As 2021 draws to a close,it is time to take stock of the Modi government’s landmark measures under Prime Minister Narendra Narendra Modi’s leadership at the helm, for the second time in a row. On the socio-political front, clearly, the historic step of abrogating Article 370 which came into effect in 1950, and Article 35-A, which came into effect in 1954, figure high on the list of achievements. After Kashmir’s special status gone, vide a Presidential order and a historic decision on the floor of the Parliament on August 5,2019, people from anywhere in India can now buy property and permanently settle in the State. With revocation of Article 370, the ball was set rolling for the return of Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to flee their homes in 1990. From banning instant ‘Triple Talaq’ and making it a criminal offence, defining the nation’s first menstrual hygiene protocol, amending the Medical Termination Pregnancy Act of 1971, giving women reproductive rights over their bodies and increasing the foetal gestation period from 20 to 24 weeks, welcoming more women recruits in the NCC, to banning commercial surrogacy, the Modi government has walked the talk on women oriented issues. And more importantly, the recent decision to raise the marriage age for women from 18 years to 21 years,has been like the much needed icing on the cake.
Again, among other things, significant headway was made in 2021 on the foreign policy front as well. For instance, while the Quad was initiated in 2007, it was only in 2021 that the first, serious, leader level, Quad summit was held to thwart Chinese policy of expansionism and aggression that neither India nor like-minded nations have taken kindly to. One of the other big achievements of the Modi government was, forcing China to undertake a syncronized and organised disengagement, starting February 2021, post the Galwan stand-off. While under an incompetent Nehru, India was forced to cede more than 38,000 square kilometre of Aksai Chin, under Modi, India forced China to voluntarily disengage, without ceding an inch of territory. Be it the surgical strike in 2016 or the Balakot strike in 2019, or for that matter the Galwan disengagement, strongman Narendra Modi’s foreign policy has always been driven by the “India First” approach with the right mix of muscularity and soft diplomacy. In fact, at the Glasgow summit in 2021, Modi’s commitment to climate justice, with India’s stated goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2070,showcased how PM Modi is no pushover, by any means.
The moot question then is: What about the “Modi Factor”? Well, the charisma and connect with the electorate,popularity and indomitable capacity for relentless hard work are factors that make Prime Minister Narendra Modi a leader who is in a league of his own. To even try and create a false equivalence between the indefatigable, Narendra Modi and the puny Mamata Banerjee,a fascist, rabble rouser, limited only to West Bengal, is doing a great disservice to even the basic understanding of Indian polity. On May 28,2021, Mamata Banerjee kept the Prime Minister and Governor of Bengal waiting and what is worse, stormed out of a review meeting to discuss the impact of a ravaging cyclone, without bothering to make a presentation. Time and again, Mamata Banerjee has shown why she is a callous, deplorable leader, unfit for any national role in Indian politics and why TMC, the party she heads is a certified party of goons and vandals. Mamata even questioned the Kolkata HC after her embarrassing defeat to Suvendu Adhikari of BJP, at Nandigram.
Modi’s meteoric rise has led to the Congress Party’s rapid fall into oblivion, changing India’s political landscape irrevocably. The Congress has ceased to matter, after a string of debilitating defeats, with compulsive liar, Rahul Gandhi turning into a vacuous paper tiger on Twitter, whom no one takes seriously. The Left, barring in Kerala, has been completely wiped out. Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav never had any national stature to start with, and both these Parties were almost reduced to nothingness in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly polls in 2017, with SP winning only 47 seats compared to the massive 312 that the BJP won. Even in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, while the BJP secured 62 seats from UP, Congress was reduced to 1 seat, Samajwadi Party to merely 5 seats, and Mayawati’s BSP to 10 seats. In the 2022 UP assembly elections, the double engine sarkaar of Modi and Yogi is set for a smart win, given Modi’s massive infra push in UP, among other things. The restoration of Kashi Vishwanath Dham, the Purvanchal Expressway, the commissioning of Saryu Canal and laying the foundation stone of Jewar airport and Ganga Expressway in Uttar Pradesh, are a case in point.
The “Khan Market Gang”, has tried to resurrect the political fortunes of many failed regional satraps in a bid to checkmate the Modi aura, but these efforts repeatedly came to nought. Winning Bihar in 2020, despite a 15 year anti-incumbency, winning Assam for the second time in a row in 2021 with a thumping majority, raising BJP’s tally by 2467% from 3 to 77 seats in Bengal, forming the government in Puducherry, winning 483 of the 576 seats in local body polls in Gujarat with a 84% strike rate, raising tally in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls by 400% from 4 to 48 seats, winning the erstwhile impregnable bastions like Dubbaka in Telangana, and Pandharpur in Maharashtra, are a reflection of PM Modi’s unmatched, winnability quotient.
What has the Modi government done for uplifting India’s farm community? Well, the Modi government has been transferring cash directly to farmers, as is evident from the Rs 6000 per year that is paid to over 10 crore farmers, under the PM Kisan scheme. Over Rs 1.62 lakh crore has been paid via PM-Kisan, since its inception, in December 2018. From just 255 million tonnes in 2012-13, under an inept Congress regime, to 297.5 million tonnes in 2019-20 and 305.43 million tonnes in 2020-21, is a vindication of how India’s self-sufficiency, with exportable surplus in the foodgrain space adding to India’s economic heft. Besides agriculture, the huge surge of FDI inflow of $82 billion in FY21,is a vote of confidence from global investors, in the Modi government’s structural reforms. India’s forex reserves surged to over $642 billion in June 2021 and that was a new high too. Speaking of the economy, there is no denying the fact that initiatives under Atma Nirbhar Bharat had a multiplier impact on consumption, growth and jobs with the GDP growing by 20.1% and 8.4% in the June and September quarters of 2021,respectively. Despite the Covid second wave, India’s rebound has been Swift and sharp with most global rating agencies and the IMF predicting between a 9.5% to 10% GDP growth for India, in FY22, amongst the highest worldwide. No other leader could have, or would have done what Narendra Modi did in terms of unleashing some of the most historic reforms during the pandemic to shape a new India, better equipped to deal with a post-Covid globalorder, with more than Rs 18 lakh crore transferred via direct benefit transfer (DBT), across various welfare schemes for the poor. The Gati Shakti master plan to spend Rs 110 lakh crore on nearly 7,000 projects across sectors such as transport, communications, urban development, energy and water, is another brilliant move. This includes projects like the Rs 3.66 lakh crore Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, the Rs 1.08 lakh crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail corridor and the Rs 1.09-lakh crore North South Dedicated Freight Corridor, amongst others.
Every sixth person in the world is an Indian. Also, India has a high population density of 455 persons per square kilometre. In the given circumstances, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to vaccinate everyone from 18 years onward in June 2021, was not only an extraordinarily bold move, but completely do-able too. In an unprecedented display of political will power and conviction, the Modi government, till date, has administered over 140 crore doses, with 89% of the eligible population getting at least one dose and 61%, both the jabs. The active caseload is barely 0.23%, with daily positivity rate at 0.62% and weekly positivity rate at 0.59%. Almost 67 crore COVID tests have been done and the recovery rate at over 98% is amongst the highest, globally. No one can forget the gigantic feat when over 2 crore, as in over 20 million doses were administered on a single day, on 17th September 2021, equal to the population of four New Zealands put together. To put it in lay man’s terms, of late, India has been on an average, vaccinating more people daily, than the average number of people vaccinated in 18 major nations globally, on a daily basis.
Clearly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did a phenomenal job, with the Command and Control (CAC),Varanasi model being a huge success story. While India’s electorally vanquished opposition did absolutely nothing apart from blaming the PM, it was the Modi government which did all the heavy lifting during the pandemic. The Congress ruled India for sixty years and could not even provide 47,000 ventilators. In just 14 months, the Modi government provided 60,000 ventilators to States. Despite ruling for 10 years between 2004-2014, the Congress under Manmohan Singh, could set up only one AIIMS. In sharp contrast, in just the last 7 years, the Modi government has set up 15 AIIMS and the number of medical seats too has gone up by 70%, from 52,000 in 2014 to 88,250 now. Hence the Congress and its paid brigade of jaded acolytes, journalists and “Durbaaris”, have no political or moral authority whatsoever to wax eloquent about India’s health infrastructure. While the Nehru-Gandhi parivaar and their family retainers left India’s healthcare in a shambolic state, it is PM Modi who has been steadfastly putting the system back on track, with almost 3 lakh crore dedicated to health spending in 2021-22, alone.
Speaking of vaccines, Bharat Biotech’s homegrown Covaxin made along with ICMR, is a tribute to India’s stellar Make in India initiative. The telecom reforms, and setting up of a Bad Bank, will further propel India’s corporate sector and unleash animal spirits, by eradicating the NPA mess left behind by successive Congress regimes, much before the Modi government assumed charge in 2014. Speaking of the Wuhan virus, while Rahul Gandhi did nothing for the people of his constituency in Wayanad, besides trolling the Modi government on Twitter and Sonia Gandhi did zilch for the people of Rae Bareli, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team that toiled hard 24/7 to ensure India’s war against Covid was taken to its logical conclusion. While of late, 358 odd Omicron cases have been reported, it is again non BJP ruled regions like Maharashtra and Delhi which account for 56% of the total Omicron cases, showcasing how good governance is an anathema to the Opposition. Don’t forget, India is a massive country with a population that is equal to the population of 196 countries. Solely due to the tireless conviction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite being a country that is widely spread out geographically, India has in the shortest time span vaccinated over 89% of its adult population with at least one dose, despite the opposition promoting “vaccine hesitancy”. 2021 will be remembered for the outstandingly deft handling of the world’s largest vaccination drive by the Modi government, despite humongous challenges and also for some path breaking moves like eRUPI,decision to remove retro taxation, tribunal reforms and the like.
In the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there is a quote, which goes: “Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones that we miss.” Well, the last two years of the Modi government have been extraordinary, for the sheer number of opportunities that were seized to create new milestones. “When the world is in crisis, we must pledge—a pledge which is bigger than the crisis itself. We must strive to make the 21st century India’s century. And the path to do that is self-reliance”—this powerful quote by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sums up the ethos of his vibrant political philosophy in more ways than one.
The writer is an Economist, National Spokesperson of the BJP, and the Bestselling Author of ‘Truth & Dare: The Modi Dynamic’. Views expressed are the writer’s personal.