Prime Minister Narendra Narendra Modi has clearly been the most popular and powerful leader in post-independent India because he has always been his own person, never allowing others to define who he is, which eventually is the true hallmark of great leaders. As the Modi government completes two eventful years at the end of May 2021, it is time to take stock of some of the most pathbreaking measures.
SOCIO-POLITICALMEASURES
On the socio-political front, 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. However, after Kashmir’s special status was 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 the property and permanently settle in the State. With the revocation of Article 370, the ball was set rolling for the return of Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to flee their homes in 1990, in one of the most horrific genocides in 1990.
WOMENEMPOWERMENT
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, women empowerment had been the cornerstone of Modi’s policymaking.
FOREIGN POLICY HEFT
Again, significant headway has been made on the foreign policy front. For instance, while the Quad was initiated in 2007,it was only on March 12, 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 synchronized and organised disengagement, starting February 2021, post the Galwan stand-off. While under an incompetent Nehru, India was forced to cede 38,000 square kilometres of Aksai Chin, under Modi, India forced China to 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.
THE UNSTOPPABLE MODI FACTOR
The moot question then is, what about the ‘Modi Factor’? 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 Mamata Banerjee,a fascist,rabble-rouser, limited to 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 the recent 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.
A FAILED CONGRESS
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 a compulsive liar, Rahul Gandhi turning into a vacuous paper tiger on Twitter, whom no one takes seriously. The Left, barring in Kerala, has been 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, merely 5 seats, and Mayawati’s BSP, to 10 seats.
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 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.
FARM REFORMS
On the economic front, the Modi government passed the historic Farm laws in September 2020, to empower India’s farm community. These laws had been pending for fourteen long years since 2006, based on recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission and National Commission of Farmers.It needs to be mentioned here that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agrarian reforms have been sweeping, far-reaching, and inclusive. Over 6 crore farmers are taking benefit of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana,(PMFBY) paying a meagre premium of just between 1.5-2.5%.
What has the Modi government done for uplifting the well-being of India’s farm community? The Modi government has been transferring cash directly to farmers, as is evident from the Rs 6000 per year that is paid to over 14 crore farmers, under the PM Kisan scheme. Over Rs 1.35 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 an exportable surplus in the foodgrain space, has added to India’s economic heft. Besides agriculture, a bright spot has been the foreign portfolio investments (FPI) amidst the pandemic, with December 2020 recording the single highest-ever monthly inflow from FPIs at Rs 62,016 crore, surpassing the previous high of Rs 60,358 crore recorded in November 2020. The year 2020 also recorded the highest ever yearly net inflow of FPIs into equities, at over Rs 1.70 lakh crore. Do note that 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.
LABOUR REFORMS
The new Labour Code seeks to transform India and rid it of outdated technologies and methodologies. The reduction in compliance burden would also facilitate the expansion of establishments, helping to create jobs on a large scale across a plethora of segments and sectors.
AATMANIRBHAR BHARAT
The Modi government announced a stimulus of Rs 2.65 lakh crore under Aatmanirbhar Bharat 3.0, taking the total stimulus since the onset of Covid, to Rs 29.88 lakh crore, which was akin to almost a massive 15% of GDP. The government’s contribution to the stimulus was 9%, with the remaining 6% came from the RBI. Indeed, the Rs 1.46 lakh crore expenditure in the form of production-linked incentives (PLIs) to ten new sectors will be over five years. That said, there is no denying the fact that Aatmanirbhar Bharat 3.0 will have a multiplier impact on consumption, especially across stressed sectors, accelerate economic recovery and incentivise job creation through a virtuous cycle. Despite Covid second wave, most global rating agencies and the IMF, are predicting between a 9.3% and 11.5% 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 global order.
GARIB KALYAN
The Rs 1.93 lakh crore allocated for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP), Rs 11.03 lakh crore allocated towards the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan 1.0, Rs 82,911 crore for the PMGKP Anna Yojana (which was extended till November 2020), and Rs 12.71 lakh crore infused via RBI measures, announced till 31 October 2020, not only injected liquidity into money markets but also increased purchasing power via direct benefit transfer (DBT), improved cash flows by recalibrating EMIs and provided access to cheap credit for MSMEs, migrants and farmers.
INFRASTRUCTURE
National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) plans to spend Rs 110 lakh crore on nearly 7,000 projects across sectors such as transport, communications, urban development, energy, and water. The plan is a grand vision involving private and state-run players and many believe it is too ambitious in its scope. According to data, these projects include 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.
MEGA COVID VACCINATION DRIVE
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, is not only an extraordinarily bold move but completely do-able too. The adult population in India is 940 million. To vaccinate the entire adult population requires 1880 million doses, assuming two doses per person. To vaccinate the entire adult population in the next 6 months requires vaccine production of 220 million doses per month. SII, in the next couple of months, will scale up production to 100-120 million doses per month, while Bharat Biotech will scale up production to 70-100 million doses, monthly. Zydus Cadila, Dr.Reddy’s, which will produce Sputnik-V, production of vaccines by Biological-E, the Johnson& Jhonson drug, Bharat Biotech’s Nasal spray, SII’s Novavax, and production by Gennova Biopharma, will ensure
that India, between August and December 2021, will have anywhere between 216-300 crore doses per month, which will be enough to not only vaccinate India’s entire adult population, but leave India with a big surplus too, even after assuming a 5% wastage rate.
INDIA BETTER THAN GLOBAL PEERS
Though Health is a State subject, by May 2021, the Modi government has provided over 22 crore dosages, free of cost to States, with over 20.6 crore people, vaccinated and close to 34 crore tests, done. India has the fastest vaccination rate ahead of the USA and China, a recovery rate of 90%, and the lowest Covid fatality rate of just 1.1%. India has a population that is four times larger than the USA and yet the US has reported more than double the number of deaths that India has. Even today, the bodies of those who died due to the Coronavirus in the US in 2020, are still lying in refrigerated trucks, as the US has run out of mortuaries, crematoriums, and burial places. In Italy, which supposedly boasted of the best health infrastructure, till the pandemic struck, the government threw in the towel and encouraged and allowed senior citizens to take their own lives as Italy ran out of ICU beds.
VARANASI MODEL & HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done a phenomenal job, with the Command and Control (CAC), Varanasi model, being a huge success story. While India’s electorally puny opposition has done absolutely nothing apart from blaming the PM, it is the Modi government that has done all the heavy lifting. 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 over Rs 2.3 lakh crore dedicated to health spending in 2021-22, alone.
MAKE IN INDIA
Speaking of vaccines, Bharat Biotech’s homegrown Covaxin made along with ICMR,is a tribute to India’s stellar Make in India, initiative. Hence, 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 is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been toiling hard 24/7, to ensure India’s war against Covid, is taken to its logical conclusion.
The good news for Indians and India lovers is the fact that, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran the world’s biggest food security program amidst a full-fledged lockdown in 2020, where-in every month, for 9 months in a row, 810 million people, including daily wage earners and migrant workers, were given free food grains. Every month, for 9 months at a stretch, India fed a population that was almost 2.5 times, the size of the US. In 2021, in yet another ambitious turn of events, India is in the midst of the largest and most ambitious vaccination drive, ever, in mankind. Given his past track record of seamlessly translating vision into reality, PM Modi is set to deliver, yet again! Don’t forget, India is a massive country with a population that is equal to the population of 196 countries. Solely due to the courage of conviction of Prime Minister Modi, despite being a country that is widely spread out geographically, India has in the shortest period vaccinated over 206 million people, despite the opposition promoting “vaccine hesitancy”. And yes,206 million is more than half the population of America, so large sections of India’s rogue media and s debilitated opposition who allege that India’s vaccination drive is slow, have completely missed the plot!
CONCLUSION
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 are personal.