The achievements of the Modi government in the last one year should be seen as its deft handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, matured tackling of the India-China stand-off along the borders, creating international alliances, and getting some crucial legislation passed despite the short sessions of the Parliament. One should also not forget the bhoomi puja for the grand Ram Temple at Ayodhya on 5 August 2020.
Here I do not wish to add the achievements from the past few years such as the impact in terms of development and the larger integration of Jammu and Kashmir after Article 370 was scrapped in August 2019. This also ushered in a truly democratic election with wider participation of the local population. The same stands true for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that granted citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who came to India on or before December 2014. This included Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians.
Incremental additions in the progressive march are happening despite hiccups and one can easily list them as achievements. But the government should also be known for momentous decisions. One such is the bhoomi puja for the proposed Ram Temple. Although the matter was resolved through a judicial process, the government facilitated the process through due diligence. August 5, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed the bhoomi puja at Ayodhya, was a rare moment in history. That it happened amicably showed the syncretic culture of India and the wishes of everyone that the temple dedicated to dharma, so vital for constitutional principles, be established.
Most of Modi’s governance in 2020 was focused on containing Covid-19, a new pandemic with no known antidote. Some messengers of doom had already predicted that India would have at least 30 crore cases and a very large number of deaths. The entire world was worried. But Narendra Modi emerged as the saviour and ordered a lockdown. Imagine an entire nation of 135 crore people coming to a standstill but with not a single scarcity anywhere. There was no hoarding, no black marketing and people had easy access to every item of daily use.
The period of lockdown was used to strengthen medical infrastructure by enabling the massive production of PPE kits, hand gloves, masks, sanitizers and creating Covid-19 facilities in make-shift hospitals. The recovery rate despite the pandemic was very high and the country was able to stave off the first wave without a high casualty figure. Even the United States with the best healthcare facilities and a population of merely 33 crore, as opposed to India’s 135 crore, could not do better. India’s efforts were lauded the world over.
To ensure that the adverse impact of the economic shutdown did not reach the poor, the Union Government gave free ration to 80 crore poor people from April to November 2020 incurring a cost of Rs 1.5 crore. Again, in April 2021, the Prime Minister announced 5 kg of free ration for 80 crore people for the month of May and June incurring a cost of Rs 26,000 crore. Transferring money directly into the accounts of poor farmers under the PM Kisan scheme that was launched in 2018 should also be seen as an effort to mitigate the sufferings of the agricultural community. Farmers of West Bengal also benefited from the scheme on release of the installment on 14 May 2021.
Just when India had started celebrating and numerous festivals, election rallies, social gatherings and a buoyant movement of people were taking place, we were hit by another Covid-19 storm. We all contributed to this. If we had given heed to the various warnings from the Centre and had exercised restraint, the situation could have been different.
The Kumbh festival in Haridwar, which critics dubbed as a ‘super-spreader’, was only one among the many events. The Prime Minister had to intervene and request Hindu religious seers to make the festival symbolic. Several warnings were sent to the state government to follow Covid protocols. The festival came to an abrupt end.
There are three events I can highlight to show how people ignored social distancing blatantly. These are the funerals of Shia leader Kalbe Sadiq in Lucknow on 24 November 2020, renowned Islamic scholar and former General Secretary of All India Muslim Personal Law Board Wali Rahmani in Patna on 3 April 2021 and Islamic leader Qazi Md Qadri in Badayun on 10 May 2021. One just needs to look at the images of the gathering to know whether they were super-spreaders or not. One also cannot forget the farmers’ agitation that was the biggest super-spreader since farmers came in groups to the protest sites at the Delhi borders and left for their villages carrying the disease. Thousands had joined these gatherings from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
The elections for five states can also be faulted. But we need to question the collective conscience rather than put blame on one or other institutions. No party wanted the elections to be postponed and once the campaigns started, it was difficult to control the situation. When the Parliament’s Budget Session was curtailed, the prime reason was to enable elected representatives to campaign in these elections. The Prime Minister, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President JP Nadda did cancel their meetings during the last leg of the election campaign in West Bengal but others continued.
Also, the country witnessed the biggest movement of people based on cell phone location data. The movement of people in crowded local trains such as in Mumbai and the density of population in Asia’s biggest slums such as Dharavi in Mumbai, and elsewhere also contributed to the spread. Most marketplaces in many parts of India were crowded and people were walking without masks. India was waiting for an explosion to happen.
People died not due to the pandemic as much as they did because of the failure of the response system and an inadequate health infrastructure. Imagine so many people falling ill at the same time and many needing oxygen, ventilators and critical medicines. The casualties went up to an unimaginable level.
Yet the Modi government worked on a war footing to bring the situation under control. The government was in emergency mode. Air Force helicopters were pressed into service to airlift cryogenic tankers from foreign countries. Naval ships were deployed to transport tankers and medical supplies from distant lands. Oxygen supplies from industries were diverted to hospital use. The Railways ran Oxygen Expresses, non-signal special trains running from industrial hubs to states with a scarcity of oxygen, to ensure that the supply line was not disrupted.
The country’s lack of preparedness was for all to see. The Supreme Court observed that in the 70 years after Independence, we had failed to create an adequate health infrastructure to give the response that was needed. The Modi government sent various missives to state governments to strictly implement Covid protocol and instruct that the states should not lower their guards. But all these fell on deaf ears. Some state governments had dismantled the structures that were created in 2020.
In the words of Dr Devi Shetty of Narayana Healthcare, the Modi government moved heaven and earth to make things possible. No country in the world could have managed the crisis better, he said. No one had imagined that the demand for oxygen would increase ten-fold from 900 MT daily to 9000 MT daily. The DRDO and other Central institutions swung into action and emergency beds were created. The Railways earmarked 70,000 Covid bed facilities all across the country. The DRDO helped set up 500 oxygen PSA plants in the country using its own design. PM-CARES was used to buy lakhs of oxygen concentrators and procure more than 1.5 lakh units of the oxycare system developed by the DRDO. The DRDO has also developed a 2DG drug that reduces dependence on outside oxygen supply and helps in faster recovery.
The biggest achievement in the fight against Covid was to encourage the R&D of the indigenous Covaxin vaccine. With it, India joined the elite club of a few countries in the world to have its own Covid vaccine. The Prime Minister took a personal interest in also ensuring that there were no bottlenecks in the faster production of Serum Institute’s Covishield. India supplied vaccines to several countries and the UN Peacekeeping force. The tremendous goodwill earned thus helped India get help from across the world when it witnessed the second wave.
The Centre had already earmarked Rs 35,000 crore in its budget for vaccination and announced that there would be no dearth of money to vaccinate people. In the initial phases, it announced free vaccination for all in the age group of 45 years and above after the drive for healthcare and frontline workers that began on 16 January. From 1 May this expanded to the population between 18-44 years. By 21 May, more than 19.32 crore people had been vaccinated cumulatively, out of a population of 135 crore. This is more than half the 33 crore population of the US.
Trials are now in progress for the age group of 2-18 years. We may soon see vaccination drives being carried out in school premises for children. Knowing fully well that the country needs faster and adequate vaccination for everyone, the government has already decided to ramp up production and the target is to achieve 2 billion vaccine doses between August and December.
One cannot but also praise the Prime Minister for the deft handling of the situation on the borders facing China. While the Chinese had no qualms in becoming aggressive when India is facing an unprecedented crisis, the Indian Government ensured that there was no let up in our guards after the border stand-off at Galwan where our brave soldiers gave a befitting reply to China’s aggression.
The Chinese have not fully disengaged despite agreeing to do so. India has refused to compromise and has shown maturity by taking logical and measured steps. Our troops are vaccinated and are on full alert. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said this month that India-China relations are at a crossroads and which way it goes will depend on China. He clarified that bilateral relations with China would not improve unless the border situation improved. The disengagement process that had started early this year has not been completed, he pointed out.
In the meantime, India has joined the Quad which is a strategic alliance of four countries—India, Japan, Australia and the United States—“to keep Indo-Pacific region free, open and accessible, diverse and thriving”. That China has warned Bangladesh against joining this alliance shows the importance of Quad.
Back home, the government has been trying to push various reforms despite Covid-19 and curtailed sessions of the Parliament in 2020 and 2021. Amidst the pandemic, the curtailed Monsoon Session in 2020 was to take place from 14 September to 1 October. However, this was shortened further and the session adjourned sine die on 23 September after completing only ten sittings spread over ten days. Similarly, the Parliament’s Budget Session in 2021 that began on 29 January and was to continue till 8 April was adjourned sine die on 25 March. The reason was to enable members to participate in campaigns for the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, Assam and West Bengal.
Even during the curtailed sessions, the government brought out legislation to bring changes. In 2020 it brought an Act to reduce the salary, allowance and pension of MPs and ministers by 30 percent, the Epidemic Diseases Act to curb unprecedented violence during the pandemic and for the protection of healthcare workers, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code to give relief to companies affected by Covid. In 2021, there was legislation on mines and minerals for faster growth, on port modernization, for insurance to raise FDI to 74 percent and bills for reforms in the social and health sectors.
The Modi government did not allow life to come to a standstill. All essential services were brought to the people. Goods trains, trucks and other essentials transport were running. The average speed of construction of national highways at 29.81 km per day was the highest ever in 2020-21. The government had already decided to complete all ongoing projects sanctioned up to 2015-16.
The Modi government’s commitment to nation building could be seen in the conceptualization of creating modern building structures to house various ministries of the government in a stretch of 3.2 km from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to India Gate. The idea was consolidation and saving the government’s wasteful expenses in the old buildings that defy modern demands.
The construction of the new Parliament building at the estimated cost of Rs 862 crore has already commenced in January after due allocation of money and the tendering process. The building is slated to be complete by 2022 to enable the country to celebrate 75 years of India’s Independence in the new Parliament. Bidding goodbye to the colonial hangover, this new building is going to be India’s pride that would stand the test of time for 200-250 years and remind coming generations of the strength of India’s democracy and the values that guide our progress.
The actions of the Modi government showed in enough measures that while we must work on our weaknesses and build our muscles by tightening the sinews of our country, India must not stop. We are not the same country that had pledged gold in 1991 to not to default on international payment obligation. We are strong. And the determination and ambition of the nation is to find fulfilment in the desire for action. Lives must be saved and those who are living must live a life of action and fulfilment. This is the Modi motto.
The writer is convener of the Media Relations Department of the BJP and represents the party as a spokesperson on TV debates. He has authored the book ‘Narendra Modi: The Game Changer’. The views expressed are personal.