Undeniably, there are a lots of ups and downs that have marked the performance of Modi government in his more than four years of rule. If you ask me, it would be hard for me to call Narendra Modi a “good” Prime Minister for the health of the nation. Even if he comes to power in the next Lok Sabha elections, it will be owing more to a fractured opposition, than to his government’s little achievements.
Please don’t mistake my disagreement as my neglect of whatever little Modi government has done for India in bits and pieces. As it is the occasion of his birthday, let’s start with counting some of his positive works:
• Convinced Saudi Arabia for on time delivery of crude oil on premium charges.
• Brought Japan’s investment of 10 million crores, and its aid in bullet trains.
• Modi is the first PM to visit Australia after 28 years. He convinced Australia for Uranium, which would help in electricity production.
• Construction of roads around Indo-china border
• Brought more than 4000 engines from Yemen, as a result of the friendly relations with the king of Saudi Arabia.
• The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC)
• Rural electrification
• Road construction all over the country
• Jan Dhan Yojana and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme for LPG cylinders for poor.
These achievements however, are just filling in the gaps of innumerable failures that took place in what is popularly being called as the “years of misgovernance”.
According to the criticizers, Narendra Modi took a sharp turn and decided to cast his glance at the betterment of rural area dwellers and poors, only after Rahul Gandhi taunted him for leading a “suit boot ki sarkaar”, commenting on his expensive suits (which changed to Kurta-pyajama and Khadi Jacket in no time) and his pro-capitalist and business-friendly economic policies in the initial years of his rule.
Good that at least he turned to the initially ignored ones. Anyway, the list of Modi government’s failures is way more than the list of his achievements. To begin with, he increasing cases of mob-lynching, the poor condition of farmers, and the incompetency in job creation, are some of the social failures which no one really talks about as such. Bullet trains which I counted in achievements above too, are nowhere to be seen.
Coming to the main failures, they include:
• India’s defense budget is a big problem, as it is unable to keep pace with the country’s need and preparations for a two-front war.
• Finance has seen the biggest blunders of Modi and his government, and the highlights are GST and ill-executed demonetization.
• Make in India scheme, which is as uncertain as it is arbitrary.
• Modi government’s inability to start the production of fighter air-crafts in India with the help of French Dassault technology.
• Regressive long-term capital gains tax (which has slowed inflows into mutual funds).
• Increase in central excise taxes (by over 200% on petrol and over 400% on diesel) to make oil costlier than it has ever been, and collection of over Rs 10 lakh crore by way of this cruel exercise in unjust enrichment.
• Shortage of jobs and the failure of “Mudra loans”
• Dysfunctional BJP-PDP alliance and the highest number of martyrs from our forces and civilian casualties in operations in Kashmir.
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