The first single-party majority government in three decades raised hopes for change and a significant step-up for India, a country that remains poor despite progress in recent decades.
In 2014, Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaigned on promises of limited government, good governance and economic transformation. Modi presented himself as a masterful leader, ready to launch India into a new era of prosperity. Hopes ran high. The atmosphere was heady and feverish. There was a general perception in the country that Narendra Modi’s performance as chief minister of Gujarat was demonstrative of his credentials as a pro-business leader with a can-do attitude. During his highly successful 2014 election campaign, candidate Modi railed against big government, declaring, ‘I believe government has no business to do business. The focus should be on Minimum Government but Maximum Governance.’ It appeared as if a conservative, right-of-centre political party had finally taken root in India. As the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) completes its term in 2019, the government’s economic policies and programmes are due for a proper and full assessment.
With the biggest political mandate in almost three decades and under a leader widely perceived to be one of the most powerful prime ministers India has ever had, did India’s economic trajectory make a decisive break from its past? This is the central question of this book project. The fundamental question raised and investigated in this book is not simply about the usual political question: ‘Are you better off today than you were five years ago?’ It is deeper. In Modi’s case, it was never about a new government performing better than the one it was replacing. It was about making the case that given a chance, the Modi government would not just outperform all predecessor governments but would match their cumulative performance within its first term. Hence Modi’s famous line from the election, ‘You gave Congress 60 years, give BJP just 60 months,’ is a running theme in this book.
Of course, some of this is political positioning and campaign management but the expectations were so high that the former ruling party, Indian National Congress, ended up with just forty-four seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament), by far its worst performance ever. It is therefore important to cast this promise of transformation as the central question of this book. This broader question includes several components:
• Has the Modi government been able to deliver on its campaign’s economic narrative, one that promised a conservative, minimum-government stance?
• Has the Modi government promoted the next generation of reforms that the previous government was unable to pursue?
• Have macroeconomic policies led to the promised spurt in growth and job creation?
• Has the investment scenario significantly improved compared to that under the previous economic regime?
• Have agricultural development and the rural-urban transition happened in a fundamentally different way than past experience?
• Has the Modi government focused adequately on human- development policies that can help young people become productive members of society?
• The question of transformation is not just about Modi’s success or failure. It is much bigger than that. We in India must think critically about policies for the future. We are at a critical moment in our history and the next government’s policies could have lasting effects as the world’s pace of change accelerates, driven in part by disruption and technology, and a new populist, anti-globalist political environment. Countries around the world confront the question of how best to effectively manage these changes, driven in large measure by technological innovation, climate change and demographic shifts. Prosaic needs anchor these big themes—the well-being of the human race, most commonly projected through a desire to ensure a good future for the next generation. Worries about the future, especially the future of work, are dominating the discourse in international economic development. There are also worries about how unequal progress will be and if some people will inevitably be left behind.
Along with these global trends, each country faces bread-and-butter development challenges. In India, we confront endemic problems in the agricultural and industrial sectors. Infrastructure needs are vast, even as investments have slowed. The rural economy is unable to slow the migration of workers to urban areas, which remain unprepared for a large influx of people. Environmental degradation and pollution are exacting a heavy toll at a time when India’s growth is enabled by fossil fuels. The biggest challenge is that of jobs. As life expectancy has increased in India, people are ageing at much lower income levels compared to the experience of advanced economies. At the other end of the spectrum, India has a youth bulge that would be the envy of any country were it not for the fact that creation of decent jobs is lagging. A demographic dividend threatens to become a demographic curse.
Excerpted with permission from “The Great Disappointment” by Salman Soz, published by Penguin India.