When Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed two decades in office, first as chief minister of Gujarat and later as Prime Minister for repeated terms, the euphoria in the BJP rank and file was markedly low-key. This has less to do with the Covid curbs and more to the fact that the government he heads failed to enthuse the general public. Modi, by far, is the most-acceptable leader across the country today, and those who seek to grab the PM chair are pygmies compared to his national appeal. Modi, at the personal level is not corrupt. He has earned his high aura after he was named the PM nominee of the BJP at the Goa conclave months before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He retained a part of this goodwill over the past seven years, but a caveat is also that his popularity is dwindling because of his low-key governance styles.
Modi failed to nail the errant or discipline the wayward. This is critical to national well-being. This, despite the massive mandate the people gave him in two successive parliament polls. Reforms were not high on his agenda though the GST, brought forward by the UPA, was pushed through after a long struggle in parliament; and the farm reform bills are stalled in court. India badly requires administrative, judicial and educational reforms. Modi has hardly ever made a mention of these in his Mann Ki Baat, which dealt, typically in Sangh Parivar style, about the past “glories” and little about the present or the future of India. India cannot grow at the pace of a snail, with the Hindu Rate of Growth, when economies in Asia — as in China and Bangladesh –are expanding fast. Thus, to praise Modi or his government beyond a level is unjustified.
The central government would need to perform better and an elected leader of the nation must be more energetic and engaging. India cannot walk; it has to run to catch up with the growth elsewhere. Corruption is eating into the veins of the nation in scary ways as is also reflected in the mess-up and loot in the PSU banking sector or the appropriation of national wealth by politicos and bureaucrats across the spectrum. Most regional party leaders are hugely corrupt. Modi as PM is caught in the labyrinth of the archaic systems that work to the advantage of the vested interests and the corrupt in India. Results are not showing up. Unless the Augean stables are cleaned, growth or progress for the nation is impossible.
