Why It Is Hard To Lose Hope In India In 2020

Amidst a pandemic that has forced us to adjust to new normal, we all are grappling with uncertainty and anxiety. However, amidst the internal disquiet and external distancing, it is unfortunate that some of us have begun to lose hope altogether.

A recent essay by Andy Mukherjee was worrisome on multiple levels; not only did he draw charitable inferences on India’s historic tryst with governance for few, he compromised his institutional memory by making selective observations.

The essay not only denies any acknowledgement of the work done by the present government to clean the malaise it inherited from two successive listless terms of UPA, the author is being unsure of his economic choices and finds both PPP and privatisation problematic.

Now, all of this and more can be attributed to his inability to cope with the fast paced transition across facets of governance; but his arguments get specious when he makes unsubstantiated claims such as decaying of institutions, speculating removal of the word “secular” from the Constitution or deliberately limiting the identity of Jammu and Kashmir to just a Muslim-majority State.

By the end of his writing, Mukherjee’s politically loaded essay sounds insistently unimaginative.

As much as the author would want to hold Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, Bharatiya Janata Party, responsible for his lost hope; the four-letter word that links India with Narendra Modi is that, “HOPE”.

Modi represents the hope that masses lost many decades ago, when the elite began to resort to exclusionary tactics to preserve their citadels of power.

Indira Gandhi vested great trust in her kitchen cabinet comprising of bureaucrats who, by virtue of their work, began to control corridors that led to consequential offices. Information asymmetry became rampant, opportunities were reserved for few and contact cards became more important than degrees in the portfolio. Those who were related to “significant others” made their way, while the rest fell in line. Economic policies neatly wrapped in socialism served the select few.

With Rajiv Gandhi came the culture of “friends” in industry with “benefits” in politics. India was resembling the British Raj in a dhoti.

Subsequently, when economic liberalisation reforms were ushered, (born out of dire crisis and not proactive policy architecture), the common Indian was not sure of their bearing. Private jobs continued to be associated with lack of “job security”; The Aam Aadmi was still eager to get a government job because decades of regulatory uncertainty and political instability had got the better of him. With three prime ministers at the helm in less than 24 months (May ’96 to Mar ‘98), the electorate was left desperate, investors exhausted.

“Hopeless hai ye country, yahan kuchh nahin ho sakta” (there is no hope left for India, nothing will ever move here) was the sentiment amongst masses. We suffered brain drain and exported our best minds who went on to lay the foundation of big tech at Silicon Valley in the United States of America. Satya Nadella left India in 1990; Sundar Pichai in 1993. Even erudite thinkers like Raghuram Rajan and Shashi Tharoor decided to build their careers away from homeland. Clearly, the unit economics of struggle back home did not make for an attractive business case.

Trust deficit ran deep and India’s story was fraying on the global front. Hostile neighbours took advantage of our domestic woes, with China invading every aspect of middle-class India’s modest living.

It was in 1999, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed the NDA Government that the spotlight finally fell on common Indian. Right from the flagship Golden Quadrilateral programme to the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, aimed at connecting the unconnected, to the telecom revolution which eventually freed the sector of license Raj in 1999 to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (60 per cent reduction in school drop-out rates), Vajpayee’s term proved to be one of finishing the unfinished.

He successfully balanced the stakeholders at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. On the one hand, he pursued for privatisation, a marked departure from hesitant divestment policies of previous regimes and upgraded the Department of Disinvestment to a full-fledged Ministry. Vajpayee opened sector after sector for foreign investment and replaced restrictions with tariffs to protect industries at home.

On the other hand, with a sustained period of low interest rates, he brough cheer to first-time home buyers. He was the first Indian leader to acknowledge the north-eastern region - a separate department of Development of North-Eastern Region (DONER) was created in 2001. India was slowly regaining its self-belief with acquisition of nuclear power and upward social mobility.

In 2003, when India was associated with five major emerging economies and influence on regional affairs through BRICS, India saw HOPE yet again!

As the turn of events in a democracy would have it, when UPA 1 assumed office in 2004, India did not give up hope. Without grudging Dr Manmohan Singh of his successes in 10 years, it was the inexplicable sharp Left turn in his policies and brazen appeasement of minorities at the cost of interests of the majority population that tired India.

Sonia’s 5 Right-Based-Laws failed to meet their intended purpose. Be it the disappearing files that made RTI ineffective, ghost employees that plagued MNREGA, scuttling aspirations of the tribal population through Forest Rights Act, incomprehensible Right to Education which did not make education compulsory or free for all and market distortions created due to Food Security Act – UPA failed to bring a tangible change in the lives of masses. India’s fiscal policies were left wanting; we were now a part of the “Fragile Five”.

Policy paralysis and never ending pieces of scams floating in the thick gravy of nepotism, corruption, kickbacks engulfed us in despair. Sly tactics including the incomprehensible legitimacy of The National Advisory Council, Communal Violence Bill, inaction on the 26/11 terrorist attack along with repeated vilification of the majority Hindu population through mainstreaming of terms like “Saffron/Hindu Terror” did not go unnoticed.

Our men sacrificed their lives at the border when the Government of the day signed political MoUs with China. The designs were not lost on the Indian electorate. Those who were still unsure of their political choices gained clarity when in 2014, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi met with Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari asking him to ensure that secular votes did not split in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

The ugly truth of “secular” votes stood disrobed before a billion plus population of the world’s largest democracy. India felt cheated : we lost HOPE yet again!

Abandoned by the system, India was tempted to resign to a broken tomorrow. However, as Mukherjee admits, our own past has trained us to see the silver lining.

We were electing those to represent us, who hardly represented us. We needed one of us to lead the country; only someone who had experienced the challenges of being a common citizen will have the inclination to solve for them. Narendra Modi, who with a proven track record of administration and unchallenged personal integrity was every Indian on the streets fighting to live another day.

When he said “acchhe din”, he was not only highlighting the miseries that the present was reeking of; he gave us hope for a better tomorrow. Unlike his predecessors who often made ambitious Indians ashamed of having a huge appetite for wealth and prosperity, he was chiding the youth for not aspiring enough.

When Indian freedom movement was struggling to inspire the masses, Mahatma Gandhi picked a fistful of salt and walked village to village in a loin cloth instilling hope of independent India. Modi travelled the length and breadth of the country like a common Indian and instilled hope of Achche Din.

True to his reputation, Modi did not squander the faith India reposed in him. From speaking of toilets and then sanitary napkins from the ramparts of Red Fort to expressing gratitude to those keeping the country clean by washing their feet, abolishing inhuman practices like Instant Triple Talaq, stressing on clean energy in kitchens to providing a relief package of 20 trillion, Modi personifies the rekindled hope for unwashed masses.

Be it cleaning the cess pool of corruption, abrogation of Article 370 (social justice for daughters and Valmiki community), dealing with situations at the border, resolving the 492 year long dispute at Ram Janmabhoomi, giving a parallel clarion call for AtmaNirbhar Bharat and foreign investors, or making a compelling case for reforms at United Nations, he has neither minced his words nor feigned intentions.

From fixing leakages in PDS (around INR 37,000 crore was saved in 2019-20) through JAM to heralding an era of governance dominated by dashboard level transparency, simplifying one of world’s most complex tax systems into just 4 slabs, aligning archaic labour laws with ways of gig economy, calling for employees to become entrepreneurs, freeing farmers from shackles of middlemen to providing free access to healthcare for 40 per cent of people in the country, introducing the first ever of its kind in the world faceless tax assessment system and reducing breaking barriers of access through affordable data, India is witnessing governance with certitude and vision.

As the unprecedented pandemic struck the world, economic activity slipped into an obvious but not unprecedented slowdown. The recently announced GDP numbers do show falling contraction rate, indicating recovery in demand. Manufacturing PMI signals that strongest increase in private sector output in close to nine years. Be it automobile sales, air traffic, rural consumption of FMCG goods, power consumption, GST collection, rail freight, fuel consumption: the demand side has shown recovery at a secular level.

India has led the COVID-19 crisis from the front, both globally and at home – our unit statistics testify the same. India is already designing strong logistic plans to ensure all its citizens are vaccinated as soon as a successful candidate emerges.

With a leader at the helm who encourages his country to convert every adversity into an opportunity it is hard to lose HOPE.