Events & Issues
New Delhi, 18 June
2022
Modi’s
Governance
OF CLAIMS&
REALITY
By
OisheeMukherjee
A section of
political analysts feel that Prime Minister Modi has succeeded in making
banking effortless through new technology while corruption is significantly
down, power cuts reduced and many more Indians paying taxes without harassment.
A recent survey suggested that rural India has 20 percent more internet users
than urban India and between 2019 and 2021 this grew by 45 percent.
Meanwhile, growth in
the fourth quarter of 2021-22 (January-March) slowed to a crawl at 4.1 percent,
reflecting just how enfeebled the economy had become because of weakening demand
and a broad based surge in prices. The downward revision in the last fiscal’s
GDP growth was attributed to the omicron variant and the start of the
Russia-Ukraine war. The Indian economy has grown by just 1.5 percent above the
pre-pandemic level (fiscal 2020) compared with 1.8 percent estimated earlier
Even in the
demonetisation year of 2016-17, GDP growth was 8.3 percent but fell to 6.8, 6.5
and a calamitous 3.7 percent in the next three years. In the Covid year, the
GDP rose by 6.6 percent. There followed a recovery to 8.9 percent in 2021-22,
which pessimists call dead-cat bounce. GDP growth in the current year was
projected above 7 percent in the budget but the Ukraine war will drag down to
may be just 5-6 percent. Meanwhile, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation
& Development Countries (OECD) slashed its growth forecast for India to 6.9
percent for the current fiscal against 8.1 percent earlier. The OECD follows
the World Bank, which cut India’s growth for 2022-23 to 7.5 percent from 8 percent
earlier.
Congress sources
pointed out that the average GDP growth during 2004 and 2014 under the Congress
(UPA) was 8.36 percent while the Modi regime has recorded an average growth of
4.75 percent in the last 8 years”. It was revealed in the party's recently
released booklet that 84 percent people suffered a decline in incomes and over
12 crore suffered job losses. Over 60 lakh MSMEs closed down during the
lockdown when millions of people suffered unprecedented miseries, walking home
without transport and food.
One may mention here
that the government’s bluff on the surging inflation has finally come to light.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), debunked the Centre’s persistent claim that a
string of external factors over which it has no control such as rising crude
oil and commodity prices, the Ukraine war and the resultant supply chain
disruptions is responsible for the broad-based surge in prices across the
country. The RBI analysis suggested that the wholesale price index (WPI)
inflation has a greater rub-off effect on retail inflation, which would suggest
that several local factors, including supply shortages and taxes and other
levies have been playing havoc with prices across the board, from food and fuel
to clothing, personal care products and health care.
As such, the policy
makers on Mint Street raised the repo rate by another 50 basis points to 4.90
percent – the second time they have done so within a month. There are
expectations that RBI may hike rates by another 70-75 basis points in this fiscal.
The RBI GovernorShaktikanta Das, ruefully admitted that the central bank would
fail to meet its mandate to keep inflation below 6 percent.
In fact, the cost of
various items like synthetic rubber, chemicals and other raw materials, mostly
imported from China, has gone up by over 20 percent in the last three months
while the price of the final product has to be kept the same. India’s economy
grew at its slowest pace in the first three months of 2022, hit been a fall in
manufacturing and weaker consumer spending. Manufacturing contracted 0.2
percent year-on-year basis after 0.3 expansion in the previous quarter.
Small firms, which
employed about 110 million Indians and accounted for 45 percent of
manufacturing, were hit the hardest, casting a cloud over the economic
recovery. According to available details, over 70,000 businesses in Tamil Nadu
have closed shop in the past few months while in Ahmedabad, business has been
struggling with a 60 percent rise in steel and gas costs over six months. Another
aspect is the rupee’s more than 4 percent against the dollar this year, making
imports more expensive and adding to the burden from rising interest rates.
Added to all this,
other documents do not fully support any major achievement of the government.
In The Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, which looks at civil
liberties, pluralism, political culture and participation, India’s global rank
has fallen from 27 in 2014 to 46 in 2021. Freedom House rates political and
civil freedoms for 162 countries, India’s rating was 66 this year down from 67
in 2021 and 71 in 2020. On the Transparency International Global Corruption
Perception Index, India was 85 in 2014 and is still 85 in 2021. Ordinary folks
believe Modi has reduced corruption a lot but the reality is somewhat
different.
Thus Modi’s claim at
the ‘Gareeb Kalyan Sammelan’ at Shimla that governance has improved as
welfare of the poor had changed this meaning appears false. Justifying his
claim, he said that before 2014, corruption was viewed as an “essential part of
the system” and instead of fighting it, the government had succumbed to it but
all this has changed now, as per the prime minister though facts do not support
this contention.
Meanwhile, a few days
back, while releasing the 2021 International Religious Freedom Report at
Washington, Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, had cited India as one of
the examples of how religious freedom and the rights of minorities were under
threat in communities around the world. “In India, the world’s largest
democracy, and home to a great diversity of faiths, we’ve seen rising attacks
on people and places of worship”, Blinken had said. Besides, the US
ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Rasid Hussain, had
stated: “In India, some officials are ignoring or even supporting rising
attacks on people and places of worship”.
All these
developments at the political, economic and social fronts don’t match the
claims being made by the ruling dispensation. Though normal monsoon has been
predicted, the situation may not improve in the coming months of this calendar
year.Realising this, the BJP has possibly adopted a new strategy of identifying
so-called temples which have been converted into mosques. Though claims made by
the Hindutva groups that medieval Muslim rulers desecrated Hindu temples and
converted them into mosques cannot entirely be ruled out this desecration of
religious places of worship was an acceptable political act in the medieval
period. Guess, the Hindutva groups now want to boost Hindu sensibilities in the
one and half years before the Lok Sabha as a counter to its economic failure.
---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
|