Modi, the dream merchant waking up to a nightmare

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's angry fulminations against Congress (mis)rule were as time-worn as they were banal. The prime minister showered praises on Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary and slammed his political successors for not living up to his legacy, while addressing a public rally in Ghazipur in the Purvanchal area of then poll-bound Uttar Pradesh in 2016. Now, slamming Nehru himself and his legacy and blaming it for all the ills of the country might occasion cheer to only those that are Modi's ideological cheerleaders. The legacy one inherits is non-negotiable. Barack Obama had to work hard to undo the knot created by his predecessor. A future American President would have to inherit the legacy of Donald Trump.

Besides, Modi was catapulted into power with a whopping electoral victory because he promised to deliver India from the morass of policy paralysis and wholesale corruption, to stand firm to China's expansionist ambitions and to decimate Pakistan's terror network, to pitch India into the comity of powerful nations, and to buoy up the Indian economy and create millions of jobs, and to eliminate all black money. He promised to be different and kept on scattering dreams with as much abandon as an American cowboy would shower bullets.

Such sky-high expectations were bound to disappoint, and they did fall in a heap. Small wonder then that we keep on hearing about Modi's broken promises by one and all. When the latest Economic Survey was tabled in Parliament recently, former finance minister P Chidambaram said that the Modi government's claim to be able to create 75 lakh jobs by March is "outrageous" as it is "simply not possible" in India's context. It is helpful to recall that Modi himself had promised the country one crore jobs a year during his election campaign.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi recently lashed out at the prime minister over the Naga peace accord, signed by the latter in 2015, saying that the agreement was yet to be made public. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, rattled by the urgency to deliver on the promises made by the NDA to the state - which include handholding it till the completion of the Polavaram project, construction of a new capital Amaravati, a special package in lieu of special category, and a new railway zone with coastal city Vishakhapatnam as its headquarters – slammed the Union budget and the breach of faith following the measly budget allocations. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh said the budget promise to double farmers' income by 2022 – by, among other things, providing production cost plus 50% as the minimum support price to farmers - was not a feasible one and may well prove to be a "hollow" one unless India achieved a 12% growth rate. The promise, made ahead of the 2014 elections, was a key part of the budget's rural focus.  

Did not the Congress make promises and fail? Yes, they did. In Punjab, the Congress demonstrated the paradox between electoral promises and government mandate in a blatant manner as it was caught between assembly elections (2002) followed by parliamentary elections (2004). In the 2002 Assembly elections, it promised – and the election manifesto committee was chaired by no other than Manmohan Singh – free electricity to farmers and removal of octroi, and registered a victory over its main opponent, the Akali Dal. After coming to power, it brazenly backtracked on its electoral promises and announced a number of initiatives to introduce economic reforms. Consequently, it did poorly in the 2004 parliamentary elections. Learning lessons from its defeat, the Congress government announced sops like free electricity to farmers in the wake of the 2007 assembly elections. When these sops were opposed by Singh, then prime minister, the chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh, reminded him that he had chaired the election manifesto committee which made these promises in the 2002 elections.

Introspection needed

As our PM is loath to take questions directly, and prefers to take them selectively and avoid the inconvenient ones, a Labour ministry report says that  only 6.41 lakh new jobs were created in eight major sectors (manufacturing, trade, construction, education, health, information technology, transport, and housing and hospitality) of the Indian economy between July 2014 and December 2016, as compared to 12.8 lakh new jobs created in the same sectors between July 2011 and December 2013.

Despite all the pompous talk and tall promises, what rankles the most is that far too many young people are unemployed and joblessness has reached epidemic proportions. In fact, the Jat and Patidar uprisings in Haryana and Gujarat were indications enough of the poor state of affairs.  Under the NDA dispensation, the expenditure on education has been declining steadily. Forget about the goal of increasing the public spending in education to 6% of GDP, as per the budget documents, while the spending on education was 4.57% of the total budget and 0.63% of GDP in 2013-14, it was reduced to 3.71% of the total budget and 0.47% of the GDP in 2017-18.

The problem, Modi must understand, is not just his failure to keep promises, it is his stout refusal to own up that he failed to keep many of them and his reluctance to be held accountable for his acts of omission. Rising intolerance, too many farmers committing suicide in Maharashtra, unemployment hitting the roof, soldiers dying at the borders, Kashmir on the boil, and now even the return of high inflation are all happening during his regime. It is time to ponder for Modi, now buckling under the pressure of his own promises rebounding on him and being caught in the web of illusions that he tried to hard-sell. An earnest introspection can help him effect course correction.