May 30 marked the two-year anniversary of the second term of the Modi government. Call it destiny or blame it on the second wave of Covid-19, the government was deprived of another chance to celebrate an anniversary, but the fact is Narendra Modi’s second year in office in his second term has been the most difficult year for him and his government. Faced with all-round criticism for mismanaging the deadly second Covid wave, the embattled PM who generally appears in control of things most of the time, was found wanting severely in his leadership in response to the surging virus infections, deaths, shortage of medical oxygen, medicines and hospital beds.
That the government couldn’t or didn’t respond proactively to control an unprecedented situation – a health crisis and a human tragedy – is a fact that has affected the Prime Minister’s popularity. Apart from his dented popularity, it's leadership failure that has played an outsized role in the government’s poor scorecard. The worst crisis that India has faced in decades has completely exposed the government’s incompetence and lack of concern for people’s sufferings.
Utterly unprepared
In 2020, when Modi completed one year of his second term, the country was facing the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The long national lockdown had an unexpected and unwanted fallout: an unprecedented migrant workers’ crisis that exposed the government’s unpreparedness to deal with the mass exodus of working class migrants from big cities.
The economic fallout of the stringent lockdown was even more severe: the economy slipped into a technical recession, millions of jobs were lost and the livelihood crisis was devastating. While the pandemic unleashed unprecedented outcomes, affecting public health, livelihoods, the economy and people’s way of living, the impact was exacerbated by the lockdown measures.
The government’s ill-conceived policy responses, inadequate relief package for the poor and equally inadequate fiscal stimulus packages were at the heart of the challenges thrown up by the pandemic. Experts attributed most of the consequences not to the pandemic itself but to the government’s response to the crisis associated with the pandemic.
Downtime wasted
Instead of using a brief lull in the pandemic to ramp up health infrastructure and vaccine supply, the government went about claiming victory over the virus, which induced false optimism and complacency in the government. This resulted in a bigger catastrophe, causing an even bigger health crisis. While the pandemic may not be raging now as it did in April and early May, it’s still a big concern, with nearly 1.70 lakh new cases and over 3,000 deaths each day. And if experts are to be believed, there is the threat of a third wave looming large, which the government will have to worry about and prepare for.
Still, politically, BJP supporters may not be too worried about the adverse fallout of the pandemic on the government and Modi’s popularity, given that, despite the migrant crisis, he and his party did manage to put a coalition government in Bihar and emerged as the main opposition party in Bengal. Of course, a win in Bengal would have been a bigger conquest for the PM and his party, probably even bigger than its victory in UP in 2017, given that they went all out to win the eastern state, which would have had several political and ideological implications. But Mamata Banerjee denied Modi his moment of glory.
Bengal setback
Politically, Bengal was a setback for Modi and BJP. But the bigger setback for the Prime Minister, his government and his party has been the devastation wrought by the pandemic. If the vaccination programme was the big hope to deal with the second wave of Covid, the government seems to have messed it up so badly that there is a severe shortage of vaccines.
Given the extremely slow pace of vaccination because of massive shortage, it’s anybody’s guess when the drive will pick up pace and when India will be able to vaccinate its population fully. Call it callousness or helplessness, the government, always keen on enhancing the Prime Minister’s image, botched things so badly that it did not even plan the vaccination drive properly despite there being advance warnings of a severe second Covid wave.
Shaky wicket
Coming back to the completion of two years of Modi Government 2.0, some political experts believe that in the seven years since coming to power in 2014, the Modi government has never looked as shaky as it does today. Thanks to the pandemic, the aura of Modi as an efficient administrator has melted and the promise of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ has proved hollow. The absence of the government during the crucial period of massive suffering has hollowed out the myth of a strong leader who delivers on promises.
In the first year of his second term, the Modi government delivered on the BJP’s ideological promises: the criminalisation of ‘triple talaq’, the abrogation of Article 370, amendment of the Citizenship Act and strengthened the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), empowering the state to designate an individual as a terrorist and impound his properties.
The high point of the Modi government’s ideological achievements was the start of the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya, following the Supreme Court judgment in 2019. Having been done with most of its ideological promises, the government turned its attention to reforms and in September last year, it hurriedly passed three farm laws, which were packaged as a major step towards reforms in agriculture.
Farmers' stir
It is six months now since the farmers began their agitation on the borders of Delhi against the contentious laws. They fear that the laws are a step towards doing away with the government procurement process as well as the MSP. After 11 rounds of talks with representatives of farmers’ unions, there is no solution to the logjam between the farmers and government: the farmers are unconvinced that the laws will benefit them and therefore demanding the repeal of the laws, while the government has so far refused to reverse them. The farmers’ agitation has been an unexpected challenge that the government did not expect, nor anticipate. And it did push the government on the backfoot when it offered to suspend the laws for a year and a half.
While it is quite likely that the Modi government may recover from the setbacks and the Prime Minister may regain some of his lost image as well as popularity, the next big test of how people view the Modi government and its handling of the pandemic will be the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early next year, which will be seen as make or break, nationally. While the comforting fact for Modi is that the Opposition remains as divided and inactive as it has often been in the last seven years, there is also the need for them to unite and find an alternative to Modi.
The author is an independent senior journalist
