Roll Over Or Make Over

 

Roll-over Or Make-over?

 

A year into Modi’s first term, the paralysis is gone. The main emphasis has clearly been on garnering billions in foreign investment to transform India. This even as all plans, tone, tenor, perspectives, indicate an ambition to stay on for at least two terms. Sadly, there are few green shoots visible as yet.

The GDP may be up, pulsing higher than a slowing but much bigger China, but it does not show. At best, its gone into the foundations. The improvement in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Current Account Deficit (CAD), even the rate of inflation, is thought to be primarily because of an international halving of oil prices.

The captains of Indian business and industry however are murmuring their satisfaction. But this is praise from the patricians, always a dangerously elite demographic.

Foreign investors agree, and will certainly be the leitmotif of the first term when we look back in 2019. They are listening carefully to who is saying what, lining up their joint venturing strategies for the cornucopia to come.

There is defence manufacturing, railways, industrial corridors, ports, power, major infrastructure development, next stage farm modernisation, food storage and distribution back bones, nuclear power plants, a revamped equity and debt market, vehicles, solar, hydro and wind, electronics, software.  The list goes on.

The projected numbers are in billions, even trillions of dollars. India is the biggest potential opportunity on the globe today. But Modi must deliver: the land, the labour defanged, the environmentalists checked. He must buck the tide of an established socialist world-view.  

We do not need 60% of our population on the land. America grows more food than any other country using mechanisation, science, and just 5% of its much smaller population. But, much of our rural population have to be retrained and gainfully employed elsewhere. There is an obvious cart and horse conundrum here.

The ‘captains’, meanwhile, are amplifying Modi’s message better than the Government, saying that a very different outlook is now in power, and it is engaged in the formulation of far-reaching, unprecedented, change.  To the ordinary citizen, they are saying, in the face of a furious Congress - support Modi, be patient.  

But unfortunately there are go-slowers and doubters within as well. The RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan,  preaches a very unpopular caution in the face of an enormous pent up demand for roaring growth. Finance and I&B Minister Arun Jaitley, the virtual number two in the Government, could have been P Chidambaram because of the similarities between them. A bridgehead between the old Advani led BJP and the new Modi dispensation,   Jaitley is, of course, very familiar with the former  Government.  He is also full of a puzzling caution, bureaucratic  exceptionalism, and a damning continuity. 

Taxes continue to be high and foreign investment unfriendly. The Government’s messaging is feeble in comparison to the Opposition’s. The CBDT seems untethered and unsupervised.  In short, Modi’s much bolder economic vision appears to be subverted by his own Government.  

The public meanwhile has seen neither bread nor circuses over the year, and is definitely not amused. The opinion polls may still give Modi over 70% positive ratings, but the public is a little angry for perhaps being played for fools.  

The mangled Congress has seized upon this disconnect for dear life, taunting the Modi Sarkar for being anti-farmer ( big potential votes in 2019), promoting suited-booted pro-crony capitalism ( no impact on votes, but very important job creators),  being a manic global traveller with nothing to show for it, and running a Government  of One.

Whatever has passed the legislature or administrative muster on its way to implementation, are claimed to be UPA initiatives. But nobody is willing to give  Modi marks for shifting the logjam and setting the stage for deliveries in year two. So, undaunted, the Modi Sarkar is getting set to blow its own first anniversary trumpet very soon.

For: The Quint

(647 words)
May 21^st, 2015
Gautam Mukherjee

 Gautam Mukherjee, entrepreneur and former corporate executive, is an incisive economic and political commentator.