget the things he laid out as a candidate, the promises he held out and the dreams he sold. Let us not forget that the peo-ple of India gave him the rare chance - one they did not provide to Manmohan Singh or Atal Bihari Va-jpayee - to actually live up to his promises. Mr Modi is the most popular politician in the world's history. He is our most powerful leader in a generation. It is not unfair to expect him to do something with this polit-ical capital, to invest it in our future. What is unfair is to expect us to treat him like any other leader we've had. With great power, as a wise man once said, comes great responsibility.

A common-sense evaluation of the government over the past year does not give great hope. True, it has largely stayed away from anything controversial, which is a great relief. And, absolutely, if you look hard, there are signs of hope for the future. (Most of those doing the evaluation have done precisely that, driven by the same wishful thinking that led many to imagine that a 206-seat Manmohan Singh would be a messiah for reform.) But you have to look really hard for those signs: you have to read the uploading on a website of a draft new labour law as a great step forward, you have to imagine the finance minister's mention of a bankruptcy code in the Budget is a step towards genuinely mobile capital - albeit one already delayed. In terms of a legislative and administrative reform programme, these flashes of hope are all we have - one whole year after 282 made such reform

possible for the first time since Rajiv. You could, if necessary, argue this is marginally better than what we have had to put up in the coalition era - but that was a significantly different time. The old excuses no longer apply; but never mind, apparently we are busy inventing new ones.

Here is the central problem: there is no clear direction from the top. This is not what one could have expected on May 16, 2014. Mr Modi's campaign was so exact-ly, so perfectly an extension of his will we assumed that something similar would happen to the central government once he took over. India's ship of state is unwieldy to turn, but Mr Modi sold his skills as a helmsman, and 282 meant he had a once-in-a-lifetime wind at his back.

Yet the constraint, one year on, is Mr Modi himself. The government's confusion reflects his own lack of direction. Delhi's bureaucrats and ministers pull in different ideological and administrative directions not because Mr Modi is not in command; it is because they do not have a clear idea of what he would do in their place. Have you heard the story - almost certain-ly apocryphal - about Margaret Thatcher throwing a Milton Friedman book at her Cabinet and making them read it? There is a basic lesson there. What India needs is a simple set of principles to be known, which would allow for effective delegation and across-the-board reform. Sadly, Mr Modi disagrees; he imagines hands-on, case-by-case action, such as he delivered in Gujarat, is enough.

This is why this government's successes have all been of the specific project kind: a number of clearanc-es, auctions of natural resources, the release of grain from the state's stores, and so on. I do not want to mi-nimise the import and effect of these actions. But are they revolutionary? No. Even the coal auctions were essentially mandated by the Supreme Court and by a 2010 amendment of the mines and minerals Act. Few governments would have acted otherwise under these circumstances. You did not need 282 for anything on this list. None of these involves a reworking of the sys-tem; each is a natural evolution of processes already in

Date: 15 May, 2015Courtesy: Business Standard

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place. Others are driven by external actors - by the Su-preme Court, or in the case of federalism entirely by the Fourteenth Finance Commission, working under new terms of reference drafted by the previous gov-ernment. In fact, we are still waiting for the first - the first! - legislative change entirely driven by Mr Modi's own vision for India's future.

What went wrong? First: many misread Mr Modi's in-tentions. He did not intend to change how we were governed. He saw nothing wrong with the system or its motivating ideology. He only saw something wrong with the people running it.

But also, second: we misdiagnosed the slowdown un-der the last government. It was not a problem of "pa-ralysis" at the top, to be solved by a "strong leader". It is now clear that blaming paralysis was a foolish error. In fact, India was faced with a systemic problem, born of the wrong laws and insufficient regulatory capac-ity. We have tried to solve paralysis, and now we're surprised the problem has barely gone away. This is because repairing growth needs investment and en-trepreneurship to restart - and that needs a complete-ly different environment for workers and investors. It needs an environment of trust in the system, which can only happen if the laws change, along with the in-centives of those enforcing them at the lower levels. Mr Modi, sadly, does not seem to have realised this yet.

Industry has figured this out. They are still waiting for a new deal, for insulation from administrative and legal risk, before investing. This has infuriated the government and its backers - this unwillingness to in-vest, the murmurs of discontent that business is still a difficult proposition in India, is said to be merely crony capitalists whining. No less an individual than K V Kamath has said industry should abjectly thank government for the absence of "paralysis". Instead of complaining about too little being different, industry

should blame itself for over-investing earlier. So it should. (The real blame, of course, goes to those who financed this excessive debt - I wonder, does Mr Ka-math, formerly of ICICI Bank, know who that might be?)

Yes, we cannot rely on debt-laden balance sheets to revive growth; but how will capital exit easily? How will new investors have faith in the system that caused those balance-sheet problems? Through legal and ad-ministrative changes, that's how. But we have seen none of that. What we have seen is - or so we are told - the end of high-level corruption in New Delhi. Few will pause to note that this had already happened by the end of the previous government; the big corrup-tion scandals all date to the end of the 2000s, remem-ber? (Of course, even if we do have big-ticket corrup-tion today, how would we know, without a CVC, a CIC, or a Lok Pal?)

The point of 282 was that it gave a government the power to change the rules of the game. That is all a parliamentary majority in fact does. This has not happened, yet. Till that happens, no real revival will emerge. The entrepreneurial upsurge that is the only hope for jobs in that saffron swathe of the north and west will not happen. Feeble, incremental change - all that this government has so far provided - will not provide us with the bottom-up revolution we need, not in 10 years, let alone five.

Without those jobs, Mr Modi is in trouble. His in-credible victory was won because people believed he would deliver a future that included jobs. He has not started building that future yet. If he does not deliv-er it, his party will perforce turn back to its preferred ways of winning elections - and we all know what they are. It is exactly those of us mistrustful of their so-cial agenda who are hoping the most desperately that Mr Modi will figure out what 282 seats gives him the power, and the responsibility, to do.

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Narendra Modi’s Popularity Wanes In India As First Year Nears End

Rahul Bedhi

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi completes a year in office on May 26th amidst increasing doubts over his efficacy as a competent and inclusive admin-istrator, economic reformer and team player.

Over the past 12 months, the 65-year-old heading the country’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has been unable to deliver on the many promises he made on the election trail, trigger-ing widespread public disappointment.

These included kick-starting the economy, boosting employment, industrial production and infrastruc-tural development, improving education and health-care and modernising India’s police and military.

But nebulous policies to retrospectively tax foreign in-vestors – dubbed “tax terrorism” by the Indian media – and failure to provide incentives for manufacturing, have adversely affected India’s investment climate.

Economic initiatives

Earlier this week the government was further enfee-bled, after failing to push through two crucial eco-nomic initiatives in parliament.

These were the Land Acquisition Bill – to make it eas-ier to acquire land for industrial and infrastructural expansion – and the bill for Goods and Services Tax, to ensure a nationwide uniform tariff much like Ire-land’s VAT.

An aggressive opposition in parliament’s upper house, where the BJP is in a minority, blocked both bills that have been postponed to the upcoming monsoon par-liament session in July, further eroding the Modi gov-ernment’s standing and ability to enact legislation.

At the same time, the cost of living has risen, with the price of commodities such as wheat, rice, vegetables and fruit soaring in the past year.

In a high-voltage election campaign Modi, who has a penchant for multicoloured waistcoats, almost single-handedly propelled the BJP to power.

It replaced the corrupt and inefficient Congress Par-ty-led federal coalition that had been in office for a decade.

The BJP managed, against all expectations, to secure India’s first parliamentary victory by a single party in three decades, on the promise of ushering in vikas (development) and ache din (good days).

During his first few months in office, Modi’s endur-ing fiery oratory and grandiose promises earned him plaudits at home and abroad.

But what his supporters labelled the “Modi Magic” was seriously degraded when the fledgling anti-cor-ruption Common Man’s Party trounced the BJP in Delhi’s state assembly elections in February. The BJP secured just four of 71 assembly seats.

High on rhetoric

“The BJP government is high on rhetoric and show-manship, but low on delivery,” said political analyst Seema Mustafa of the Centre for Policy Analysis in New Delhi.

Modi has centralised power in the prime minister’s office and is running a presidential, instead of an in-clusive cabinet form of government, she said.

India’s minority Muslim and Christian populations, which comprise about 15 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively of a population of over 1.25 billion, also remain wary of the BJP and Modi.

Nine weeks after Modi assumed office, Hindu organ-isations affiliated to the BJP forcibly converted poor Muslims to Hinduism under a ghar vapsi or returning home campaign. Several churches were vandalised,

Date: 16 May, 2015Courtesy: The Irish Times

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reportedly by Hindu groups, and a 71-year-old nun gang-raped in eastern India.

Modi’s condemnation of all such activity was feeble at best. The shadow of the 2002 Muslim pogrom in Modi’s western home state of Gujarat, of which he was chief minister until he became prime minister, still hangs over him.

He was never indicted for the unrest in which some 1,200 people died, but the extent of the rioting under him, raises disturbing questions.

“The government seems to be more concerned with managing headlines than putting policies in place,” former BJP minister Arun Shourie said in a television interview that unnerved the government.

Big picture

“The situation is like many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle lying in a mess with no big picture in mind about how to put them together,” he said, elaborating on the growing sectarian unrest under Modi.

Meanwhile, on foreign policy Modi has been proac-tive, travelling to several countries in India’s imme-diate neighbourhood and to Australia, Japan, the US, France, Germany, Canada and China among others.Many of these visits have been peppered with dramat-ic public appearances, some rivalling rock concerts, ensuring wide media coverage and boosting Modi’s personal image but for now, have delivered no divi-dends.

Workaholic

There is, however, little doubt that Modi is a worka-holic, sleeping no more than four hours a day, a teeto-taller, abstemious in his personal habits and a propo-nent of yoga.

Tales abound in official circles of his cabinet members and civil servants sleeping in their offices and working weekends to keep up with the tireless prime minister.

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After A Year of Outsize Expectations, Narendra Modi Adjusts His Plan For India

Ellen Barry

NEW DELHI — Standing before India on the first an-niversary of his swearing-in, Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi on Monday gave a speech that was notable for the subjects it avoided: Large-scale job creation. Manufacturing. Urbanization.

Mr. Modi instead delivered an ode to struggling In-dia. During the speech in Mathura, a town about 90 miles southeast of Delhi, he lavished attention on farmers and said that mom-and-pop traders, not “big industrialists,” should be India’s crucial driver of job growth. Most of all, he praised the poor, who he said “will become my warriors.”

The shift was telling. After soaring through India’s po-litical stratosphere on the economic promise “achche din aa gaye,” or “better days are coming,” Mr. Modi must face the reality that much of his agenda is still only potential.

From abroad, India is now seen as a bright spot, ex-pected to pass China this year to become the world’s fastest-growing large economy. But at home, job growth remains sluggish. Businesses are in wait-and-see mode. And Mr. Modi has political vulnerabilities, as parliamentary opposition leaders block two of his central reform initiatives and brand him “anti-poor” and “anti-farmer.”

Most formidable of all is a problem Mr. Modi has made for himself: outsize expectations that he would sweep away constraints to growth in India, like strin-gent laws governing labor and land acquisition.

“Their image became larger than they themselves,” Vi-marsh Razdan, senior vice president at Orient Craft, one of India’s largest garment exporters, said of Mr. Modi’s government. “They have become superheroes. And everyone knows superheroes don’t exist.”

A year ago, businesspeople were awaiting Mr. Modi’s arrival in New Delhi with eagerness and a bit of ap-prehension: In Gujarat, the state he led for almost 13

years as chief minister, he was known for his concen-tration of personal power, his dislike of red tape and his sometimes intimidating manner.

Since then, India’s business culture has indeed changed, chief executives say. They rejoice that they no longer have to notarize all documents submitted to the government and say that it is far easier to find bureaucrats at their desks during the workday. Sudhir Dhingra, the founder of Orient Craft, says that only about one-third as many inspectors are showing up at his factories and that they are “fearful of accepting money.”

Mr. Modi has built a centralized system that requires business deals to be routed through his office. Gone are the informal meetings that business leaders used to hold with ministry officials, often to hash out poli-cies regulating their sectors. As for Mr. Modi, business leaders have found it hard to cultivate him socially.

“This one year has taught the businessmen one thing: Meeting him at weddings, or meeting him at seminars or whatever, doesn’t give them any advantage,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member of the upper house of Parliament and a technology en-trepreneur.

“For me, and I have been around for a while, this is very, very unusual,” he said. “A lot of people are having sleepless nights because of that.”

By most measures, India’s economy has had a good year. India is heavily reliant on imported oil, and plunging prices have cut the cost of government fuel subsidies, allowing the authorities to rein in a chronic budget deficit. Inflation fell to 4.87 percent in April. Foreign direct investment rose by more than 25 per-cent, to $28.8 billion in the 2014-15 fiscal year.

The government has introduced a flurry of changes: It has deregulated prices for diesel, petroleum and cook-ing gas, and raised limits on foreign investment in the

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: The New York Times

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defense and insurance sectors to 49 percent. It has opened 125 million bank accounts for poor families, with the goal of eventually replacing food and fuel subsidies with cash transfers to prevent corruption. Coalfield leases, found to have been sold at artificial-ly low prices, were reallocated through a transparent process; so were telecom spectrum allocations.

Those urging Mr. Modi to introduce deep structural reforms, however, have been disappointed.

Raghuram Rajan, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, told an audience in New York last week that many people saw Mr. Modi as “Ronald Reagan on a white horse” coming to slay anti-market forces, and that the image was “probably not appropriate.”

He added that the government “has taken steps to cre-ate the environment for investment, which I think is important.”

Mr. Modi’s only truly risky change to date — muscling through an executive order easing the government’s ability to obtain land for development — backfired this spring when he tried to transform it into a perma-nent law. The proposed law met a wall of protest from a rejuvenated opposition declaring that Mr. Modi was “anti-farmer.”

Charges of cozying up to business must sting for Mr. Modi, said Shekhar Gupta, a journalist, especially af-ter his party’s crushing defeat in February elections in Delhi. He was criticized there for wearing a custom-ized suit with pinstripes made of embroidered script spelling his name.

“It’s taken away from him the basic image of a tea-sell-er who became a country’s leader in his own right,” Mr. Gupta said.

Economic grandees have their own grievances with Mr. Modi, which they are increasingly willing to ex-press. One damaging assessment came from Arun Shourie, an economist and former minister with Mr. Modi’s party, who said the government lacked a single unifying vision on economic policy, and was “direc-tionless, a great disappointment.”

Deepak Parekh, chairman of HFDC Bank, complained that procedures for obtaining funds had become more

onerous, not less so, under the new government. And he described “a little bit of impatience creeping in as to why no changes are happening.”

Jayant Sinha, a former investment fund manager who is now the minister of state for finance, said these com-plaints were the natural result of fiscal and monetary consolidation that the government had undertaken to control inflation. Their “economic pain” will ease over the next several months, he said, as the investment cy-cle picks up.

“Everyone is saying, after a year, ‘Where are the good days? Why hasn’t growth picked up?’ ” Mr. Sinha said. “It is natural for them to feel challenged in an envi-ronment like that. Analysts and economists, forward looking, feel that India is on a very sound footing and feel we can now drive hard for growth.”

The Reserve Bank of India, he added, “can cut rates now.”

But some limitations of Mr. Modi’s ability to trans-form India’s economy are coming into focus. Mr. Mo-di’s large electoral mandate gave him control of only one house of Parliament. In domestic affairs, he must cope with a huge, fragmented bureaucracy.

One example came early this year, when the tax au-thorities alarmed 68 foreign investment funds by de-manding, for the first time, a payment of a 20 percent levy on capital gains made over the last three years. It contradicted Mr. Modi’s vow to end retrospective tax-ation, and as foreign capital fled the country early this month, the government scrambled to calm investors.

Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser to the government, said the episode showed how difficult it was to centralize authority in domestic policy. He compared Mr. Modi to President Obama — “taking decisions on his own” in the realm of foreign policy, but constrained in the domestic sphere.

“In that case it was a recalcitrant Congress, in this case it’s the bureaucracy,” he said. “Power is so dispersed that you cannot expect speedy decision-making across the board. It’s a grinding process. Notice I am not saying it won’t happen. I am saying it will happen, but it will happen slowly.”

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Opinion polls suggest that Mr. Modi remains quite popular, with approval ratings upward of 60 percent, even where there is little evidence of economic im-provement.

On a dusty roadside in Greater Noida, outside Delhi, on Monday, Gaurav Dikshit, 24, a construction engi-neer, looked at the hulking shapes of a dozen half-fin-ished high-rise apartment buildings, projects in lim-bo because of land litigation. Around him, billboards exclaimed: “Gold Coast Golf Course and Lake-Fac-ing Luxury Apartments!” and “Aryan International School.” But Mr. Dikshit, who earns around $400 a

month, has put his plans to move into the neighbor-hood on hold.

“I expected that prices would come down,” he said. “I expected that real estate would boom. That has not happened. I thought there would be more jobs on the market. I thought I would be able to change my job. That has not happened.”

But he said he still had a feeling that things were going to turn around in Greater Noida. “If you plant fruit trees,” he said, “it still takes some time to get fruit.”

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Promises That He Can’t Deliver: Have Modi’s 18 Foreign Trips Brought In The

Ddesired Results?First Post

A year in office and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already visited 18 countries, and spent close to 55 days abroad, making financial commitments that far outstrip the resources at the foreign office's disposal. Earlier this year, the Modi government slashed the foreign office's funding for the current fiscal by 15 percent, forcing the resource-strapped external affairs ministry to pull back from key diplomatic commit-ments.

A Telegraph report in February had pointed out that due to the slashing of funds, aid to Bangladesh will reduce by more than 40 percent, while a Rs 158-crore loan promised to the Maldives by March remains un-fulfilled. The aid promised to Nepal has been cut by a third, assistance to Bhutan by a fifth and that to Myan-mar by three-fifths.

The Modi government had already incurred a travel bill of Rs 317 crore in the first nine months of com-

Date: 22 May, 2015Courtesy: First Post

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ing to power, according to the revised budgetary esti-mates, about Rs 59 crore more than the Rs 258 crore the UPA-II cabinet had spent in its last year in office (2013-14). The government does not see the travel spend coming down as the 2015-16 budget has made a provision of Rs 269 crore even though there has been a consistent cut in MEA funds as part of the overall budget tightening by the finance ministry.

But these high-level visits abroad are taking a major toll on the foreign office budget, so much so that the foreign office is now planning to write to the finance ministry to create a separate kitty for international commitments made by the Prime Minister, President and other senior government representatives to avoid national embarrassments and save face, according to another report in the Telegraph.

During his many trips abroad, Modi has promised a Rs 6,400 crore credit line to Mongolia as well as setting up of an English-medium school and an IT centre in the country. While in Seychelles, he promised a Dorn-ier aircraft for the country's maritime surveillance and in Guyana Modi promised a Rs 384 crore grant for an ocean ferry and a four-lane highway. The lavish list of gifts doesn't end here and many promises of grants and development projects made to India's neigh-bouring economies such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, still remain unfulfilled due to a funding crunch at the foreign office.

"Non-availability of funds during this critical working period is detrimental to timely completion of projects and leads to cost overruns as procurement of material and labour cannot be done on the promise of immi-nent release of funds. Delay in the release of payment

to vendors and stalling of projects affects our image and leads to questions on our credibility to complete key projects in a timely manner, the MEA had said in a written reply to the parliamentary panel earlier this month.

While several crores were spent in organizing Modi’s event at Madison Square Garden, his visit to the US did not translate into a single memorandum of under-standing (MoU) being signed. China had pledged to invest $100 billion but Chinese premiere Xi Jinping, has met that promise with only a $20 billion commit-ment, which too hasn’t materialised till date. China, on the other hand, has already pumped in $46 billion in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Moreover, Modi went ahead and announced e-visas for a coun-try that issues only stapled visas to Indians domiciled in Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

But this act of over promising and under delivering is not new to the Modi regime. The Vibrant Gujarat investor meet during his tenure spoke of Rs 2.0 lakh crore of investment. Billions of dollars were commit-ted by India Inc though observers say these events had a history of pledges that were never followed through.A 2012 report in Caravan had pointed out that even though Modi claims an implementation rate of great-er than 60 percent for pledges made at the summits, an analysis of data from the state industry department suggests that only 25 percent of the promised invest-ments have actually been made.

Is Modi now doing the same with his foreign policy too... promising what he cannot deliver?

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One Year Of Narendra Modi Sarkar:Expectations Were Unrealistically High

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Jokes sometimes have a way of capturing truth more effectively than analysis. The measure of the present government is captured by this one going around: What is the difference between the UPA and the NDA? In the UPA we had a government and no prime minister; in the NDA we have a prime minister and no government. This has an element of cruel exagger-ation. But it highlights the central tension of one year of Narendra Modi’s government. The PM is still riding relatively high in public popularity. But the govern-ment is looking very ordinary. Areas where he devotes inordinate attention like foreign policy have some sense of purpose. Occasional schemes done in mis-sion mode like Jan Dhan Yojana achieve their targets. There is a sense that overall transactional corruption at high levels is, at the moment, down. There is still an air of expectancy around big legislation like the goods and services tax. But government as a whole is floun-dering, getting tripped on execution and detail.

Admittedly, the expectations of the Modi government were unrealistically high. The inherited regulatory

and administrative mess that the UPA had left were never going to be easy to clean up quickly. But Modi was also very lucky. He got the single biggest windfall any leader can want in terms of lower global energy prices, which automatically tempered his challenges on inflation and subsidies.

The government’s economic performance has been disappointing. Contrary to the prime minister’s own rhetoric, there is almost no decision that this govern-ment has taken that one could call bold. Some of the new welfare measures, like old age pensions and in-surance, are necessary. But they are, in comparison to UPA’s welfare schemes, hardly trail blazing. The ratio-nalisation of subsidies (other than petrol, started un-der UPA) has barely begun. With the continuation of Aadhaar a potential platform for a more rationalised welfare state is in place; but the future shape of welfare is still uncertain. Rather than being fixated on poverty lines the governments framework is rightly focused on access to key elements of inclusion, including pow-er and infrastructure.

Date: 15 May, 2015Courtesy: The Financial Express

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But the government is sending mixed administrative and financial signals on social sector spending. This will cost it political capital: In a time of stagnant rural wages, which are dampening demand, MGNERGA was the only instrument the government had for alle-viating short-term agrarian distress. Demand is stag-nating, and will not revive without an increase in rural incomes.

Second, the UPA brought the economy to a grinding halt by a combination of legislative hubris and law-yerly casualness. This government risks falling into the same trap. The finance ministry’s credibility to tax issues is, rightly, sinking to a new low and it will take time to recover. This session it did pass some signif-icant legislation on insurance, mining, coal. But its strategy on two major pieces of legislation, land ac-quisition and GST, is perplexing.

The Land Acquisition Act of 2013 needed some amendment; but the government’s approach has been ill advised.

Instead of a sensible, workable middle ground, it is trying to move the clock back to 1894. It has also needlessly lost political capital in the process. The GST, when passed, will be a game changer. But it is in-explicable how the government has not done enough to ensure that the full efficiency gains from GST are realised. Not doing away with interstate levies risks, as one commentator described it, producing a moth-eat-en legislation. Third, on almost every regulatory is-sue, from taxation to the environment, the Centre has steadily produced more uncertainty rather than less.

It does not seem to have the support structures that can create modern 21st century regulation.

Third, this government’s speciality was supposed to be execution. In some ministries like the railways, there is a promising new energy; the ministry of power at least got Coal India to shape up on the production front. But the ability of this government to get public investment out of the door, a crucial element in get-ting growth up, has yet to be demonstrated. As FE re-ported earlier this week, there has been a decline even in public tenders for big infrastructure projects. The government does not yet have a credible plan for re-viving stalled projects, most of which are not stalled because of land acquisition problems.

Fourth, the government’s biggest and unconscionable failures are on health and education. Admittedly, the mess in these sectors was also inherited. But these are two sectors where there is not yet even an indication of a framework to solve deep problems in this sector. The financial commitment to both these sectors is tep-id in relation to the need; the regulatory frameworks are a complete mess; and the air of ad hocism and un-certainty makes for a dismal future for these sectors.There is a sense that the prime minister wants to fly high. But whether the government has the engine power to support him is an open question. Since the economy is chugging along, helped by favourable ex-ternal conditions, the weaknesses of this government will remain disguised for a while. But it needs to get its act together, before the winds blow a sputtering en-gine off course.

*****

24

The One Thing That Has Saved Modi From Being A Complete Flop This Year

Mr Girish Shahane

A year since Narendra Modi assumed power, the Ganga is no cleaner, stashes of black money abroad no closer to being repatriated, and the Ram Temple in Ayodhya no nearer being built. The rupee is sliding against the dollar, belying Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s con-viction that it would strengthen by over 50% under Modi.

Core sector growth has flagged though rejigged meth-ods of calculating GDP have boosted India’s reported economic expansion.

In some cases, the government seems to be not just ignoring last year’s campaign but actively working against it. Where the Bharatiya Janata Party manifes-to promised to modernise and upgrade government hospitals, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has slashed outlays on health care. The manifesto targeted spend-ing 6% of GDP on education, up from the 3.3% level when the new government took office. Instead, the al-location for education dipped substantially in Jaitley’s budget.

History of obstruction

The government faces resistance within and outside Parliament for its lone innovation: the amended Land Acquisition bill. While condemning disruptions to Parliament, BJP leaders ignore their own history of obstructiveness while in opposition, and their public defence of such tactics.

Was there no progress, then, in Narendra Modi’s first year as Prime Minister? Far from it. Parliament ap-proved a few crucial laws, and ratified a landmark agreement with a neighbouring nation. What stands out in these cases, though, is that they’re all legacies of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance that were stonewalled for years or rejected outright by the BJP.

Item 1 on the list of U-turns is the Goods and Services Tax, or GST. A tax reform unanimously endorsed by economists, GST was on the UPA legislative agenda for years. Unfortunately, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states obdurately opposed the idea, its most promi-nent critic being Gujarat’s Narendra Modi.

Item 2: UPA’s Insurance Bill. One of its provisions raised the foreign investment limit in private insur-ance firms to 49% from 26%.

The BJP refused to sign on. Prakash Javadekar, now minister in charge of clearing industrial projects without environmental safeguards, led the campaign against the bill in his role as President of the National Organisation of Insurance Officers. Barely 16 months after Javadekar received support from Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill was passed, in a form indistinguishable from the UPA version.

The Prime Minister has made 16 foreign trips in his first year in office, but the signature foreign policy ad-vance of his term so far, which fructified a week ago, concerned a nation he has yet to visit. I’m referring to Bangladesh and the final settlement of the border be-tween the two nations. As with GST and the Insurance Bill, the BJP was against it before it was for it.

Nuclear deal

Perhaps the mother of all flip-flops relates to the civ-il nuclear agreement between India and the United States. The BJP fought the agreement tooth and nail, damning it as “an assault on the nuclear sovereignty” of India, and swearing to renegotiate it once in power. The Indo-US nuclear deal was followed by the tabling of the Civil Nuclear Liability bill, which described the form compensation would take in case of a nuclear accident. BJP members condemned the bill as uncon-stitutional and a violation of the fundamental rights of

Date: 13 May, 2015Courtesy: scroll.in

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Indian citizens.

Cut to US President Barack Obama’s visit during the 2015 Republic Day celebrations, and the “break-through” in negotiations over the nuclear deal. The breakthrough, it turned out, was that the US got ex-actly what it wanted, a restriction on the liability of suppliers and nuclear plant operators in case of an ac-cident. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but to argue the case for restricted liability would take me far from the focus of this column.

For those who believe a year is too short a period of

time to judge a government’s performance, I have two acronyms for you: NREGA and RTI. Both the Nation-al Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Right to Information Act were introduced in 2004, mere months after the first UPA administration came to power. Those pieces of legislation may divide opinion, certainly NREGA does, but there’s no denying they fundamentally changed how Indian society functions. Despite all his sloganeering, and his comfortable ma-jority in the lower house, Modi hasn’t come close to promoting anything as important. The only thing that’s saved him from being a complete flop is his flip flops.

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India Wants Delivery, Not Just Intent India Today

As Narendra Modi completes his first year in power following an unprecedented mandate in three de-cades, more than half of India feels the 'achche din' (better days) promised by the BJP have not yet arrived.Though 56 per cent respondents in the India Today Group-Cicero snap poll rated the BJP-led NDA gov-ernment's performance as good, the message was unambiguous - people are ready to give Modi a long rope, but for a government which seems to be enjoy-ing an extended honeymoon, it is also a wake-up call.

Following are the 10 big takeaways from the India To-day Group-Cicero snap poll:

1. Do you think 'achche din' has come as promised by Modi? Yes: 34 No: 53

No other election slogan has triggered imagination as well as disappointment more than the BJP's master-stroke 'achche din' promise in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. A year down the line, the BJP has been found scrambling to explain the various mani-festations of its slogan even as a belligerent opposition and the voter on the ground taunts the party for its evasion.

2. What is Modi's biggest failure? Not addressing farmer concerns: 30 Slow job growth: 28 Economy: 17 Religious intolerance: 8

For a government that is doggedly pursuing the amendment to a 2010 land acquisition law passed by the UPA, the taint of being anti-farmer - and by exten-sion anti-poor - is hard to wash off. It is for the same

Date: 23 May, 2015Courtesy: India Today

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reason that more people (26 per cent) think Modi is pro-corporates than those who think he is pro-poor (23 per cent). The sluggish pace of economic reforms is his second biggest failure, according to the poll.

3. Media gives too much attention to Modi. Yes: 71 No: 17

And the media has a reason. No other leader since In-dira Gandhi in the 1970s has been able to collapse his party as well as the government into his persona. For most in the BJP, Modi is the government and the gov-ernment is Modi. Besides, Modi is one of the smartest politicians in post-social media India, using the tools it throws to his best advantage.

4. Rahul Gandhi is right in saying that the Modi gov-ernment is a 'suit-boot ki sarkar'. Yes: 43 No: 36

Rahul Gandhi's selection of a phrase that became an instant hit can be considered one of the best come-backs by a politician, who, only days before he uttered those remarks in Parliament, was being widely ridi-culed for an unexplained 57-day sabbatical. When more people think Rahul is right in using that phrase, the BJP has reasons to worry about the perception it creates.

5. 56% respondents have not heard of Modi's Mann ki Baat.

A regular feature on the state-run All India Radio, it won't be surprising if Modi does a rethink on this ad-dress as he begins his second year in power. The Mann Ki Baat with students, farmers and the countrymen in general has not seen much enthusiasm among the listeners, with many calling it indulgent and hyped.

6. 49% say there has been no improvement in quality of life in the last one year.

One of the highlights of the BJP's 2014 Lok Sabha campaign was the chord that Modi had struck with the masses with his humble son-of-a-chaiwala an-tecedent. For them, Modi was one of them, who un-derstood their pain and pathos more than any leader who claimed the Delhi throne did. It was natural for them to expect that he will be instrumental in a sim-

ilar turnaround in their lives. When half of his vot-ers say there has been no improvement in their lives, Modi should realise the uphill task ahead.

7. 46% say Modi is yet to meet their expectations.

For the voters who gave the BJP of the biggest man-dates ever in India's electoral history, voting Modi to power meant the promise of a better life. The aspira-tional Indians knew it had voted the UPA out with the hope that the NDA is far more in touch with the realities on the ground and will act accordingly. For Modi, getting that confidence back will be the biggest challenge as he begins his second year at the helm.

8. The best performing ministers: Sushma Swaraj: 16 Rajnath Singh: 14 Arun Jaitley: 12

This was a surprise. For a minister who has generated a lot of sympathy on Twitter for not being able to fulfill her duties - thanks to Modi visiting 18 countries in 12 months - Sushma Swaraj remains the best performing minister. It has perhaps a lot to do with evacuating Indians from conflict-torn Yemen and Iraq.

9. The worst performing ministers: Uma Bharti: 9 Piyush Goyal: 6 Radha Mohan Singh: 6

Bad news for Bharti for whom the BJP created a min-istry and assigned her with the sole task of cleaning river Ganga, one of the pet Modi projects. The Su-preme Court, which has repeatedly pulled up the gov-ernment over its ambitious Ganga plans, will not be amused.

10. Who is the biggest challenger to Modi? Rahul Gandhi: 31 Arvind Kejriwal: 29 None of them: 25

Lastly, the Modi dispensation has been forced to watch the future plans of a resurgent Congress vice-presi-dent, who has emerged out of the shadows to take the government on on various issues. Kejriwal, despite an impressive 29 per cent approval, knows he is not there in this race.

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The Most Visible Part Of The India Growth Story Has Been Modi’s Increasing

Ability To Laud HimselfMonobina Gupta

On 28 September 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took centre stage at Madison Square in New York to face an audience that publications across In-dia decreed as worthy of a “rock star.” Indeed, Modi’s self-congratulatory speech appeared to be a pains-takingly orchestrated performance that carefully fed off the euphoria of his, and not so much the Bhartiya Janata Party’s, decisive victory in the elections. “Win-ning an election is not just occupying an office but victory brings with it responsibility. Since I won the elections, I haven’t taken even a 15-minute vacation. The responsibility you have given me … I can assure you that you will never have reason to feel small be-cause of my actions,” bellowed the triumphant leader.Eight months after that speech, as he completes one year in office, the sense of elation around Modi’s con-quest might have diminished, but his own affectations remain unaltered.

Speaking at an exhibition centre outside Shanghai on 16 May 2015, Modi told the Indian community in attendance, “Earlier, you felt ashamed of being born Indian. Now you feel proud to represent the country. Indians abroad had all hoped for a change in govern-ment last year.”

Such statements have served to highlight the discom-fiting and persisting strain of vanity that Modi has ex-hibited in his recent speeches delivered abroad during his three-nation trip to China, Mongolia and Korea.If he is to be believed, Indians had been denied “asmi-ta” (pride) in their Indian origins till he rescued them from a shameful existence. Through these words, Modi happily represented himself as not just the na-tion but its saviour as well. In Seoul he went on to sug-gest that India was steeped in despondence and dark-ness before he appeared on the horizon as the beacon of hope and light:

“There was a time when people used to say we don’t know what sins we have committed in our past life to

be born in Hindustan. Is this any country, is this any government ... let’s leave. And they left. Even business-men didn’t want to do business here. Most people then had one foot abroad. They were gripped by pessimism and rage. ... Now people, from all walks of life want to come back to India, even if it means having a lower income. Mood badlahain (the mood has changed).”

A careful reading of a succession of the speeches that he has delivered before the Non-Resident Indian (NRI) communities abroad presents an increasingly problematic picture—one that reveals the prime min-ister’s disturbing and overwhelming obsession with himself.

Modi’s speeches have little to do with his government working as a collective. In turn, the government’s achievements have little to do with his cabinet col-leagues or the ruling party. The narrative exclusively hinges on one man. He is the messiah, the indefat-igable worker, the economic revolutionary, and the voice of the poor. The most pronounced word in all of Modi’s speeches is “I,” “main” and “hum.” The BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) find only marginal references in his speeches. Everything and everyone barring the prime minister is paraphernalia.Consider this excerpt from his speech at Madison Square Garden for instance, where, even as he feigned humility, Modi’s discourse reflected anything but dif-fidence: “Main ekbahut hi chhota insaan hoom, main bahut hi samanya insaan hoon.Mera bachpan bhi aise beetatha. Chhota hoon isiliye mera man bhi chhota chhota kaam pe laga rahta hain.Chhota hoon isili ye chhote chhote logon keliye bade kaam kartahoon” (I am a small and insignificant person. My childhood, too, was insignificant. I want to concentrate on small things because I am a small person, who wants to ac-complish big feats for other small people).

Whether in forging a democratic connect with the people or focusing on hitherto foregone subjects like

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: The Caravan

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toilets or cleanliness, he becomes the sole mediator between his government and people. The “small per-son” is presented as a colossus towering over the na-tion.

In speech after speech delivered in Toronto, Shanghai and Seoul, Modi confidently asserted that a transfor-mation of popular janman (mindsets) was underway in all spheres—from eliminating corruption, inculcat-ing conscientiousness about work to making cleanli-ness a national issue. The prime minister’s speeches paint a picture of total transformation over 12 months where 60 years of flawed history have been effectively wiped out—by him.

Taking it upon himself to declare his policies—such as his mass-banking scheme, Jan Dhan Yojana—a rev-olutionary success, Modi has cast this success in per-sonal rather than institutional terms. Consider what he said in his speech in Toronto:

Insaan bhi badal gaya. Bankwale bhi badal gaye (peo-ple have changed and so have those in banks). The same bankwallahs, going from village to village, house to house, have opened 14 crore bank accounts in 100 days. I told the poor open an account with zero bal-ance. But they deposited Rs 14,000 crore in the banks. I bow to them. This is garibikiamiri. Janmanbadla-hain.

To further corroborate this miraculously transformed mindset, Modi said in the same speech, “A newspaper proprietor wrote to me that the mood in the country has inspired his publication to take the decision to de-vote one edition a week solely to publishing positive news. Maybe it is just one paper, but this is not a small development.”

In Shanghai, he praised himself by claiming that In-dians had been made worthy of respect not through their own efforts but by his presence in power, “Earlier

you would be dismissed as Indians. Was anyone ready to listen to you? Talk to you? Speak to you? Within one year are they not treating you with respect? Don’t you feel proud of the nation’s progress?”

It is ironic indeed that even as Modi has made for-eign affairs the centrepiece of his governance archi-tecture, Sushma Swaraj, his external affairs minister, is conspicuous by her absence at these visits. Swaraj, who used to be a prominent voice in the BJP under its earlier leadership, appears to have gone silent. This silence could also be attributed to the role that she oc-cupies as an external affairs minister, which has been rendered redundant by a prime minister who is all too willing to assume centre stage under the guise of in-ternational relations.

In the past, Modi had led an effective charge against the dynastic rule of the Congress. However, there ap-pears to be little difference between a dispensation that was saturated by a family, and one that is besotted with a single man. In his recent interview with Time, the prime minister claimed that democracy is a mat-ter of “faith” in India. But, what he seems to demand from Indians is not faith in the democracy, but blind faith in the power of one individual. It is an implicit demand that reads more like a recipe for uneasy coex-istence with an autocrat rather than the give and take of democracy.

As the Modi government launches into its anniversa-ry celebrations, it is difficult to think of even a single minister who has been singled out by the prime min-ister for being a ‘performer.’ Flanked by his two, and perhaps only, trusted lieutenants—Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley—on either side, Modi is happy talking about himself and himself alone. Where does that leave the government and its ministers? At the mo-ment, the shadow of anxiety and fear of reprimand clearly is working in forging a collective silence. But how long will such silence endure?

*****

29

Modi’s One-Year Anniversary: Where Are The ‘Good Days’ He Promised?

Shashank Shukla

Nearly a year ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode to power on a wave of high expectations and a slew of promises that were destined to bring “Acche Din” — “Good Days” — for the common Indian. Yet, a year in, the very same rhetoric is being used by Mr. Modi’s critics who claim that the promises are yet to be translated into reality.

Even the staunchest of Modi’s critics praise him for his foreign policy agenda thus far. Enhancing India’s image, Modi started by inviting all SAARC leaders during his swearing in ceremony and engaged in con-stant outreach to foreign leaders in the U.S., Europe, China, South East Asia, and Japan, among other countries. The pro-business perception of the Prime Minister has also shored up investor confidence as is reflected in the upgraded ratings of Moody’s and oth-er rating agencies. Lastly, Modi has endeared himself to millions in the Indian diaspora and in turn has invoked in them a sense of patriotism that has been missing for some time now.

However, Modi’s focus on external affairs has result-ed in him ignoring burning domestic issues. Among them are the increased suicide rate of farmers due to distress, the resurgence of anti-state movements like Naxalism, as well as the growing incidences of com-munal tensions across the country.

The opposition, led by Rahul Gandhi, has been agitat-ing against the revised Land Acquisition bill and have painted the Modi government as “pro-rich” and “an-ti-farmer.” The public response to Gandhi’s “suit-boot ki aarkar” comment is a warning bell to the govern-ment and calls for a quick course correction. Insen-sitive comments by senior leaders of the ruling party toward farmers, including the Haryana state Agricul-tural Minister who called farmers who have commit-ted suicide “cowards”, has further aggravated matters.Yet instead of embarking on a corrective course, the government seems adamant on pushing the Land Ac-quisition bill, among others, through the ordinance route thus bypassing the Parliament. The BJP-led

NDA government has a majority in the Lok Sabha (House of the People) and therefore can pass any bill it desires. The government has promulgated as many as six ordinances (temporary laws meant to be issued by the President at the request of the government when Parliament is not in session) due to stiff opposition in the Upper House where it lacks a majority, rather than engaging the opposition in debate and pursuing a ne-gotiated solution. This approach has further aggravat-ed and unified the opposition against the government, resulting in stalled progress on key bills like the GST bill calling for a uniform tax code across India — con-sidered a key reform that could improve the country’s economy further.

Despite the expectation of a pro-reform government, the Modi government has done little to make India business-friendly. Retroactive taxes that were to be discontinued in the government’s first budget are still in force. As such, foreign companies do not see India as a business-friendly location as they are continually hit with heavy new retroactive taxes. Indian corpora-tions continue to wait for long-standing demands like labor and tax reforms, which are yet to see the light of day in the new regime. Even small business owners, who voted for Modi expecting pro-SME (small and medium enterprise) sector policies and less bureau-cratic red tape, feel dejected due to lack of any initia-tives on this front.

The 250 to 300 million strong Indian middle class that stood firmly behind Modi also seems to be disen-chanted with the slow pace of reforms and increas-ing cases of religious intolerance. Above all, the mid-dle class wants peace and security. Yet the increasing trend of communal violence between religious com-munities, coupled with the administration’s inability to reign in fringe fundamentalist leaders within its rank, has not done much to help Modi’s image. He has also been criticized for his stoic silence and lack of disciplinary action against fringe leaders within his party who hold key positions within the BJP.

Date: 22 May, 2015Courtesy: opedspace.com

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Already bearing the burden of high taxes, the middle class will endure increased taxes if certain proposals involving the disclosure of every foreign trip and ev-ery purchase of more than Rs 1 lakh pass. This will not sit well with an aspirational, young and consump-tion-driven middle class.

The honeymoon period is most certainly over for Modi as the end of his first year in office comes to a

close. A string of electoral losses in the Bihar by-polls, the Uttar Pradesh by polls, the Delhi Assembly polls and the West Bengal local body election results have more than proved this. It is clear that the Modi gov-ernment now needs to translate rhetoric into reality and promises into performance. If not, the “Acche Din” of the Modi government will soon be a thing of the past.

*****

Modi’s 1-Year Report Card: Anti-Farmer And Pro-Corporate Sarkar

Kavita Chowdhary

The govt failed to communicate its views to people on the amended Land Acquisition Bill while the Opposi-tion ran away with the agenda.

Making a successful transition from Gujarat chief minister to prime minister was a formidable challenge for Narendra Modi. He set about doing this with élan.He started his tenure with a grand swearing-in cer-emony in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. He invited heads of government from neighbouring na-tions, like Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose arrival he had marked.

That sheen has started wearing off after 12 months.

The depleted Congress as Opposition labels Modi’s government the “U-turn sarkaar” for changing its position on all crucial economic reforms hanging fire since the United Progressive Alliance regime, from insurance to the goods and services tax. One year of Modi sarkar: Complete coverage

The hype of 281 MPs in the Lok Sabha, which raised the government’s pitch on economic reforms, received

a reality check in the Rajya Sabha, where the Bharatiya Janata Party does not enjoy a majority.

Undeterred, Modi launched ambitious programmes like the Jan Dhan Yojana and established a direct link with the people through his “Mann Ki Baat” pro-gramme on All India Radio.

“Just as the UPA was tainted by scams, the Modi government has been branded the anti-farmer and pro-corporate sarkaar,” observes a political analyst.

The government and its ministers failed in communi-cating their views to the people on the amended Land Acquisition Bill while the Congress-led Opposition ran away with the agenda.

It helped the Congress that after 11 months of silence a rejuvenated Rahul Gandhi, tore into the Modi gov-ernment, labelling it a “suit boot ki sarkaar.” Misman-agement by the government of the land bill, coupled with Modi’s sartorial flourish, has thrust Gandhi back into the headlines.

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: Business Standard

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While Modi scaled dizzy highs this past year, includ-ing referring to the President of the US as “his good friend Barack” with whom he chatted frequently over the phone, the government’s anti-minority image, whether it was a series of attacks on churches or the brazen communal statements made by Union minis-ters, has earned this government the censure of the international community, including that of Barack Obama.

No wonder then on completing a year in office, Modi told TIME magazine, “So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the Constitution of India.”

The strong image of the ‘Make in India’ campaign lion, unveiled by Modi during his visit to Germany, was welcomed by a large section of industry, but it could not quell voices questioning achievements on the ground, away from the hype.

The honeymoon for the government, bolstered by low international oil prices and a check on spiralling infla-tion, is under threat from an agrarian crisis.

A poor monsoon could queer the pitch further.

The prime minister was keen to have the constitution-al amendment for rolling out the goods and services tax and the Land Acquisition Bill cleared by the time the government completed one year in office. Those plans have been scuttled by the Rajya Sabha.

“There was corruption during the Congress’ rule, from land to spectrum to coal. But you cannot level a single charge of corruption against us,” Union Minis-ter Venkaiah Naidu said last week.

A Comptroller and Auditor General report naming a senior Union minister seemed to be a temporary set-back on this count. Yet, Modi has pulled off the most productive Parliament session in the past 15 years.

A Promise Broken: PM Modi’s Maximum Failure on Minimum Government

Seetha

*****

On this day last year, the Narendra Modi government was sworn in to office. It was a 45-strong council of ministers and Modi immediately earned kudos for walking the talk on his favourite minimum govern-ment maximum governance slogan.

This writer had pointed out that Modi's council of ministers was certainly a lean government, but that does not equal a minimum government, which is rooted in a certain philosophy of the role of the state one in which it confines itself to maintaining law and order, defending the country's boundaries, providing

public goods and not interfering in areas where indi-viduals and enterprises could manage their own af-fairs. One year later, does the Modi government pass this test?

In terms of numbers, Modi seems to have broken the promise of a lean government, with his council of ministers numbering 65. But, yes, it is smaller than that of his predecessor (78 ministers) and far short of the limit of 81 that the ninety-first amendment to the Constitution sets (it limits the size of the council of ministers to 15 per cent of the strength of the lower

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: First Post

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house of Parliament and state assemblies).

The litmus test of minimum government, however, does not lie in numbers. A government can be small-sized and interventionist. What matters, really, is the areas in which the government functions and how.

Speaking at the ET Global Business Summit in Janu-ary, Modi said the state was needed for just five things: public goods, a regulatory system for negative exter-nalities, checking monopolies, plugging information gaps and ensuring people can make informed choices and a well-designed welfare and subsidy mechanism to ensure that the poor are not deprived of basic ser-vices, especially education and healthcare.

He appeared to have understood the philosophy of a minimum government (though classical liberals will contest some of these). But even on this touchstone, Modi hasn't measured up.

And he is unlikely to, so long as his government con-tinues to see disinvestment merely as a revenue raising tool, selling government stake in public sector compa-nies only to adhere to stock market listing norms and selling only loss-making companies. This is just a con-tinuation of the United Progressive Alliance's (UPA) policy.

In his January address, he said the government should not be in business, especially in areas where the pri-vate sector can and is delivering better. That does not square with the government not getting out of sectors where the private sector is doing better and where the public sector is hugely under-performing airlines, ho-tels, telecom.

The tourism minister said last week that the govern-ment could sell a few loss-making hotels. But why should the government be running hotels at all, even if they are making profits?

The government has been tom-tomming its accep-tance of the Fourteenth Finance Commission report on devolution of taxes to states, but why has it not ac-cepted another recommendation of the Commission on a strategy for public sector disinvestment? (Read here).A major reason for public sector banks being in a mess is the political interference in their functioning. Yet, there is hardly any action towards giving them

more autonomy, let alone bringing down government stake in them.

A minimum government would have moved away from a heavy-handed interventionist role in the field of education. Here too we got more of the same. From forcing the Delhi University to roll back its five-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) through the Uni-versity Grants Commission to meddling in the af-fairs of the Indian Institutes of Technology to placing ideological favourites in research institutes to telling schools how they should observe Teachers Day and Christmas, the human resource development minis-try has been no different from previous governments (even they didn't do the last one). But earlier gov-ernments never spoke about minimum government; Modi keeps harping on it.

Modi's minimum government copybook has also been blotted by his government resorting to invoking the Essential Supplies Maintenance Act (ESMA) at the first sign of shortage-driven price spikes.

There is ample evidence that this does not work but only increases harassment and corruption. Before he became prime minister, Modi had headed a working group of chief ministers on food inflation and had wanted ESMA to be strengthened, so it is probably unrealistic to expect him to repeal this, but this is an-other example of the state micro-managing the econ-omy.

While on the food economy, one cannot overlook the fact that the government has taken only baby steps on reforming the Food Corporation of India (FCI), despite having the benefit of the Shanta Kumar com-mittee which made several recommendations to re-duce the corporation's overbearing role in managing food supplies which is a major factor in the mess in the food economy.

The Modi government certainly needs to be applaud-ed for doing away with the Planning Commission, but how its replacement, the Niti Aayog, will be an im-provement is still not clear.

Merely making the states a part of it may not mean much if ultimately the Aayog continues to nudge them in a certain direction that is decided by the Centre.But it's early days yet and one needs to give the gov-ernment more slack on this.

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Doordarshan Singing praises Won’t Do Any Good

Sandipan SharmaAll Indira Radio, Rajivdarshan and now Prasar Modi.For the next few weeks, the Information and Broad-casting ministry will do what it has done over the past several decades: make Doordarshan sing in His Mas-ter’s Voice, perform paeans in Raag Darbari.

According to news reports, the ministry has asked the public broadcaster to launch a publicity blitz for the government when it completes a year. “As celebra-tions for the Modi government’s one year anniversary pick up pace, over 20 senior ministers will be giving interviews to Doordarshan to mark the day,” reports the Times of India.

According to the Business Standard, Doordarshan has been asked to capture the mood of the nation after a year of Modi raj through special programmes, inter-views and jingles composed by Prasoon Joshi.

So, over the next few days, we will have ministers ex-tolling their achievements and gratuitous people tell-ing us how their lives have changed in the past year and Doordarshan reporters spinning stories of the success and achievements of the NDA government. All of it on a channel that nobody really cares to watch, but that’s a separate point.

The real bad news is that the Modi government has no intention of implementing one of its brightest and honest suggestions: set Prasar Bharti free, give up gov-ernment control over public broadcasters.

“There is no need for I&B ministry in a democracy; Prasar Bharati should be free of government interfer-ence; it should have an independent editor-in-chief.” These were the ‘philosophical and ideological’ words of I&B minister Prakash Javadekar during an inter-view in 2014.

Javadekar’s philosophy was sacrificed at the altar of obeisance to another kind of ideology when Doordar-shan decided to broadcast live RSS chief Mohan Bhag-wat’s Dusshera speech in October 2014. Whatever was left of left of Javadekar’s brave idea perhaps died when he was shifted to a different ministry. And the gov-ernment has now given up all pretensions of freeing

Doordarshan and AIR of the burden of propagating its mann ki baat.

Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with a gov-ernment using a broadcaster as its pet. Many totali-tarian regimes across the world have their own news agencies and media. The Russians have their TASS and Pravda, China has Xinhua and many regimes in Islamic countries control every word that is written or spoken. The Indian government too is entitled to be-lieve that it should have a mouthpiece. But, the prob-lem is that political parties preach autonomy and in-dependence for Prasar Bharti while in opposition but refuse to give up the state’s control on becoming part of the government.

For instance, during the 2014 election campaign, the BJP had protested when Doordarshan ‘edited’ some portions of the interview with Modi. “I feel very sad to see our National TV channel struggling to main-tain its professional freedom,” Modi had tweeted his outrage then.

Will he now allow Doordarshan to air interviews with opposition leaders on his government’s first anniver-sary? Will the I&B ministry allow the state broadcast-er to give equal space to critical analysis and public opinion?

Forcing government propaganda on people rarely helps. It didn’t work for too long for Joseph Goebbels, it didn’t help Indira or Rajiv Gandhi. During the 80s, AIR and Doordarshan were used shamelessly by the Congress to prop up Rajiv as Indira’s heir, and lat-er when he became the PM, most of the prime time news was dedicated to his programmes and speeches, forcing critics to call it Rajivdarshan. But none of this helped Rajiv avoid a crushing defeat in the next elec-tion.

If it didn’t work in the age of Doordarshan monop-oly, only a naïve government would believe that His Master’s Voice can be heard and blindly believed in the din of contrasting, competing and contradictory voices that rule India’s airwaves today.

Date: 16 May, 2015Courtesy: First Post

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After A Year In Office, The Real Modi Needs To Stand Up

Dhiraj Nayyar

Three weeks from now, India’s Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi will mark his first year in office. He swept into office with a clear center-right message -- “mini-mum government, maximum governance” -- and the biggest mandate of any leader since 1984; one might have expected him to establish a policy direction and priorities fairly quickly. Yet his administration still can’t seem to make up its mind what kind of govern-ment it wants to be.

On May 1, in the strongest criticism thus far from within the ruling coalition, former minister Arun Shourie blasted the government’s economic policy as “directionless.” Until recently considered a close ally of Modi’s, Shourie may have employed the wrong ad-jective. The government’s policies seem pulled in too many directions -- both toward reform and against it.

The problem isn’t that the pace of reform is too slow. In a large, unwieldy polity such as India, there’s an ar-gument for promoting good policy in measured, in-cremental steps that build upon one another without provoking widespread opposition. And in fact, Modi’s government has gotten several small things right. The budget released in February gave a big and welcome fillip to public investment, especially in infrastructure, to kickstart a stalled investment cycle. The govern-ment has held steadfast in its determination to amend a restrictive land acquisition law. Last week, it made the first big move to revise India’s equally onerous la-bour laws by proposing to raise the limit at which em-ployers need permission from the government to lay off workers from 100 to 300 employees. While much more needs to be done, that’s a major incentive for In-dian firms to employ more formal workers rather than relying on informal and poorly-paid contract labour.

If the government had pushed such measures con-sistently, supporters would be willing to overlook the delays caused by gridlock in Parliament. The problem is that Modi’s administration has simultaneously en-gaged in blatantly regressive moves, especially on tax-ation. The decision to apply the Minimum Alternate Tax to foreign institutional investors who had hereto-

fore been exempt has seriously dented investor con-fidence. Slapping Cairn Energy with a tax bill based on an awful retrospective tax law passed by the pre-vious government was equally damaging. Individual taxpayers are not being spared either. In a move that harks back to the socialist era of the 1970s, the gov-ernment has proposed scrutinizing the foreign travel of ordinary Indians to prevent them from squirrelling funds away in overseas accounts.

Last week, the government also caved to vested inter-ests by withdrawing two welcome proposals that had been included in the February budget. One would have transferred responsibility for managing govern-ment debt from the central bank to an independent agency, as is the case elsewhere. The other would have asked the securities regulator (SEBI) instead of the Reserve Bank of India to regulate the bond market. Both measures would’ve helped clear up some of the problems India is having with the transmission of monetary policy.

The central bank has a serious conflict of interest as the setter of interest rates and the manager of govern-ment debt. At the same time, an underdeveloped bond market (particularly for the private sector) would have been served better by the efficient SEBI than a conflicted RBI. The central bank made no secret of its opposition to the budget proposals; the government loses credibility by caving in so easily. If, as officials now claim, they simply wanted to consult further with the RBI, they should’ve done so before releasing the budget.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment, though, has been the government’s total failure to privatise even one of India’s massively inefficient public-sector companies. One of Modi’s loudest applause lines during the cam-paign was that the government shouldn’t be in the business of business. Yet instead of divesting majority stakes in loss-making Air India, the stagnant telecom companies BSNL and MTNL or the hotel company ITDC, the government has continued to insist that it can manage these companies better -- a familiar re-

Date: 6 May, 2015Courtesy: Daily News Analysis

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frain.

Perhaps Modi, acclaimed for his stewardship as Chief Minister of Gujarat state for more than a decade, still thinks he can run the Indian economy on a proj-ect-by-project basis rather than developing a coher-ent governing philosophy. His penchant for launching big schemes is unabated. He’s just announced a grand highway project that will connect the east and west of India. He’s also put forward a plan to construct 100

“smart cities” with world-class physical and digital in-frastructure.

The fact is, though, that all these projects are heavily dependent on attracting large investments, and inves-tors look for policy certainty before committing any money. Before he floats any more grand projects, and before he gets too far into his second year in office, Modi had better lay out and stick to the principles by which he plans to govern.

*****

After One Year, India Expects Modi to Deliver

Sanjay Kumar

One year is a long time in politics. No one under-stands that better than India’s prime minister, Naren-dra Modi. In 2014, he won with an historic landslide at the polls, decimating the Congress Party, which was left with just 44 of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the first few months after that triumph, the country was in complete awe of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and it looked as though Congress didn’t have much of a future.

Twelve months later, Modi’s aura of invincibility has disappeared. The BJP has not won a single by-election since coming to power last May, suffering its biggest humiliation in Delhi elections in February, conceding defeat to the upstart Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). In Ut-tar Pradesh, a crucial state, where the party won 71 out 80 parliamentary seats, it has failed to win even a single seat in 16 by-elections. It’s the same story in West Bengal, the eastern Indian state, where the BJP

was crushed in civic elections last month.

With Modi’s political stock falling, Congress has found a new lease on life. The party is punching well above its parliamentary strength, and its leader, Ra-hul Gandhi, has begun to draw traction, particularly after he opposed a controversial land acquisition bill. Another surprising development is open criticism of Modi from former supporters.

Arun Shourie, a BJP member, has called Modi’s eco-nomic policy “directionless.” He served as India’s Fi-nance Minister between 1998 and 2004. “The gov-ernment is more concerned with managing headlines than putting policies in place,” Shourie said in an in-terview last month. “[BJP] is stuck with a scrambled set of jigsaw pieces and has no sense of how to put them together.”

Date: 22 May, 2015Courtesy: The Diplomat

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Social activist Madhu Kishwar’s attacks on Modi were particularly surprising. She blames Modi his lack of vision, especially on education and economic devel-opment. That’s coming from someone, who not long ago, went out of her way to justify the polarizing prime minister.

Mihir Sharma of the Business Standard writes that Modi is wasting his parliamentary majority by not taking bold decisions. “The government’s confusion reflects his own lack of direction,” says Sharma. The author of the recent book “Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy,” Sharma adds that “we are still waiting for the first – the first! – legislative change entirely driven by Mr Modi’s own vision for India’s fu-ture. The point of 282 was that it gave a government the power to change the rules of the game. That is all a parliamentary majority in fact does. This has not happened, yet. Till that happens, no real revival will emerge.”

The initial years of any new government are consid-ered a crucial time, when far reaching decisions can be made. But the BJP, which came riding the high horses of expectation, has been a disappointment for both the critics and supporters.

On Modi’s core campaign promise, fixing the econ-omy, he hasn’t had much success. The corporate and middle classes of Indian society had hoped that the BJP would launch another wave of economic reforms. But despite boasting 282 of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha, the government has shied away from making any radical decisions. That has disappointed both critics and supporters, who had hoped to see the eco-

nomic forecast improve in India.But Modi’s political personality, not his reforms, have garnered headlines in his first year, as opponents have raised questions about the centralization of power and about the Prime Minister’s self-obsessed behav-ior. Delhi’s political circles have been abuzz with the news of how the files are piling up in the Prime Minis-ter’s Office (PMO) and how even an appointment for a personal secretary to a minister has to be cleared by the PMO—something which has never happened be-fore in India.

Modi’s political mettle is also being tested, with elec-tions in Bihar coming up in September. If the BJP fails to form a government there, the prime minister’s cred-ibility would take a beating. The parameters by which to judge the Modi-led regime in Delhi can not be the same as they were for the previous regime. His was a historic mandate. For the first time a non-Congress party won a majority in the lower house of parliament on its own. Modi successfully sold a dream to the na-tion and people put their faith in him. Many voted for him despite having strong reservations about his political past because he promised to deliver a new future. Therefore, Modi cannot hide behind excuses and cannot get away with a mediocre performance as prime minister.

With the opposition showing more fight than expect-ed, that would make it difficult for Modi to make tough economic decisions. His bold foreign policy initiatives will mean little if he gets sucked into domestic polit-ical skirmishes. Either way, the next few months for the prime minister look to be bumpy.

*****

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One Year On, Modi Government Has Proved Its Critics Wrong

Aakar Patel

It was said of Valery Giscard ‎d'Estaing that the idea of a European Union thrilled him but the details bored him.

‎Something similar may be said about Prime Minis-ter Narendra Modi's vision for India, assuming we can give his scattershot projects the grand title of vision.Indeed, a lack of overall coherence informs his obses-sions, which in military terms may be described as "shoot and scoot‎". Meaning that he lets off a volley here, a volley there and runs along to the next thing whose idea fascinates him but whose details bore him.‎Take black money of which we heard much during the campaign from Modi himself and which fiasco is now left to be explained by his minions. Let us not go into the details of how much and how soon and so on (for danger of boring ourselves) but let us keep it in the back of our minds to locate him as a thinker.

On taking power, Modi has been quick to shoot off two magnificent projects: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Make in India.

A confusing plan

The first confused me when I heard it announced. Was he attempting to reform India's street culture, shaming us with his personal example, like Gandhi? This was what the visuals of him in the first days of the project seemed to suggest. Or was the goal more modest and was : Swachh Bharat Abhiyan merely an umbrella title for all the various toilet construction schemes funded by previous governments? This is what the newspaper adverts suggested. So which is it? What are the de-liverables? Number of toilets constructed or number of uncivilised Indians converted? I am still unsure, which is remarkable given how much space has been given to it by us in the media. Of course it has failed because the bureaucratic apparatus is as confused as I am and therefore utterly clueless in execution.

If India could be cleaned up by prime ministeri-al tweets congratulating opportunist celebrities for

holding a broom, our cities would be Singapore if not Tokyo. That they remain filthy is because the fault lies with us and not the government, yes, but who asked Modi to have a crack at social reform? Not his vota-ries, surely.

Make in India. What is it? How does it work? The governor of the Reserve Bank of India said it made little sense. Perhaps. But you must admit that it has a superb logo. And it sounds right. As Mukesh Am-bani observed at the launch of the project - it's not made in India; it is make, giving it an active voice, an urgency. It must be accepted by all, including Mo-di-baiters, haters and whatever other name is applied to such people, that the prime minister has a talent for nomenclature. The acronyms – AMRUT instead of JNURM for the urban renewal mission, the vari-ous crisp abbreviations – of this government are much better and nicer.

So what's happened to Make in India after that explo-sive start and all the full-page newspaper ads? I don’t know, really. And few will admit that they do. If man-ufacturing as a sector is still flailing, that is a function of the reality the RBI governor referred to.

One thing Modi has been universally praised for ‎has been his energetic foreign policy. He successful-ly closed a deal with the United States that his party prevented Manmohan Singh from closing, and then claimed it was the greatest diplomatic triumph since the Congress of Vienna. This is his privilege and his right as winner of a majority – his opponents should stop moaning.

Pakistan policy

But what is this grand foreign policy really? Let us look at his actions toward our most important and danger-ous neighbour, Pakistan. Are we friends or foes? India invites Pakistan for a grand swearing in, sympathises with Pakistan for the Peshawar attack, congratulates Pakistan for sporting victories, sulks with Pakistan

Date: 16 May, 2015Courtesy: scroll.in

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for gossiping with two Kashmiris, promises to break Pakistan's mouth by incessant border firing, whines about Pakistan not ceasing fire – and it's not even been a year. No consistency, no vision, no nothing. No thinking.

An awful and cruel piece by the data journalism web-site India Spend showed that in their first years the effete, corrupt, incompetent, soft and nepotistic Man-mohan Singh government and the strong, tough and clean Modi government had achieved pretty much the same thing.

And here I will come to why I think the Modi gov-ernment has done well. There are those who were ter-rified that he would bring some sort of fascist rule to India. They have been proved wrong. There are those who were hoping he would bring enormous change and rejuvenate India. They have been disappointed. Most people who voted for him likely expected some-thing much more modest. A little less corruption at the centre, fewer stories of scandals, a continuation of the very gradual improvement in their middle class lives, a little more entertainment from their leader. They have not been disappointed.

Fishing For Compliments: Modi Govt’s Publicity Blitzkrieg Smacks Of Desperation

Akshaya Mishra

*****

The self-congratulatory blitz unleashed by the Nar-endra Modi government on the country to mark the completion of its first year in power is unprecedent-ed. Being modest or underconfident was hardly ever a strong trait in the genetic make-up of the BJP, but this time it has exceeded itself in this self-glorification exercise. It would be acceptable if substance and hype weren't mismatched and there was no hint of desper-ation in the exercise.

Why desperation? The fact that the government has chosen to make it such an high decibel event is per-haps indication that all may not be well when it comes to its achievements. It wants to drown out uncom-fortable questions by bombarding us with confusing

numbers, arguments that don’t quite add up and the clever excuse of legacy. Surely, one year is not enough to judge a government’s performance, there are legacy issues and there’s nothing to fault Modi’s government on intent, particularly on matters economy so far, so why this blitzkrieg?

Is there a realisation in the ruling dispensation that behind the carefully constructed facade of positivity and exuberance, the criticism is gathering strength and that its performance hasn’t been good enough to speak for itself and quell such statements? The gov-ernment’s army of cheerleaders and faithful swamp-ing the media space with glowing, and unabashedly uncritical, tributes to the achievements in the year

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: First Post

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past would have us believe that India has made a clean break from its diffident, reticent and ‘tainted’ past and is now in an exciting space of possibilities. It is diffi-cult to accept all that without suspension of belief.

To be fair to the Modi government, the first one in 30 years without the baggage of a political coalition, has been successful in conveying the impression that it means business, literally and figuratively. The macro economy has got into good shape, with a big dollop of help from global factors, and there’s clear intent on tackling structural issues in the economy. NRI confi-dence in the country is up.

The prime minister has been able to project himself as the leader of the country and thus restored the dignity of his office, which had gone missing during UPA rule to a great extent. If he weren’t perpetually in election campaign mode, he would come across as a sagacious politician too. In short, there’s this feeling that there’s a government in place and it’s willing to take respon-sibility for its actions, unlike earlier. All these would have been enough to flaunt after one year, but Modi and his party decided to go for overkill, exposing the government to closer scrutiny.

It would still have scored a respectable six out of ten marks in public ratings despite its disaster that is also called its Pakistan policy – it’s so obviously direction-less but BJP’s leaders and apologists would, for some reason, still call it a success; alienation of the farming community courtesy the Land Bill; low job genera-tion, a disappointment so far among the youth who

voted for the party in 2014; an overall indifferent in-dustrial growth; the invisibility of a Make-in-India policy despite an emphasis on it; and the approval of many UPA’s policies which the party opposed while in opposition.

While on the negatives it’s difficult to keep the activ-ities of the Hindutva groups out. The government’s silence on them has created apprehension among the minorities and a major section of Hindus too. They are lying low now, but it’s a matter of time they resur-faced with their aggressive illiberal agenda.

It was a unique convergence of favourable sentiment across segments that saw Modi and the BJP sweep the elections in 2014. Farmers, youth, the middle class and the urban rich – the well-orchestrated campaign held out a bright promise for all. It sustained through the elections in five states where the party swept to pow-er. One year down the line, the overarching feel-good sentiment shows signs of wearing off. The confidence in the government is waning, though it’s not entirely lost yet. The party and the government must do some-thing to revive it apart from blocking the space for the opposition to revive itself. Perhaps that explains the sense of urgency the government and the BJP on the occasion of the completion of one year in power.

From here on the government will require much more than Modi’s fabled oratorical skills and the legacy ar-gument to keep its constituencies satisfied. Year one was an extended honeymoon period for the Modi government, year two will be much tougher.

*****

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One Year On, Modi Has Battered Many Constitutional Principles – But The

Biggest Victim Is FraternityHarsh Mander

The centrality of fraternity in nurturing and sustain-ing democracy is one of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s many profound insights. The word used in the Constitution in Hindi is bandhuta, which vividly evokes ideas of comradeship and mutual belonging. It suggests that regardless of our multitudes of differences – of faith, caste, class, gender, language, of the ways we dress and eat, marry, divorce, celebrate and mourn – we are in the end one people, because we belong to one anoth-er. The first energetic year in office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was marked by severe contestations of many constitutional principles, but none more than fraternity.

Fraternity, our common sisterhood and brotherhood, would, if fully realised, result in a seamless oneness, or unity, amidst our limitless diversities. This is an ideal we as a people have never achieved. Instead of complete unity, we articulate interim ideals of amity, harmony and peaceful co-living. These in turn require at the minimum two fundamental principles in public life – of public civility and public fairness. Both these minimum principles for fraternal co-living have been badly battered in the first year of Modi’s stewardship of the central government.

Public civility

Take first public civility. Never in free India has the public discourse been so poisoned by MPs and min-isters of an elected ruling alliance. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj labels madrasas as “hubs of terror” fostering “love jihad” and “education of ter-rorism”. He exhorts Hindu women to bear four chil-dren, declaring that in the Modi yug (era), the alleged Muslim practice of having four wives and 40 kids – a fiction of majoritarian paranoia – should be forcefully halted. He further describes Nathuram Godse, Gand-hi’s assassin, as a “patriot” and “martyr”. Another BJP MP Yogi Adityanath declares that an India without Ram cannot be imagined, and that those who alleged-

ly torment Hindus with riots will have to pay dearly. Moreover “for every Hindu converted, 100 Muslim girls will be converted as retaliation”. Minister Sadh-vi Niranjan Jyoti describes those who do not worship Ram as “haramzade” or bastards. A Shiv Sena MP force-feeds a Muslim canteen functionary during his roza fast. Another, Sanjay Raut, calls for the disen-franchisement of Muslims.

These are not hate provocations by non-state fringe fanatics. These are displays of unrepentant public big-otry by elected public representatives of the ruling al-liance in Parliament. The prime minister – who is oth-erwise not known ever to be at a loss for words, prides himself on an expanded chest and imposing his iron will on his ministers and party – is deafening in his silence in response to these criminally culpable hate statements of his colleagues. His occasional reactions, hardly amount to even a mild rap on their knuckles.

Public fairness

Take now public fairness. Consider the state of Guja-rat. Maya Kodnani, imprisoned for 28 years for leading the brutal slaughter in Naroda in 2002 of 97 Muslims, including 36 women and 35 children, is out on bail for an intestinal malady since July 2014. Another in-famous organiser of the slaughter, Baju Bajrangi, also serving an extended life term, was freed on bail for an eye aliment in April 2015. Caught in 2006 by the newsmagazine Tehelka on secret camera Bajrangi had bragged, “We hacked, burned, set on fire… because these bastards don’t want to be cremated… I have just one last wish… let me be sentenced to death… just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day… I will finish them off… at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die.”

Senior police officer Vanzara, charged with the mur-der in fake encounters of teenager Ishrat Jehan, Sohrabuddin and others, was released on bail in Feb-

Date: 26 May, 2015Courtesy: scroll.in

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ruary 2015 to a hero’s welcome. In contrast, coura-geous whistle-blowing police officers Rahul Sharma and Rajnish Rai face a barrage of charges. An ex-hausted but unbending Sharma finally took voluntary retirement. Police officer Sanjeev Bhatt remains sus-pended. Gutsy Teesta Setlawad, who pursued many battles for legal justice for the survivors of the 2002 carnage, faces multiple criminal charges and escaped imminent arrest only through the intervention of the Supreme Court.

Communal ferment

India’s Constitution took care to defend not just the right of faith of religious minorities, but also their right to propagate their convictions. Contrary to its spirit, there is influential public advocacy for a na-tional law barring religious conversions. A rash of high-decibel programmes were organised in which converts to Islam and Christianity were “welcomed back” into Hinduism. These programmes were titled “homecomings”, suggesting that the legitimate Indi-an faith is Hinduism, and conversions to Islam and Christianity represented prodigal straying. The same cultural hegemony of majoritarian upper-caste Hin-duism underlay Maharashtra government’s ban on both selling and eating beef, criminalising dietary tra-ditions of not only many non-Hindu faiths, but even many Dalit and tribal peoples.

This has also been a year of widespread communal fer-ment. Big communal conflagrations are now unlike-ly, because they attract international condemnation and troublesome domestic activism. But these have been replaced by an undeclared continual epidem-ic of small, but deeply toxic, communal attacks and skirmishes across the length and breadth of the land. Assaults on churches here, disputes over mosques and cemeteries there, raids on religious processions, throwing of animal carcasses into shrines, raising of communal tempers when young people choose to love or marry outside their religions, and against cow slaughter, all of these have resulted in several hundred communal clashes throughout the country, peaking in regions which are due to face elections.

Modi in his first year in office has led our nation into a long, blistering majoritarian summer. This has scorched both the fairness of institutions of the state – including sadly the judiciary – as well as fraternal social relations. None but the most delusional right-wing radicals expect millions of people of minority faith to leave this nation. But what they want is that these millions learn to live in separate ghettoes, eco-nomically enfeebled, socially submissive, politically disenfranchised. This is their competing idea of India.

*****

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One Year Of Narendra Modi Sarkar: Not a Good Year For The Farmer

Ashok Gulati

When the Narendra Modi sarkar took over the reins in Delhi in May 2014, the biggest challenge in the agri-food space was to tame food inflation, which was hovering in double digits. Prices of food articles were up by 9.5% in May 2014 over May 2013; potato prices were up 31% and onion prices were showing surging signs in most major consuming centres. On top of this, monsoon rains were erratic in June-July 2014, and finally ended up at 12% below the Long Pe-riod Average (LPA). The government realised that this could be a party spoiler, and so it had to act fast, lit-erally hit the ground running. This was Modi sarkar’s first litmus test.

A slew of measures were announced by the govern-ment to contain the damage from surging food infla-tion. It not only restricted exports of onions but also imported onions and dumped them in major onion markets at prices below import cost. It also used the stick and raided many onion traders/hoarders. The message was clear that the government will not be a passive spectator but will move fast. In July, it took a major decision to liquidate 15 million tonnes of foodgrain stocks, and in September the APMC was changed in Delhi to allow trading of fruits and vege-tables outside the Azadpur mandi. As this fire-fight-ing to contain food inflation was going on, good luck seemed to descend on the Modi sarkar in the form of tumbling global commodity prices—from crude oil to corn to cotton, all started slipping down. This came in very handy to finally bring down food inflation within reasonably comfortable range, and in April 2015 the consumer food price index increased by only 5.1% over April 2014. How much it was due to domestic policies of the government and how much it was due to global price slide, will remain an issue for discus-sion and debate. But the fact remains that, in May 2015, food inflation is not as burning an issue as it was in May 2014.

The flip-side of this scenario was the impact on farm-ers. Although government did not declare 2014 as a drought year—presumably to allay the fears of food

inflation—practically with 12% below normal rainfall, it was a drought.

Falling global prices of agri-commodities led to a slowdown in exports of several commodities, notably cotton.

Domestic prices started crashing and it goes to the credit of the government that it put the Cotton Cor-poration of India (CCI) into action, which procured more than 9 million bales at minimum support pric-es and gave a breather to cotton farmers. This was a timely action, and without CCI’s proactive role there could have been a spate of farmer suicides in the cot-ton belt. That disaster was averted. But farmers’ price realisation in most agri-commodities declined signifi-cantly—by 15-25%—whether it was basmati rice or cotton or corn, and so on.

So, for the farmer, it was not a good year. Farmers suffered a drought in kharif and unseasonal rains in March-April 2015 hit the crops badly, which otherwise could have been a bumper rabi. This double wham-my of poor and erratic rainfall during kharif and rabi, and lower price realisations, has hit farmers hard. Al-though the Modi sarkar has raised the compensation for farmers by 50% in one go, and also lowered the trigger point for compensation from minimum 50% damage to one-third damage, yet it is far from being sufficient to take care of farmers’ interests.

Moreover, our procedures of assessing damages and compensating farmers are so slow and often corrupt that farmers remain at the receiving end. Creating a more robust crop insurance system with the help of modern technology that uses satellites, drones, en-hanced and upgraded all-weather stations and rainfall loggers, digitisation of farmers plots, and dovetailing these with Jan-Dhan accounts and Aadhaar’s UID, re-mains a challenge for the Modi sarkar.

Overall, while consumers have heaved a sigh of relief from high food inflation, farmers have come under

Date: 15 May, 2015Courtesy: Financial Express

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distress due to nature’s fury and falling global prices. The overall agri-GDP in FY15 may fall flat.

The big-ticket items in the agri-food space have not been touched much in the first year of the Modi sark-ar. These are food and fertiliser subsidies. Of the bud-getary allocations to five key ministries (agriculture, food, fertilisers, water resources and food processing) which impact agri-food outcomes, more than 85% of resources go as subsidies on food and fertiliser. The PDS suffers from large leakages (over 40%) and fer-tilisers are being smuggled and used for non-agri-culture purposes due to low pricing of urea. Massive inefficiencies continue to dog the food management system, from excessively high stocks to high costs of operation of the Food Corporation of India (FCI).

The PM set up a high-level committee under Shanta Kumar—the former Union minister for food—to look into the functioning of FCI and streamline the food management system. While the panel has submit-ted its report, it has yet to see any solid action by the government. Even the PM’s directive to liquidate 15 million tonnes of grains in 2014-15 has not been im-plemented in its true sense; actual open market sales by FCI have been less than one-fourth of this amount.

This is the unfinished agenda, along with streamlin-ing fertiliser subsidy and raising investments in wa-ter management, which should be on high priority in FY16, else Indian farmers will remain under stress and Indian agriculture will keep limping.

*****

Healthcare Under Modi : In Need Of Critical Attention

Dinesh C Sharma, Daily News Analysis

In television debates on one year of the Modi gov-ernment, the ruling party and government spokes-persons have brushed aside criticism of hefty cuts in social sector-spending by saying there won’t be any real shortage of funds for sectors like health because more money will now be available to states. They have argued that slashing of central government’s health budget should be viewed in the context of the new tax devolution formula that increases the share of state governments in central taxes from 32 per cent to 42 per cent. In effect, this means the future of public spending on health now hinges on the hope that states will prioritise health and allocate more funds for it.

While it is true that states have been major contrib-utors to health spending with public health expendi-ture ratio between the Centre and states being 31:69, the Centre’s role has been more critical in terms of providing policy guidance, technical help and direct financial assistance for certain key schemes. The pre-vious government had demonstrated with the Na-tional Rural Health Mission (now subsumed in Na-tional Health Mission or NHM) that greater central spending can spur states into action in key area. Some programmes like National AIDS Control Programme were fully supported by the Centre.

Date: 27 May, 2015Courtesy: Daily News Analysis

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In the name of financial devolution, this pattern of funding has been suddenly changed. Besides cutting down budgetary support for NHM and AIDS control, as many as 15 centrally-funded schemes have not been allocated any separate funds for fiscal 2015-2016. Nine of these 15 schemes have been labelled by health min-istry as “non-negotiable” for which money must be found somehow otherwise it would have catastrophic impact on equitable access to health. Take for instance trauma care for which the health ministry had sought Rs472 crore. This money was to be used for capacity building for developing trauma care facilities in gov-ernment hospitals on national highways, considering the fact that road accidents are a major killer in India. The National Programme on Prevention and Man-agement of Burn Injury – for which Rs171 crore had been sought – was aimed at developing burn wards in government hospitals. The National Tobacco Control Programme too has been given a thumbs down.

The national mental health policy, unveiled in Sep-tember 2014, had promised universal mental health care and expansion of the district mental health pro-gramme but the National Mental Health Programme stands to get no support from the central government. The most critical central scheme facing uncertainty is the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke. Others in this list include programmes for the care of elderly, prevention of blindness, human resource development and telemedicine. The health ministry has been told that all these 15 schemes will now be part of NHM. When the budget for NHM itself has been squeezed, it is difficult to understand how NHM is going to accommodate more schemes. Moreover, NHM has a specific mandate of improv-ing primary and secondary healthcare. If tertiary care schemes are merged into this, money may flow to these schemes at the cost of primary and secondary care components.

The second option is to depend on states to contrib-ute more to these schemes but the quantum of states’ share remains uncertain. Some schemes like AIDS control will now be fully at the mercy of states. Under-funding of such critical schemes may wipe out gains made in the past. The rate of new HIV infections has been declining, but at the same time new infections are appearing in low-prevalence states. Nutrition and health related programmes of other ministries too

have been hit. An example of this is massive 50 per cent cut in allocation for the Integrated Child Devel-opment Scheme (ICDS) run by the Ministry of Wom-en and Child Development. This has serious implica-tions for child nutrition.

The opinion among public finance experts is divid-ed over the quantum of additional money that would become available as a result of devolution. Even pre-suming that sufficient funds would flow to states, it would depend on states to decide how much to spend on health, and set priorities within the health sec-tor. Past experience about health spending by states shows that expenditure on health by states has been declining and the expenditure on health is much low-er in states with poor health indicators. This means that states that ought to spend more on health are not doing so. Overall, states are spending more on urban and curative facilities than in rural areas where infra-structure needs to be strengthened. Most states lack capacity in health sector to absorb additional funds, as reflected in huge amounts of unspent central funds in health sector.

The parliamentary standing committee on health, which went into the health budget for 2015-2016, has nailed the issue. In its view “huge assumption has been made that 42 per cent transfer of central taxes to states in the form of untied funds would compen-sate for the shortfall in central funds for health”. If this assumption falls flat, then there would be severe shortfall of money for health sector in backward states which already fare poorly on various health indica-tors. “Past experience shows that if spending is left to states, contractor-intensive sectors take priority over non-contractor intensive sectors and health, not be-ing a contractor intensive sector, will take a backseat in such circumstances,” the panel has warned. Given precarious state of states' finances, according to the panel, expecting states to allocate adequate financial resources for health for year 2015-16 is “unrealistic”. In any case, more funds from states for health schemes during 2015-16 is unlikely as most states have already presented their budgets.

At a time when India needs a clear roadmap to achieve the goal of universal health, the central government appears to be dithering from its commitment to pub-lic health. Both central and state governments togeth-er spend a mere 1.1 per cent of GDP on health. More-

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over, public funding is just 20 per cent of what Indians spend on health every year. The rest 80 per cent is ‘out of pocket’ expenditure by people. The goal was to en-hance public spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by the

end of the 12th plan, so as to reduce the burden on people’s pocket. With reduced public funding, uni-versal access to health for Indians will remain a pipe dream.

*****

An Education In AcronymsAnjali Mody

Amid a plethora of cleverly named new schemes and tech-fixes, the HRD Ministry is busy tinkering with bureaucratic processes.

Every year multiple agencies, private and public, tell us that an unacceptable number of school-going chil-dren at age 14 are functionally illiterate and that their numbers are not declining. Teachers and teaching, al-most everyone is agreed, are at the heart of this prob-lem. Every year a tiny fraction of hopefuls clears the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) or TET ex-ams necessary to a get a teaching job in a government school. There are massive teacher vacancies across the country and the question that those responsible for CTET are grappling with is whether the tests to qualify as a primary schoolteacher should be at the class 10 level or the class 8 level. Lowering already low standards for qualifying teachers in order to fill the massive teaching vacancies is clearly not the solution to the problem of low learning outcomes in schools. Changes in pedagogy and improvements in teacher education, however, top the list of necessary changes if we expect the trend to reverse any time in the future.

A promising start

The Union government appeared to get off to a good start with the announcement of a teacher education

mission. The Prime Minister inaugurated the mission with great fanfare, speaking of a “five-year training course” and exporting teachers across the world “in lakhs”. His government, however, allocated only Rs. 180 crore a year for five years towards this goal. This works out to less than Rs. 400 per existing teacher per year — a derisory sum that suggests the Prime Minis-ter is prone to flights of fancy and that his government has absolutely no understanding of the enormity of the problem. Combined with cuts across the board in the Centre’s education spending, the message that the government appears to be sending is that mass public education is not its priority; it just hopes the State gov-ernments will do something about it.

School education is, in the main, the concern of State governments. But it was to address the failure of State governments and the huge regional disparities that the Centre intervened in the first place. From a uni-versal mid-day meal scheme to Sarva Shiksha Abhi-yan, central allocations have been responsible for vastly increasing student enrolment, attendance and completion. However, their focus on numbers — the quantifiable goals beloved of both politicians and bu-reaucrats — has ignored the larger issue of learning or the quality of education. The next logical stage, for any government serious about mass education in the country, would be to devise a sustainable policy for

Date: 23 May, 2015Courtesy: The Hindu

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improving teaching and learning standards across the country. The Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, however, reinforced the impression that this government does not grasp what is at issue when she told Parliament: “Insofar as budgetary cuts with regard to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Mid-Day Meals Scheme and RMSA [Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan] are concerned, as you know, in higher education there has been an increase in allocation.” Comparing apples and oranges is a clumsy bureaucratic defence.

Sadly, bigger budgetary allocations for higher educa-tion, even if true, do not signal a greater understand-ing of what higher education in India needs. Over the years the MHRD and its clerically minded agent, the University Grants Commission, have fuelled a race to the bottom, reifying credentials over an education, setting up new institutions rather than strengthen-ing existing ones, and denying universities autonomy through the capricious use of their powers.

In the last year, the MHRD and the UGC have done practically nothing to change course, implementing policy proposals of the previous government. So the opening of new IITs and IIMs in all States continues apace, even as existing ones have problems filling fac-ulty vacancies and grapple with issues of quality in re-search and teaching. The Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) and the uniform curriculum that goes with it have been in the MHRD pipeline for years. This gov-ernment takes credit for pushing it through. Its gram-matically challenged announcement describes the CBCS as “providing for more choices for students to opt for employable courses through a system of flex-ible credits….” And, the UGC justifies its need thus: “Because of the diversity in the evaluation system followed by different universities in India, students have suffered acceptance of their credentials, at times across the university system, as well as the employ-ment agencies.” And so, the most significant ‘new idea’ in higher education in the country’s premier universi-ties is reduced to “employable credits” and credentials that “employment agencies” can read.

Bureaucratic control

The one major policy decision in higher education mooted by this government has been the rollback of the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), which, Delhi University, backed by the United Pro-

gressive Alliance-run MHRD, had put in place. The manner of the rollback was, however, entirely in keep-ing with the style of the government’s past. Less than a month after the new government was sworn in, the UGC, in consonance with the BJP’s manifesto prom-ise, issued a directive overturning its own endorse-ment of the FYUP. The Ministry also persists with the sort of political interference and bureaucratic control over institutions that in the first place set their down-ward course — meddling with appointments, filling up positions with ideological allies, and undermining independent institutions.

There is no surer sign of a lack of ideas at the top than cleverly named new schemes and tech-fixes. The government is, according to the Minister, putting its weight behind Massive Open Online Courses, with a programme called Swayam (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds). The expecta-tion is that the IITs and IIMs will post lectures online, which students who have not made it into these insti-tutions can access, learn from and, if they choose, ob-tain a certificate on the cheap (“just Rs. 500”, accord-ing to the Minister). MOOCs are a useful tool where learning levels are high and Internet penetration is not restricted to less than a fifth of the population (mostly men), the majority of who access the Internet on a phone.

But, tech fixes — unmindful of the access to and cost of phones, computers and data — are a thing with this government. Schools can now post their students’ progress reports online, and parents can keep tabs on their children’s homework and attendance via mobile phone messages. And the Ministry also hopes to give “free of cost” access to NCERT school textbooks via a mobile phone app.

The government has also begun what it claims is an “inclusive, participatory and holistic” consultation for its promised New Education Policy, through a website called mygov.in. The website has received suggestions and comments from between 300 and 1,000 people (mostly men) on twenty-two, sometimes overlapping, themes listed for discussion. In parallel, the Ministry has set up a seven-tier consultation starting with vil-lage education councils and ending with a national task force. The scale of the consultation (2.75 lakh vil-lage meetings to be held on one day, 6,600 block level meetings, etc.) is designed to impress. But like the my-

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gov.in exercise, just the appearance of a wide consulta-tion seems to be the goal. VECs, Block Education Of-ficers, and the like are responsible for administrative supervision of programmes like the SSA and are not concerned with pedagogy or teacher training or stu-dent learning. This entire exercise reeks of bureaucrat-ic inventiveness — to create a sense of purposefulness in the absence of real purpose or to obscure processes whose outcomes will be delivered as a fait accompli. Either way, we will not know until the end.

A year is perhaps not long enough to make an assess-ment of a government’s achievements. But it is long enough to judge whether the government has set a forward course or if it is meandering without pur-pose. The HRD Minister is a consummate public per-former, presenting her Ministry in the media and in Parliament as purposeful, and herself as a facilitator of the Prime Minister’s ideas. The trouble is the Ministry is purposefully involved in bureaucratic processes and the Prime Minister appears to have no good ideas. It looks like this government’s education policy is stuck in byways, with no clue of how to get out.

*****

India’s One-Man BandThe Economist

A year ago Narendra Modi came to office promising to bring India “good times”, by which he meant jobs, prosperity and international renown. His progress has been frustratingly slow. The problem is hardly a lack of opportunity. Voters gave his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the biggest parliamentary mandate for change in 30 years. Mr Modi has concentrated more power in his own hands than any prime minister in recent memory. The problem is that India needs a trans-formation—and the task is too much for a one-man band.

The Modi blues

There is no doubting Mr Modi’s conviction that India

is about to achieve greatness, and he may well be right. Within a generation, it will become the planet’s most populous nation. It could be one of the world’s three largest economies. And it could wield more influence in international relations than at any time in its histo-ry. But, in his heart, the prime minister believes that only one man is destined to lead India down this path: Narendra Damodardas Modi.

Much has gone well, though serendipity shares the credit. Helped by oil prices, Mr Modi has presided over an improving economy. Inflation is down, interest rates are dropping, the rupee is stable, and fiscal and current-account deficits have shrunk. Official statisti-cians claim that India’s growth, at 7.5%, outpaces Chi-

Date: 23 May, 2015Courtesy: The Economist

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na’s—meaning the country has the world’s fastest-ex-panding large economy. Foreign direct investment is up. So are the prime minister’s visits abroad, where he cuts an impressive figure. This newspaper chose not to back Mr Modi in last year’s elections because of his record on handling religious strife. Though he fails to control the Hindu-extremist bullies who back him, we are happy that our fears of grave communal violence have so far not been realised.

But when it comes to reform, Mr Modi’s record is underwhelming—as our special report in this issue explains. The past year saw auctions of coal depos-its. The past few days have brought the tiniest of baby steps towards privatisation: eight state-run hotels may be sold off. Mr Modi points out that foreigners may now invest more in railways, insurance and defence. He is cutting red tape to create a friendlier business climate. Poorer Indians will increasingly get cash wel-fare, not cheap rations in kind: since April the world’s biggest cash-transfer scheme has replaced artificially cheap canisters of cooking gas. Massive subsidies on diesel have been scrapped; whopping ones on paraf-fin should follow. And by encouraging people to open 150m new bank accounts, linked to a biometric data-base of 850m people so far, the government is creating a structure to provide better poverty relief.

As welcome as this is, it sells India short. Mr Modi is making two mistakes. The first is to think that time is on his side and that big unpopular decisions can wait, perhaps until he has control of the upper house as well as the lower one. That rests on a delusion among Indi-an leaders that they must consolidate power first and reform later. In fact a brief period exists in which to get change going, early in the parliamentary term.

Mr Modi already faces twinges of popular discontent. Surly voters drummed his party out in state elections in Delhi. Some dislike his attention to diplomacy over-seas. This week he wrapped up a trip to China, Mon-golia and South Korea, completing 52 days abroad in 18 countries over the past year. Others are put off by his narcissism, embarrassed that he met America’s president, Barack Obama, wearing a dark suit with all 22 letters of his name stitched over and over into its golden pinstripe. As he cracks down on groups like Greenpeace, some complain of his authoritarian streak.

The second mistake is for Mr Modi to think that he alone can bring about change. On the contrary, the only way for him to realise his aims is to draft in help. And it could come from three main sources—India’s states, other national politicians and the power of the market.

He has made a start by devolving some power to states. The idea is to create a manufacturing boom (though that would, at a minimum, also require wider chang-es to the way land is bought, labour hired and roads built). As they compete in setting priorities for policy and spending, the go-getting states will become mod-els for the rest. Good policy will be rewarded thanks to a national goods-and-services tax that creates a common market—and hence competition—across India. Mr Modi says he wants the tax by next April, as promised, though parliament has just delayed it. The sooner, the better.

Unfortunately, national politics is a long way behind the states. Mr Modi cannot blithely assume his power will grow. The prime minister’s office cannot expand to do everything. It is time to relaunch his govern-ment by bringing in outside talent. Like the previous government, he should get in bright people from the private sector—especially as the BJP is short of capa-ble leaders—to strengthen, say, the finance ministry and the corporate-affairs ministry. In parliament Mr Modi could sometimes compromise with the opposi-tion Congress party, to rush through the sales tax, say, or make buying land simpler.

All together now

Lastly, he needs to use markets as agents of change. Mr Modi should lead a national campaign to ease the world’s worst labour laws. Perverse restrictions on domestic trade in farm produce should go. Private companies could compete to make the railways more efficient. Infrastructure must be built faster, which re-quires a better law on acquiring land. State-run banks should no longer be subject to political meddling, but recapitalised and put in independent, ideally private, hands. Foreign investors could raise standards in In-dian universities. Across the woefully bad education system a focus is needed on excellence in teaching and standards—easing the way for more private providers.

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*****

Mr Modi acts as if a lot of small improvements add up to transformative gains. They don’t. He is still thinking like the chief minister of Gujarat, not a national leader

on a mission to make India rich and strong. If he is to transform his country, India’s one-man band needs a new tune.

In Service Of Corporates & Hindutva-Modi’s Disastrous First Year

Praful Bidwai

When first-time MP Narendra Modi arrived in New Delhi to be sworn in as India's Prime Minister, he flew in a private aircraft belonging to the Adani Group, although he could have taken a commercial flight or hired a chartered plane. On landing, Mr Modi was greeted raucously with the slogan Har Har Modi, pat-terned on communal-military lines.

The two events showed where Prime Minister Modi's loyalties and priorities would lie: with Big Business and Hindutva, both of which he had served with pi-ous zeal in Gujarat since the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 and through the many crony-capitalist deals he cut later.

Over the past year, he has showered favours on both constituencies, and antagonised many classes and groups, including some who voted for him out of the naive belief that he would bring "development". His honeymoon period has ended, but he doesn't seem to

have grasped that.

This was proved by a third development. That's Mr Modi's May 16 statement in Shanghai to an Indian au-dience: "Earlier, you felt ashamed of being born Indi-an, now you feel proud to represent the country..." He repeated this in Seoul, adding the religious motif of "sins" committed in past life as the cause of being born Indian: "There was a time when people used to leave [including] businessmen ... These people are ready to come back. The mood has changed."

Mr Modi thus heaped a gratuitous insult on Indian citizens, for which he has deservedly drawn flak. The use of terms like "shame" and "sin" reveals deep inse-curity and an inferiority complex in Mr Modi's para-noid persona, which psychologists should analyse.

The boastful claim that the "mood" in India has changed dramatically in his one year in office is meant

Date: 24 May, 2015Courtesy: Kashmir Times

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to cover up that inferiority complex-in the same way that Hitler and Mussolini tried to do by declaring that they had made the German and Italian people "proud" through military aggression and by making the "trains run on time"! These comparisons should seriously worry us.

What's the first-year balance-sheet of Mr Modi's gov-ernment? Frankly speaking, it's overwhelmingly neg-ative. India has socially regressed in multiple ways, economically become more unbalanced and unequal, and politically got further polarised in an unhealthy, skewed manner.

India's social regression is evident in the growth of rabid communalism, attacks on democratic rights, intolerance towards dissent, spread of authoritarian ideas, Hindutva takeover of educational and cultural institutions, greater licence to male-supremacism and violence against women, spread of insecurity among the religious minorities, all amidst neglect of human development and growing disdain for social cohesion.

The Ramzada-Haramzada abuse, ghar wapsi, attacks on churches and open calls for depriving Muslims of the right to vote are just the crassest forms of the present outbreak of communalism. The government's indulgence towards them sends a clear message: it's India's open season to malign non-Hindus, ban the sale of beef and even slaughter of bulls, impose surya namaskar and the Bhagwad-Gita on school students, and build a cult around Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse.

The message is amplified when those charged with Gujarat's "fake encounters" and communal killings, in-cluding BJP president Amit Shah, are discharged with-out trial; but the entire might of the state is brought to bear against secular campaigners like Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand on trumped-up charges-because they are trying to bring the culprits of Gujarat-2002 to justice.

Other signs of social regression are evident in savage cuts in social sector budgets: by 20 percent in health, 29 percent in Mid-Day Meal schemes, 17 percent in education, 51 percent in women and child welfare, and similar reductions in sanitation, drinking water and rural infrastructure schemes.

Central transfers to the states, which implement many social schemes, were cut by a huge 30 percent. In the National Rural Health Mission, the shortage of prima-ry health centres is over 20 percent and of doctors 70 percent-plus.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act had its worst-ever performance under the Modi government. In 2014-15, the number of per-son-days of work created was 40 percent less than in the previous two years. Only 3 percent of families got the promised full 100 days of work, and 70 percent of wages were delayed-to disastrous effect in a year of acute agrarian distress.

Industrial growth has slowed to about 5 percent, and the investment rate has declined from 37 to barely 31 percent. Employment growth in industry has fallen to its slowest pace in a year, barely a fifth of what's need-ed to absorb the growing workforce.

The suit-boot-ki-sarkar is shamelessly pro-rich and anti-poor. It's cajoling capital to invest by improv-ing the "ease of doing business" through various in-centives. But investment isn't forthcoming because a huge number of companies are financially stressed. Fiftytwo percent of India's top 500 companies are ex-cessively indebted, and 14 percent of bank loans have turned bad.

The Modi government has failed to diagnose this, and believes that the key to stimulate investment is threefold: dismantle environmental regulations, allow unbridled diversion of agricultural land to industry (hence the land ordinance), and "reform" labour laws to allow hire-and-fire policies.

The first approach has meant ruthless "fast-tracking" of industrial-project clearances without scrutiny, vio-lating the Forest Rights Act and coastal zone regula-tions, and redefining "forests".

The high-level (TSR Subrahmanyam) committee has recommended far-reaching changes in 5 environ-mental laws, including abolition of Central and state pollution control boards, self-certification of envi-ronment-related information by project promoters, and automatic clearances for roads and power-lines through forests earlier declared "no-go" areas, etc. But

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environmental regulations are no obstacle to indus-try: over 94 percent of proposals have been cleared since 2007.

Land has become an extremely contentious issue. The UPA's land law was meant to give farmers and those dependent indirectly on agriculture a stake in determining their fate-necessary since some 60 mil-lion people have been displaced from land since 1947, mostly without rehabilitation. The NDA's ordinance undermines this rationale. It's opposed tooth-and-nail by a wide spectrum of parties and farmers' organisa-tions. A land agitation could turn politically explosive.

The government is sitting on lakhs of acres it ac-quired for various defence undertakings and Special Economic Zones, but which it hasn't distributed. The whole idea behind the ordinance seems to give private capital free access to land and what lies under it, espe-cially valuable minerals-in other words, a huge racket. This has become a Modi government obsession.

The planned dismantling of labour protections will rob workers of the right to form unions (for which the minimum membership has been raised from 7 to 100). No permission will be needed to lay off workers or close factories with 100 workers; these account for 90 percent of the total number of units. The factories Act will also be undermined, making a travesty of safety rules. Employment of contract labour for per-manent work will become rampant.

Politically, Mr Modi is running the most over-cen-tralised government in India's history. This cannot work without destroying decision-making integrity and creating insecurity among bureaucrats and minis-ters; indeed, RSS men have been appointed as "officers on special duty" to spy on them. This makes nonsense of democratic government.

Worse, Mr Modi has introduced venomous confron-

tation into politics, which goes against the spirit of de-mocracy. Intimidating and cornering your opponents, and even your allies, can quickly become counterpro-ductive. Several NDA constituents and Sangh Parivar outfits have turned against the land ordinance. Mr Modi is making enemies out of friends.

Going by the recent Assembly elections, byelections, and local-body polls in different states, the enthusi-asm witnessed in favour of Mr Modi in April-May last year has all but vanished. The BJP proved incapable of repeating its Lok Sabha performance in vote-shares/seats even in favourable situations like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh or Jharkhand. The edge it established in parts of West Bengal, including a lead over the CPM in Kolkata, has already eroded.

What's becoming manifest now is the effect of the thinness of the original support for Mr Modi. He won 31 percent of the vote, but 52 percent of the Lok Sabha's seats, the highest such disproportion ever. This happened because his support was highly con-centrated in a handful of states-not least because of planned communal violence and polarisation along caste and class lines.

Another factor was Mr Modi's high-octane, corpo-rate-bankrolled, multi-billion-dollar election cam-paign, which hyped up Gujarat's at-best-modest growth and social indicators as great achievements. Thus a CSDS-Lokniti poll asked people which state in their opinion was India's most developed: 64 percent answered Gujarat, only 4 percent said Maharashtra, and even fewer cited Kerala, India's indisputably most advanced state in social development.

This illusion, partly based on the search for a mes-siah, is breaking down. People are realising that the "56-inch-chest" man is a hollow caricature of his man-ufactured bloated image. Mr Modi's troubles are set to worsen in the coming months.

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