India : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has completed four years in office but there is widespread disappointment among the Indian people with his performance as their prime minister. There is a strong perception that Modi spent most of the last four years either in state election campaigns, on foreign tours, or giving scores of moral lectures on state-run television, radio, and his own online app. Black money, Terrorism, Corruption, Employment, all of them, deceptively employed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the lead-up to general elections in 2014, now seem like vote-grabbing rhetoric without any substance whatsoever. It seems that Modi added four years of his government when he alleged that previous governments did nothing in the last seventy years. Because India had been free for 67 years when he started making this claim of his. And nobody knows it better than Modi that nothing substantial has happened in the last three years. All out in the open, how will the BJP win the general elections in 2019? A strategy has already been chalked out. After the recreation of treta yug in Ayodhya this Diwali, the BJP decided to make Ayodhya and Ram Temple the major issues the next general elections. The work on playing up Ayodhya and Ram Temple will begin in February 2018, when Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath flags off the Ram Rajya Rath Yatra in Ayodhya.
It is pertinent to mention that a book titled ‘This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines’ written by Miss Barkha Dutt revolves around the author’s personal experiences during the course of her long and eventful career (25 years) as a television journalist. This is a book that looks at the dark side the unsavory stories and realities of India, a side that is rather ignored. The book raises serious questions about the nature of power politics, corruption and the use of unconstitutional violence by the State. Miss Dutt writers of 2002 as her first experience of religious conflict and also India’s first ‘television riot’. While writing about Gujarat riots, Ms Dutt is critical of Hindutva and its alienating agenda. Ironically, religion is being used in India for political advantage. It can be argued with legitimate reason that today’s triumph of the BJP has a lot to do with the destruction of the Babri Mosque. It led to the rise of the fringe elements and Hindu Mob who would not stop at anything.
If the lessons of the last four years could be distilled into a single sentence it would be this: The Modi government has been undeniably and gravely harmful to our nation’s health. On every conceivable metric, it has failed and every single citizen has had to pay a heavy price for the Modi brand of misgovernance. One of the biggest casualties of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure. Modi has lumbered on from one ill-advised and poorly thought out decision to another. The senseless execution of demonetisation cost us Rs 3 lakh crore in GDP growth and wiped out over 25 lakh jobs, while a hastily implemented GST penalised entrepreneurship. Farmers, who gave their lives for a fairer price for their produce, became victims of verbal jugglery. When the finance minister announced that the government would pay minimum support price plus 50% profit, it turned out to be a mirage with rates for various produce being far below what was paid during UPA’s tenure. In fact, even now it is impossible to find a mandi where the promised rates are paid for any product.
Moreover, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced calls for his resignation over charges of corruption in a military jet deal with France after former French president Francois Hollande was quoted as saying New Delhi had influenced the choice of a local partner. Indian political parties have been gunning for Modi over the 2016 purchase of 36 Rafale planes from Dassault Aviation estimated to be worth $8.7 billion, saying he had overpaid for the planes and had not been transparent. In recent months, the opposition has questioned the government on the choice of billionaire Indian businessman Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as Dassault’s local partner instead of a state-run manufacturer with decades of experience. Hollande, who cleared the intergovernmental deal when he was in office, was quoted as saying New Delhi had put pressure on Dassault to choose Reliance. Under Indian defence procurement rules, a foreign firm must invest at least 30 per cent of the contract in India to help it build up its manufacturing base and wean off imports. For that, the French firm picked Reliance and not Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the state-run giant that has been producing planes for decades, most of them Russian under licence.
In his remarks on what he calls the ‘biggest ever’ corruption scandal, Rahul Gandhi has said that India is overpaying for the Rafale jets and that the Modi administration is ‘lying’ about a non-disclosure pact between the French and Indian governments. What’s more, the Congress party leader asserts, the 2015 deal was hurriedly changed by Modi to benefit “his friend’ the Mumbai-based billionaire businessman. ‘The fun part is that the contract was given to Ambani-ji, who has never made an aeroplane in his life nor has he ever taken a contract for defence,’ said Gandhi, ironically adding the honorific ‘ji’ suffix to the 59-year-old businessman’s name for added effect. Smaller parties also joined the attack on Modi who is already under pressure to shore up his political base ahead of a series of state elections this year followed by a national election in 2019.
Corruption and mismanagement by the Modi government has resulted in failures on all fronts, particularly in creating jobs, addressing agriculture crises and helping uplift the poor. Many in India feel that the country lost another four years with Modi as prime minister. Ironically, Modi has tried to prove himself more as a successful speaker than trying to be an agent of change.
