May 30 marked the completion of one year for the Modi government in its second term. Anniversaries are time for stock-taking, a time when governments assess their performance and show their report cards to the public. It is also the time when people evaluate the government’s performance and draw their own conclusion. Performance evaluations involve differences over how well the government has done. Quite often there is agreement over what the government should have accomplished, but disagreement over how well the goals have been achieved. Basic goals such as low unemployment, low inflation, good governance, steady economic growth, general well-being of people, treatment of the minorities and so on. The past one year has been a busy year for the government in terms of meeting the promises the BJP made in its manifesto of the 2019 general election. But whether they can be called achievements is open to debate and discussion.
One deceptively easy approach to evaluate a government’s performance is to analyse the government’s actions only through an ideological prism. This approach is often taken recourse to by the government itself and its supporters. But in a democracy, there is always a room for alternative viewpoint based on ground reality which can be a counter to the official narrative. It is said that politically a government takes about one year to consolidate, another one year to chart priorities, the third year for preparation of policies and the fourth year for their execution. The fifth year mostly goes waste in preparation for the next election. Since the Modi government returned to power with bigger majority in 2019, there was no need for it to spend its first year to consolidate itself. The consolidation phase was taken care of in the Modi government’s first term, which was marked by ideologically-driven governance in the guise of growth and development.
Used as a camouflage to avoid backlash to the BJP’s core agenda, the pretense of growth and development in Modi government’s first term was replaced by muscular anti-minority narrative in its second term. Thus the first year of the Modi government 2.0 went into implementing the BJP’s ideological priorities: outlawing of Triple Talaq, abrogation of Article 370, passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a “peaceful” resolution to the Ayodhya title dispute, thanks to a favourable court verdict which will pave the way for the construction of Ram temple. With the Opposition in a complete disarray after its decimation in the last general election, the government has had a free hand in implementing its promised ideological urgencies and was quite successful in creating a favourable narrative around them.
Successfully pushing the BJP’s core agenda through legislation is an ideological victory for the government, though its actions have left the largest minority community in India troubled and distressed. The government’s so called ‘achievements’ in its first year have also left the soul of Indian democracy damaged and dented the idea of India. Call it disregard for democracy or an indifference to the rule of law, when some of the major decisions of the government were aimed at targeting only one community, they cannot be called ‘achievements’ but failure of democracy in which all people are not treated equally and some are discriminated against more blatantly. Criminalising Triple Talaq is discriminatory because gender justice cannot be selective. How is it fair to make it a crime for Muslim husbands who abandon their wives without properly divorcing them when Hindu husbands who do the same have nothing to fear? Incidentally, Triple Talaq is not a widely prevalent practice as much as abandonment of married women among all communities in India.
CAA is discriminatory because it uses religion as a factor to grant citizenship to only non-Muslims who are victims of religious persecution in India’s four neighbouring countries. Had it been a law to facilitate Indian citizenship to any bona fide victim of religious persecution from our neighbourhood, there would not have been widespread protests against CAA, which led to polarisation of society and culminated in horrific riots in Delhi in February. If one recalls Home Minister Amit Shah’s infamous chronology, CAA was the first step towards NPR and nationwide NRC. The resolute opposition to the CAA-NPR-NRC combination wouldn’t have ended had Delhi not been rocked by three days of rioting, which was incited by a series of hate speeches and incidents of gunfire against the protestors. The sheer depth of public opposition to CAA was the reason behind the government backtracking on the NRC, at least temporarily.
Abrogation of Article 370, a long standing promise of the BJP since the time of its predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, was done without due process of consultation with all stakeholders. Parliamentary majority was used to take away the federal statehood of a state in an undemocratic manner. The communication blockade that was imposed on the people of Jammu & Kashmir ran for six long months and has still not been fully lifted. Today, the situation in Kashmir is far from normal and one doesn’t know how long the state-turned-union territory will remain in a state of political instability with many of its political leaders still under arrest. With the Supreme Court refusing to prioritise the petitions on the legality of Article 370 annulment and enactment of CAA, the two major ‘achievements’ of the government are still caught in a legal tangle, while the Ayodhya title dispute case, fast-tracked at the urging of the prime minister, was settled through an absurd verdict in which faith was given precedence over the merits of property dispute.
Achievement is described as a heroic deed, accomplished successfully with special efforts, superior ability or great courage. But the ‘achievements’ of the Modi Government 2.0 in its first year are more to do with the suppression of democracy, individual rights and growing insecurity among Muslims. The government’s handling of the distressed economy which is consistently on a downward spiral over several quarters has been a cause of huge concern. Rising unemployment to a 45-year record high is another concern that the government has not been able to address. Its apathy towards the plight of migrant workers and a belated acknowledgement of their suffering 68 days later by the Prime Minister in his letter to the nation is a sign of the government’s indifference to the misery and pain the poor people have gone through over the last two months of the lockdown. More than the disease itself, the unabated reverse migration of workers has haunted the government, which is still battling to control the spread of coronavirus pandemic. Now 70 days later, India is still in the midst of a health emergency.
The writer is an independent Mumbai-based senior journalist.
