In the general elections of May, 2014, I was one among the many millions who voted the BJP into power. At that time, there were many reasons that justified my decision - Shri. Modi, the candidate projected by the BJP for the post of Prime Minister, had an impressive report card to show-off, and, most importantly, inter alia, there was no candidate from the opposition parties who could claim similar achievements that Shri. Modi flaunted. Consequently, the elections brought to the helm a man who rose from being a ‘chai-walla’; however, this hasn’t been the first time that the vibrant and strong democracy of India has caused a wo/man from humble backgrounds to becoming the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy - Shri. Deve Gowda from Karnataka was a farmer, a ‘son-of-the -soil’ (or maNnina maga, in Kannada) as he famously referred to himself, though, I must add, the circumstances under which he became P.M. were very different.
Given the majority that the ruling party and it’s allies share in the lower house, or the Lok Sabha, the responsibility on them is also major; as the adage goes, ‘ uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’. The responsibility of the faith imposed by a nation in its ruling leaders is a touching and humbling experience. It is not one to take pride in or be arrogant about; rather it is one that reminds one of the humility in her/his duty towards a nation ridden with problems - when a nation of 1.26 billion people look up to a Prime Minister to lead them on the path to a better life, the task can be really daunting. And once at the helm, it no longer is about the high-decibel rhetoric; it is about the the development that is on the ground which is silently reflected in growth and development indicators.
Nobel Laureate, Shri. Amartya Sen, and many other economists and analysts opine that the high growth rate that India has been witnessing hasn’t really been distributive. The Modi government had, in it’s last budget, cut expenditure on education and healthcare. One might argue that the devolution to the States had been increased; but that fact is that the amount available for development in these areas had actually come down. India has the lowest literacy rates among other BRICS nations (at 74%) and our spending on healthcare is just about 1% of our GDP, one of the lowest in the world (compare this with 3% by China and 8.3% by the USA). These are key factors that contribute to the HDI - we still battle a high MMR and IMR. The health ministry has proposed increasing spending on healthcare to 2.5% of the GDP.
The latest figures by the Labour Bureau put the figure of jobs created in 2015 at 1.35 lakhs, which is the lowest since 2008. While we boast of a demographic dividend on the one hand, on the other, we have failed to create the necessary infrastructure for skill development and education, and jobs for the youth. As the honourable President recently noted, this could lead to unrest among the youth. Unless the social sector sees an improvement through innovative initiatives and regulations in education and healthcare, we face the added burden of an ailing population and the restlessness of uneducated and unemployable youth.
The recent currency reform about which much has been written and said, while a welcome idea due to its objective, remains far from it on the ground. Surely it shouldn't have been the first step in tackling the problems it was envisaged as doing - unaccounted cash, counterfeit currency and terror funding. There are electoral reforms and tax reforms that should have preceded the currency reform. Funding of political parties, reforming the tax laws relevant to it and rationalising taxes have been long demanded by the analysts and intellectuals. By now it is public knowledge that the unaccounted cash targeted through the currency reform constitutes only about 6% of the unaccounted wealth. The move to correct the latter should have involved stricter real estate regulations, large volume cash transactions etc.
The government has now changed it’s objective of the currency reform, making it a move towards digitisation. Digitisation in transactions/cashless economy would have been an obvious and eventual fallout of the reform but we aren’t ready yet with the requisite privacy laws and infrastructure to support it! If the currency reform were to be the last step in the war against corruption, unaccounted wealth, counterfeit currency and terror funding, as the government states it is, it would have been at a pace that the nation was prepared for, in terms of infrastructure and laws and regulations.
South Korea, which is one of the most technologically advanced countries, has itself set 2020 to move to a cashless economy. We are a laugh behind! The laws relating to technology and privacy have always been a step behind; but where people’s money and privacy are at stake, the government had to be proactive and pre-emptive in its approach towards moving to a cashless economy. There should have been a clearly chalked out plan which has been lacking.
The BJP had shown the people a vision that it would be different. But its every action is justified by the opposition having no moral right to question - this is a disappointing approach. Every action must be justified by solid plan based on economic reasoning, ethical bases and political will, not by the morality, or lack of it, of the opposition.
It no longer is about who has a wider chest (which was, in my extremely humble opinion, a very crass statement!); much water has flowed under the bridge since.
It cannot be a battle of bravado v/s brains anymore!
Hoping for a dawn of wisdom, Raga Nat Bhairav:
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