Almost every front page and index page in the Indian media is preoccupied with the first 100 days of the Narendra Modi government. It’s largely a celebration of decisive action, though a few newspapers have also highlighted the shortcomings. For instance, though corporate India is trying to grin and bear it, the disappointment is palpable: work has started in critical areas like labour law reform, a project that has misfired for over a decade, but outcomes cannot be expected for many months yet.
And that is precisely the point: Can the performance of a government be judged in such a short span of time? Isn’t the 100-day barrier a purely psychological construct? Isn’t it as arbitrary as judging a government’s performance in 95 days, or, to be even more wilfully erratic, 82 days? Indeed, the good news in this period has not been about real progress, but positive sentiment. The Sensex breached the 27,000 point mark for the first time on September 1, but that too is a psychological benchmark, driven by market sentiment after the Prime Minister’s success in Tokyo.
Earlier, people all but popped the champagne – or ‘aam panna’, according to taste – when GDP growth hit 5.7 per cent in the quarter ending June. GDP is certainly a more credible standard than the ever-wavering ECG report of the stock market, but that was a quarter-on-quarter result, and 2013 was difficult not only for India, but for the global economy. This year, US markets are booming and a recovery is palpable. A spike in the GDP growth rate was inevitable after a sluggish 2013 – normal acceleration looks incredibly fast when you start from zero. And this is normal acceleration, given that even right-leaning economists read Arun Jaitley’s first budget as a continuation of UPA policy.
Taking credit for a previous government’s policies has become not only acceptable, but unaccountably admirable. The UPA had developed on and taken credit for various steps taken by the Vajpayee Government, such as expanding road infrastructure and opening up the mobile telephony market. Narendra Modi has taken credit for planning to connect all panchayats by broadband internet. This was actually a flagship project of the UPA government. Financial inclusion and direct cash transfers instead of subsidies, again, were ideas moved by the UPA Government, which had launched the Aadhar scheme to anchor them. Modi has simply expanded on the same model in the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. The real breakthrough of the project was to open 1.5 crore bank accounts in one working day. This is the kind of get-up-and-go that the previous government had appeared to lack.
But the scheme has the same problems as the UPA’s version: a poor person receiving his subsidies in an account and immediately cleaning it out with a RuPay card does not spell financial inclusion. That would imply the ability to access the levers of financial power – savings instruments, investment options and commercial credit on a much larger scale than the Rs 5,000 loan that a person can take after operating an account for six months. If the poor cannot use the same financial instruments as the rich, even if on a smaller scale, such a scheme cannot be termed financial inclusion. In fact, if bank accounts are treated mainly as channels for cash subsidies which are immediately siphoned off, the model is that of welfare, for which the previous government was castigated. Besides, banks will treat the system as an imposition if it only results in outflows, not savings.
However, in these 100 days, at least the intent of the government has become clear. On the positive side, it shows a real commitment to transparency and the removal of procedural bottlenecks. Putting the process of green clearances online is progressive, since it would reduce controversy. Remember how stopping work at the Lavasa housing project near Pune on environmental grounds, after the grant of licences, had generated unseemly heat? In general, this government seems to be opposed to the idea of retrospective effect, and transparency in the clearance process is most welcome. And generally speaking, the end of the era when a scam was outed every other day is thankfully over.
But, as noted, the government has produced a UPA budget and, in effect, perpetuated welfare. And in spheres other than the economic, the performance of the government makes you a little uneasy. Conversion and other communal issues are acquiring political salience. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to reject communal politics in favour of the development agenda which brought him to power, but he is ominously silent in such matters. On the other hand, he is embarrassingly voluble in the defence of Rajnath Singh, whose son was under a bit of a cloud.
Meanwhile, the credibility of the judiciary has been undermined by repeated controversies, most significantly the tussle between Gopal Subramanium and the government, and the question of judicial appointments. Governors have fallen like ninepins and the voting public is not wholly convinced about the propriety of the process. The government has embarrassed itself over the HRD minister’s educational qualifications. And to the vast embarrassment of economists beloved of the NDA, whose best work is in international trade, its government has put a spanner in the works of the WTO over the UPA issue of food security.
Yes, it’s back to the economy, to numbers, which this government was elected to improve. And one can’t help but notice, by the way, that while Rs 7,060 crore has been allocated to build 100 smart cities, what smartness entails is not clearly specified. And there you are – there’s that apparently magic number 100 again. It will take much more than 100 days for the track record of this government to be credibly and fairly evaluated. Even 108 days, while sounding even more divine than 100 days, would not be time enough.
Antara Dev Sen is Editor of ‘The Little Magazine’. Email: sen@littlemag.com
Antara Dev Sen
