"However, six months down the lane, Modi government stands out for three simple characteristics - U-turn on promises, mere renaming and plagiarising UPA's programmes and schemes, and decisions that involve selling out public/national interests for the benefit of friendly corporate houses," an acerbic Congress spokesperson Ajay Maken told reporters.
The document (you can read below), which may well be the first smart PR move made by the grand old party, offers a damning list of somersaults from the insurance bill to black money to the Henderson report to taking support from the NCP.
The government’s supporters argue that the PM is on the right track and he needs some more time to translate words into action. The BJP points out that Modi has been chosen for 60 months and they will talk about his balance-sheet only in 2019. And those watching him from his Gujarat days suggest that Modi spends the first few months understanding the problems he has to solve and weighing the possible solutions. He acts only when he is absolutely sure that he has worked out the best plan. All this, his supporters argue, takes time.
His critics, on the other hand, accuse him of following the classical Roman philosophy of ‘bread and circuses’, with the most acerbic among them pointing out that even the bread is missing and there is just a lot of pointless action and meaningless buzz in the Modi sarkar.
Infidels and disbelievers, however, never harm a faith. The warning bells start ringing only when the devout begin to have doubts, and some of them have started to entertain them ever more loudly in recent days.
Columnist Tavleen Singh and author Chetan Bhagat—apart from Madhu Kishwar who seems to have disappeared after her displeasure with Smriti Irani— were widely perceived as cheerleaders of the ‘we-want-Modi’ campaign. Both appear a bit disappointed after Modi’s six months.
In her column for the Indian Express on Sunday, Singh fears that Modi may not be on the right path. “At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried,” Singh argues.
In her piece, Singh quotes management guru Peter Drucker to underline the despondency and frustration of a Modi supporter: “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” This sounds similar to Congress leader Anand Sharma’s famous quip that Modi is running a treadmill government that seems to be doing a lot but is going nowhere.
On the same day, and this must be just coincidence, Bhagat suggests that Modi may be making the mistake of marketing a product even before it is ready for the international bazaar. “Selling the India story abroad is vital…. (but) we need to make India ready to receive FDI. We haven’t done that, but we have launched a full blown promotional effort,” he laments in the TOI.
Late last week, the GDP figures for the second quarter of this year were released. The growth rate dipped marginally from 5.7 percent in the preceding quarter to 5.3 percent. Much of this decline can be blamed on the late arrival of Monsoon, but it also shows the government’s efforts have not started reflecting in the results. The big-ticket reforms people like Tavleen Singh had expected are nowhere in sight, though FM Arun Jaitley has promised that the next budget would start that process.
The only ideological Lakshman Rekha that still stands between the Congress and the BJP is that of secularism. But those who watched Amit Shah silence the roaring Kolkata crowd on Sunday during the afternoon azan now wonder how long this line will withstand the compulsions of vote bank politics. If it blurs, expect the temperature among the other faithful -- outside the polite confines of op-ed columns -- to hit red-hot.
At this rate, Modi may soon find himself tarred with the blackest of the UPA brushes -- policy paralysis, and pandering.
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