Delusional Politics

by Hardeep Singh Puri

  Aroon Purie, writing as editor-in-chief of India Today on 14 July 2017, stated Ashis Nandy’s reference to a ‘chartered accountancy of violence’. 46 This is interesting because the people who plan these attacks, he says, are not driven by faith or fanaticism but by calculations of political power. He says lynchings are a manifestation of a new type of abstracted, free floating violence seeking a soft target. The deeper reason is that underlying tensions in society cause such resentments to explode into rage. Social mobility has not gone hand in hand with social cohesion. People are living in cities without imbibing civil values. Anyone who looks, prays, eats and lives differently from the majority becomes the enemy.

  Sociologist Dipankar Gupta ascribes it to the imperfect establishment of the rule of law. ‘Violence is also endemic where law enforcement officials are ambiguous about their role or are partisan in the performance of their duties’. 47

  And here I would like to point out the hypocrisy peddled by Indian liberals under the garb of strengthening Indian secularism.

  As per these individuals, any public display of embracing religion in India is fine, as long as it is not Hinduism. To call oneself a Hindu draws ire and labels such as communal if not worse. The following example illustrates this point:

  When Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused to wear a skull cap offered to him by a maulana in 2011, he was chastised by liberals for being disrespectful to Indian Muslims.

  Rahul Gandhi too recently was chastised for stoking communalism, but this time for embracing his Hindu faith! On the campaign trail during the 2017 Gujarat State Assembly election, the Congress scion was photographed offering prayers at Hindu temples, and a leaked video showed him telling party workers he was a Shivaite.

  In no other country, do we see the faith of the majority so routinely treated as the ‘other’. The majority Hindu population, its faith and cultures, are tolerant and have contributed to the peace and harmony such a diverse population enjoys. The public acceptance of one faith over another is a deeply divisive tactic deployed for political gain, and it’s time to call out those who have peddled this argument for decades.

  More than seventy years after independence, 224 million Indians still live below the poverty line and India accounts for one-third of the world’s poor. 48 Much of our physical infrastructure, railways, roads, ports, etc., need huge infusion of capital. More importantly, two of our crucial ‘systems’—healthcare and education—are falling apart. They need improvement and reform to give the average Indian citizen a decent chance for a normal subsistence-level existence.

  The only real way forward to counter this communal versus secular discourse is to put India in a high growth path and address the challenge of poverty, and abject poverty, of these 172 million.

  Prime Minister Modi’s Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas motto—vision of equal development for all sections of society—has the potential to transcend these issues of caste and religion. When the entire country grows, and reaps the benefits of economic development, our peaceful ethos only gets strengthened.

  ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’—India’s Last Chance

  On 9 August 2017, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Quit India movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the people of India to take a pledge to free the country of problems like communalism, casteism and corruption and create a ‘new India’ by 2022.

  He saluted all those who participated in the historic movement in 1942 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and asked people to take inspiration from that.

  In a series of tweets, he noted that the entire nation had come together under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi with the aim of attaining freedom.

  ‘On the 75th anniversary of the historic Quit India movement, we salute all the great women & men who took part in the movement,’ he wrote. 49

  ‘In 1942, the need of the hour was to free India from colonialism. Today, 75 years later the issues are different,’ he added. 50

  ‘Let us pledge to free India from poverty, dirt, corruption, terrorism, casteism, communalism and create a “New India” of our dreams by 2022,’ he said. 51

  Giving the slogan of ‘Sankalp se Siddhi’ (pledge to achieve), he urged the people to work shoulder to shoulder ‘to create the India that our freedom fighters would be proud of’. 52

  Seventy years later, the political transformation that India is witnessing—following the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections and subsequent state assembly elections—is again anchored, at one level, in a spectacular bid to connect to the masses cutting across ideological, religious and caste divisions which in terms of a framework is inspirationally anchored in development. Will this effort succeed? More importantly, can this effort succeed given that the ‘state’ which has to deliver on Prime Minister Modi’s bold vision for a New India by 2022 and implement the desired transformation continues to display severe limitations? This is, in several respects, India’s last chance.

  There are two perceptions of India, seemingly contradictory but in reality complimentary, that need to be understood and assessed to obtain a realistic picture of the state of play on the India story as it is unfolding.

  India is an old civilization—going back five or even seven thousand years. Prior to British colonization, India accounted, in 1700, for 27 per cent of global output, as pointed out by the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison. 53 Arthur Llewellyn Basham’s The Wonder That Was India and Sunil Khilnani’s The Idea of India further elucidate India’s syncretic and multi-lingual identity. Moreover, India is the most successful story of post-colonial reconstruction after 190 years of colonial rule. It is today a polyglot, secular country, the world’s largest democracy, a 2.8 trillion dollar economy 54 with a rate of growth, which is one of the fastest amongst emerging economies. In a nutshell, India is a country that would appear to have everything going for it.

  At the same time, after 70 years of colonial rule, India still falls under the ‘developing country’ category and is plagued by social fault-lines, particularly along the lines of caste.

  In spite of all the praise that is showered on India’s performance as a successful example of post-colonial reconstruction, India’s large population of over 1.25 billion people has more poor people than there are in all the least-developed countries of the world put together. A graphic illustration of India’s poverty lies in the fact that millions of Indians still do not have access to toilets.

  A young colleague who worked with me in the Defence Ministry and who is now associated with the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) assured me that the total number of persons defecating out in the open has seen drastic reduction. He estimated that in 2017, the figure had come down from 520 million to 320 million, thanks to the efforts of the SBM. I invariably express my admiration to him. The very fact that a task of this nature has been accorded priority by successive governments is in and of itself commendable. There is no escaping the fact that according to my friend’s statistics, at the time of my meeting with him, 320 million still went out into the open fields to answer the call of nature every morning. This is more than the entire population of the Brazil, Canada and Mexico put together.

  In a short span of four years, the Narendra Modi-led government has secured for India a 62-place jump in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index—from a rank of 142 to 77. Credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have backed the government’s reform agenda—with the former improving India’s credit rating, and the latter reaffirming the government’s sound external accounts position, management of fiscal deficit, and improved monetary credibility set the tone.

  The Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas mantra of the present government is predicated on creating a corruption-free, citizen-centric, development-friendly ecosystem in the country. 55

  What has brought about this turnaround? If one were to cast their minds back to the years 2010–2013, the forecasts for the Indian economy sang an entirely different tune. I would submit that the NDA government has not just reformed, but re-formed three c
ritical areas of both India’s society and its economy.

  First, there has been an unflinching commitment to literally ‘building’ India’s infrastructure. In the first four years of the Modi government, it sanctioned construction of 51,073 km of national highways as compared to 25,158 km in the preceding four years. The rate of construction achieved in the year 2017 was 27 km per day. 56 In civil aviation, the UDAAN scheme has been a resounding success—India’s civil aviation sector has grown between 18 and 20 per cent under the Modi government and, as of May 2018, stands just behind that of USA and China in terms of passenger trips. 57 In urban development, more than 60 lakh household toilets and over 4.3 lakh community toilets have been constructed, and 75 per cent of all wards have door-to-door waste collection under the SBM. Under the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana, the government has sanctioned construction of over 6.3 million homes, of which more than 800,000 have been occupied in four years (as of August 2018). More importantly, the titles of these homes is under the lady of the house or co-jointly, securing her financial future and thereby providing a fillip to women’s empowerment. As a comparison, under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and Rajiv Gandhi Awas Yojana, in ten years, the UPA was able to sanction construction of 1.34 million. As minister for housing and urban affairs, I am confident of meeting my (SBM) target of open defecation-free cities and 100 per cent door-to-door waste collection by 2 October 2019. Under PMAY, 12 million homes will be sanctioned before the end of 2019, much ahead of the target year of 2022.

  Second, the government has shown that investment in ‘hard infrastructure’ need not come at the cost of ‘softer’ needs. Prime Minister Modi’s devotion to achieving swacchata in India is perhaps the best example. While SBM targets building infrastructure, the social movement for swacchata is above all focused on human security. The ethos of the movement stems from the belief that it is only when each citizen of this country is liberated from defecating in the open, will India truly achieve sustainable and inclusive development. It is a shame that our fellow Indians, particularly women, have to go through this indignity, often risking physical harm. As the prime minister noted at a public event in London, the mental distress that open defecation inflicts on a woman is perhaps the biggest disservice our polity has committed to the Indian people.

  A human security challenge, therefore, cannot simply be overcome by building infrastructure. I do not discount the need for building toilets; they are after all essential to making India open defecation free (ODF). But more than simply building toilets, it has been the effort to bring about a behavioural and cultural change towards swacchata. When PM Modi terms SBM a people’s movement, he is delinking the mission from the din of government and politics. He is asking his fellow citizens to take ownership of swacchata; it is only when every Indian imbibes the sanitation ethos of Mahatma Gandhi that India’s march towards sustainability will be successful.

  It makes me at once proud and humble to note that swacchata today has become a jan andolan, a citizen-led social movement. The union government, in partnership with state governments, has put its full weight behind the mission. NGOs and civil society organizations are empowering citizens to demand cleanliness and are supporting the government’s efforts to raise awareness. India’s corporate sector too has been instrumental—they have adopted towns and are investing significant sums of money to build and maintain toilets.

  The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is another excellent example of the government’s welfare efforts. As of October 2018, 329.9 million previously unbanked individuals have a bank account in their name today. A total of Rs 864.80 billion in deposits shows the scale at which Indians today have access to organized finance which had previously been unfathomable, if not unimaginable. 58 Moreover, the linking of Jan Dhan Yojana with Aadhar has been a game changer in public service delivery. Citizens now receive their dues through a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mechanism, leakages have been plugged, middlemen eliminated, and corruption ceased. As a result, the public exchequer has saved over Rs 570 billion till the FY 2016–17. 59

  It has been argued that no developing country can achieve the developed status without adequate investment in health and education. The government has realized the Indian reality is no different and taken requisite action. In healthcare, in the budget speech of 2014–15, the Finance Minister announced the establishment of four new All India Institutes of Medical Science (AIIMS). The following year, the government announced six more, and in 2017–18, another two. 60 Perhaps the biggest health sector reform this country has witnessed was announced in the 2018 budget. ‘Modicare’, or the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), will extend health insurance to 100 million families and raise the insurance ceiling to Rs 5 lakh. 61 This is a transformational shift on how health care is viewed in India. Fellow citizens will no longer be subjected to the ordeal of making rounds and standing in long queues at government hospitals. The average Indian now has access to establishments, which provide the finest medical treatment.

  In education, within the first year of assuming office, the government announced and established five new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), with a sixth one following a year later; and five new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). 62

  Further, in an unprecedented move, the UGC granted autonomy to sixty higher educational institutions. These centres of excellence will have the freedom to start new courses, off-campus centres, skill development courses, research parks and any other new academic programme. 63 This has led to a paradigm shift in not just how educational institutes are run, but how they are imagined.

  Some have argued that the efforts of the Modi government are neither new nor unique. Many governments in the past have tried to address health and sanitation requirements of the country, as they have tried to build roads, highways, airports, and houses. Those who are more cynical have argued that PM Modi’s missions are just a rehash of old schemes.

  A ringside view of Indian policy-making for over forty years would make me agree that similar attempts have been made in the past. I would, however, urge those asking these questions to ask another question—if this is simply a case of old wine in a new bottle, why does the wine taste so much better now as compared to the past?

  The answer to this question lies in the fact that for much of India’s history, following independence, a culture of impunity was nourished, encouraged, and allowed to flourish. Corruption had become the norm rather than the exception—the Commonwealth Games scam, the 2G spectrum allocation scam, and the coal block allocation scam were just the tip of the iceberg. The third intervention of this government, therefore, was to put an end to such practices that undermined any and all efforts for growth and development.

  Demonetization and Goods and Services Tax (GST) clamped down on nefarious business activities. The move to make all economic transactions transparent brought a fresh air of accountability to Indian business. The fillip given to digital transactions furthered this effort—today, there exists a backstory to every payment made and received.

  Similarly, the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) into law in 2016 has dealt a serious blow to India’s crony capitalists. The World Bank estimates that insolvency procedures in India take an average of 4.3 years; for China, this number stands at 1.7; for the US 1.0, and for Germany 1.2. 64 The IBC enacted by this government now allows entrepreneurs an exit from their loss-making enterprise and focus their resources on establishing more profitable entities. The effects of the IBC can already be seen—out of fear of losing control of their businesses, 2,100 defaulting companies have settled dues worth Rs 83,000 crore. Further, Tata Steel’s bid to acquire Bhushan Steel for Rs 350 billion became the first acquisition under the IBC’s insolvency proceedings, making it a ‘historic breakthrough’ in addressing legacy issues of Indian banks. 65

  Urban development too was not immune to nefarious practices—the real estate sector was perhaps the most notorious of all, and often used to park elicit wealt
h, i.e. black money. I am certain that when the history of India’s urban development will be written, it would be divided into two phases—pre-RERA and post-RERA. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, or RERA, enacted into law in 2016, is a game changer for the real estate sector. The fact that India did not have a real estate regulator for seventy years is perhaps the biggest injustice that had been committed in the fight against corruption. With the enactment of RERA, the builder-politician nexus has been broken—no longer will citizens, and their hard-earned life savings, be at the mercy of corrupt officials and corporates who are out to cheat them off their dream home. RERA, when seen in conjunction with the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act of 2016, has moved the fight against corruption in real estate from mere lip service, to concrete, on-ground solutions.

  After ten years of paralytic UPA governance, India is witnessing buoyancy across government departments. There is a sense of purpose in the policy community to implement what the PM calls ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ in order to provide Indians with ‘ease of living’, and ultimately achieve, the motto of this government—‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’.

  It is delusional to think that India’s economic potential can be realized if the Government of India is led by a 1990s-style coalition government. Such a scenario won’t just be a bad dream, but a nightmare—a loosely put together federal government, where ‘alliances’ are formed not for economic and social progress but merely for political power, is the worst thing that can happen to a country, which is today considered one of the few bright spots in a flailing world economy. I began this section of the chapter by claiming this is India’s last chance—the last shot at pulling millions out of abject poverty and empowering them to determine their own future. To fulfil the aspirations of the peoples of our land, we need a strong central government, with a visionary leader at its helm, who is willing to take the required political and economic risks that will deliver prosperity and security to its more than 1.2 billion Indians.