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Carrying burden of expectations in a restless India

Most major opinion polls have rated his performance as good to very good though not outstanding. That should spur Modi to perform even better in his second year.

Carrying burden of expectations in a restless India

PM''s Independence Day address was one of the three defining moments. File photo: Mukesh Aggarwal



There is something about having large majorities that burden leaders who rule with it. When Rajiv Gandhi swept to power in 1984 with an unprecedented three-fourth majority in the Lok Sabha, he termed people’s expectations as “scary”. A quarter of a century later, Narendra Modi, who is the first Prime Minister to run a majority government since Rajiv, is realising the weight of those words. He had come with the catchy promise of ensuring “achhe din” (good times) if he was elected. With two days to go for Modi to complete 365 days in office, he is often asked, even taunted, as to whether the proverbial “achhe din” have arrived.

Given the relatively short time-frame that Modi had to operate in and the magnitude of the challenge the Prime Minister faces, to expect him to make dramatic changes within a year is being both unrealistic and unfair to him. Those who know Modi well say that he is a trifle irked that his first year’s performance is not being compared with those of his predecessors and instead, he is being judged on a bundle of arbitrary expectations. When his immediate predecessor Manmohan Singh began his first term as Prime Minister in 2004, no one expected him to occupy the post and so expectations were relatively low. Modi doesn’t have that advantage.

On Friday, Union Finance and Information Minister Arun Jaitley claimed that the Modi government had transformed the nation's mood from one of doom and gloom in the last years of the UPA government to one of hope and renewal in the span of just one year. He talked of how decisive the Modi government had been, including the speed and transparency with which decisions were taken. He also mentioned that his government had operated with great clarity and that the economy was back on the rails with an 8 per cent growth rate. If India was restless, it was because the populace was impatient. There was much truth in Jaitley’s self-assessment.

That was not the way though how many looked at the Modi government's performance. His own party colleague Arun Shourie, in a recent television interview, criticised the Modi government for its lack of clarity and direction on the economic front and talked of a small coterie running the government. Rahul derided it as a “suit-boot ki sarkar” that had become captive to corporate interests. Others wanted to know whether it was Bharat Sarkar or just a Modi Sarkar, given that the PMO was widely seen as calling the shots in most ministries.

There were many nasty comments too: That his governance was more ‘selfie’ than substance. That Modi was tall on talk, but short on delivery. That he was too frequent a flier with trips to 18 countries in a span of one year and SMS jokes circulating that he has now become an occasional visitor to India. That behind the facade of development, he was promoting an RSS agenda and had so far done nothing to reassure the minorities.

For me, the three defining moments of his first year were the public swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi on the foreground of the Rashtrapati Bhavan attended by SAARC heads of state, including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.  In the months ahead, Modi followed that diplomatic coup with the rapid strides that he made on the foreign policy front by engaging with and impressing major powers like the US, Japan and China. 

The second was on August 15, when at the ramparts of the Red Fort, he utilised his Independence Day address to lay out his agenda for the government, including announcing major schemes such as Swachh Bharat and Jan Dhan Yojana. These long-needed programmes, if implemented systematically, would make a difference to the poor and the needy in the country, apart from improving India’s image. And Modi fired corporate India’s enthusiasm with his call to “Make in India”.

The third defining moment was Modi’s rockstar-like performance at the Madison Square Garden in the US, which signaled that he had arrived on the world stage and resulted in reviving foreign investor confidence in India. The Prime Minister enjoyed an extraordinary long honeymoon period that was abruptly terminated when AAP swept the Delhi polls in February and thrashed the BJP. Team Modi, which looked invincible till then, suddenly seemed vulnerable. His government compounded that perception by rushing through amendments to the Land Acquisition Act and failing to respond quickly enough to farmers’ distress, caused by unseasonal storms that destroyed their crops. Those lapses allowed space for Rahul Gandhi to make a comeback of sorts by projecting Modi as anti-farmer, anti-worker and pro-corporate.

Yet, even his critics will acknowledge that in the first year Modi has energised the country and has set both the direction and pace for the much-needed changes across the spectrum. Most major opinion polls and The Tribune’s assessment have rated his performance as good to very good though not outstanding. That should spur Modi to perform even better in his second year and rapidly implement his various initiatives that he has announced. In that endeavour, he will find that India is right behind him.  

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