It has been almost two years since the last general elections, and it is time to say bluntly that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government is flailing on all fronts, most importantly in managing global politics and economic affairs. The only area where it has performed well is in media management, and even that is being stretched as failure is piled upon failure.
Declining independence
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has personalised global politics to such a degree that there is almost no instance of a dignitary passing through India without Modi jumping into his arms. This style of diplomacy presents images that give the impression of intimacy with world leaders, but it hides the fact that India is increasingly being treated with contempt by the countries that matter.
There has been a great deal of talk about a strategic partnership with the United States. This ignores the fact that the US has no equal allies. A close look at the UK, Japan, South Korea or Pakistan should be enough to see who dominates every alliance the US is part of, even if one ignores North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which is an alliance of 28 member states almost completely dependent on the US for logistics and intelligence. (And it is worth remembering that at least four of the NATO member states, not counting the US, have economies bigger than India’s.) A very clear indicator of India’s declining independence is evident in the proposed re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan. India worked incredibly hard to be recognised as an independent actor, worth engaging on its own. After seven years, this is now slipping out of our hands.
At the same time India is also kowtowing to China, through our membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the BRICS Bank. India is a major (for us), though very junior (for the Chinese), partner in both. Touted as an alternative to the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, there is no clarity on how these institutions, completely dominated by China, help India. It ties India with Chinese markets which are dominated by back-room insider deals and are headed for a great deal of loss in the near future. Not only that, China’s first major infrastructure deal overseas is the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Not only does this corridor completely bypass India – it also reverses all efforts by the Modi government to raise the issues of Gilgit-Baltistan as part of Pakistani administered areas of Kashmir. China’s contempt for Indian sensitivities, and India’s impotence before such contempt, could not be more effectively highlighted.
The third major component of India surrendering its freedom is the relentless effort by the Modi-led government to become part of the global war on terrorism. The US-led effort has failed spectacularly in Iraq, which it has turned from a country ruled by a brutal dictator, to a fountainhead of global jihad. Afghanistan, where Al Qaida actually had a presence before the US intervention, has suffered under the flawed strategy of fighting terrorism even after the Taliban were defeated and Al Qaida thrown out of the country. This has led to a resurgence of terrorism and the Taliban both, while all the institutions of the country have become satraps of brutal warlords. India’s full-throated desire to enter this battle between the brutal and the bestial has received support from such luminaries as the Syrian envoy to the UN, while the Syrian regime continues to murder its own citizens. Maybe next we will support Tajikistan as it hunts down a colonel, trained by the US, who has defected to ISIS? Or join China in condemning the Dalai Lama, whom the CCP now compares to Saddam Hussein, after earlier highlighting his “sympathy” for ISIS?
Financial train-wreck
Unlike global politics, in which he had no experience, Modi was supposed to be an expert on economics. He was going to set the house in order by ending corruption and easing the rules of doing business. Two years later corruption and financial impropriety haunt the BJP politician, whether it is Sushma Swaraj or Vasundhra Raje in relation to Lalit Modi, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the Vyapam scam which is so vast that it seems beyond the scope of the Central Bureau of Investigation to defeat it, or Arun Jaitley’s involvement in the DDCA scam, because of which the suspended BJP MP, Kirti Azad, is allegedly moving a case against the CBI and the Union Government.
The legislative acts which would have led to a more pliable judiciary (through the National Judicial Appointments Commission), the ability for the government to acquire land as it wished (through the Land Acquisition Bill) and for corporates to work under the same laws across the country (the Goods and Services Tax Bill) have all stalled. Had these passed Modi would have had similar freedoms as the autocrats of China and Singapore enjoyed, to remove people, distribute land as they wished, and pursue a Big Business-led style of growth. Two years with a full majority and the best that can be said about this government is that it has tinkered a little with small economic reforms, exactly what the United Progressive Alliance did before it. Even worse, it has resisted liberalising petrol prices, so although they are less than a quarter of what they were two years ago, Indian consumers are paying just as much, if not more. With these funds extorted from the taxpayer to pay for social schemes – such as the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA that Modi condemned just a year ago – the prices have been passed on to Indian consumers, farmers and businessmen. It is no wonder that Indian exports have fallen month upon month throughout 2015.
Modi has launched his “Make in India” scheme, but it seems to have had no effect. Maybe because, other than pious statements, we seem to be only getting the following: a Japanese bullet train, a Chinese “Statue for Unity”, and French fighter jets. These are the biggest deals India has signed, and they seem to be benefiting manufacturing in countries other than India, at taxpayer expense.
The government has taken to fiddling with Gross Domestic Product or GDP calculations, which remain a source of worry, to everyone, including the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. In that sense, though, Modi has brought his “Gujarat model” to the Centre. As the Comptroller Auditor General’s report on Gujarat revealed, growth was calculated by very “creative” accounting, and the state was, in fact, recording negative growth. The fact reality of the Gujarat model was revealed once again when Hardik Patel led his band of protestors from one of the most privileged groups in the state to demand reservations, and now it seems that the current Chief Minister’s daughter received 250 acres of land at the price of Rs 15 per square metre (notified rates were Rs 50 lakh per square metre) when Modi was still CM of Gujarat.
Clueless opposition
While it is easy to condemn a government that believes international relations are best conducted by imitating a cuddly koala, it is striking that the opposition has done little beyond criticising. While the Congress has every right to criticise Modi’s flip-flop on Pakistan, what is the strategy that the Congress recommends? On the US, of course, the Congress is silent, after all was it not Dr Manmohan Singh who told George W Bush that the people of India loved the American President? The Left parties, ever ready to condemn the “neo-imperialist, neo-liberal” forces, have nothing to say about China’s brutal policies, or Indian subservience to it. And this is ignoring all the little state based parties, the Janata parties, or the Aam Aadmi Party, which never formulate ideas on either international relations or economic growth, unless they have to organise a mob, placate some aggrieved community, or hand out a subsidy (more usually a tax exemption, or parcel of land).
Modi pursuing faulty policies is the small tragedy – although to the ones paying the price it may not seem so small. The larger tragedy is that no other person or group is presenting better options. Without better ideas, our democracy is bereft of substantial things to debate, and Parliament becomes a hall of clowns. As the old saying goes, great minds debate ideas, average minds debate events, and small minds debate people. With all the political parties focussing only on Modi’s successes or failures, without discussing ideas, the Indian commentariat is increasingly becoming a group of small-minded people discussing things of no consequence, as our fellow citizens starve, and India falls once again under the domination of foreign powers.