Tavleen Singh, a leading Columnist associated with The Indian Express. Find all Columns from Tavleen Singh here.
Fifth Column: A year of bad choices
Had Modi remained true to his promise of taking India in an economic direction that veered towards free markets and reduced regulations, we would have seen that kind of dramatic change by now.
In this season of good cheer I am finding it hard to get in the mood. From a political perspective, 2019 looks like it will be a year of bad options. The general election looms closer and the choices are depressing. This column lent its support to Narendra Modi in 2014 in the hope that he would hold true to his promise to bring the ‘parivartan’ India so badly needs. Not just in economic policies and political culture but in improving our colonial, byzantine systems of administration that cannot ever deliver good governance.
It was the magic of that word ‘parivartan (change)’ that in my view won Modi a full majority. Modi did not have the constraint Congress leaders have of paying lip service to Nehruvian socialism. So his economic reforms could have surpassed those that P V Narasimha Rao made by ending the licence raj. India’s private sector boomed as a result and we saw the creation of a middle class bigger than the population of most big countries. Had Modi remained true to his promise of taking India in an economic direction that veered towards free markets and reduced regulations, we would have seen that kind of dramatic change by now.
Had he at the same time changed a political culture that treats elected representatives as rulers, and not servants of the people who elect them, we would have seen political ‘parivartan’. He chose instead to veer right only in a cultural sense, so the lives of cows have become more important than the life of a police officer. And, the lynching of Muslim cattle traders has come to be the leitmotif of Hindutva, debasing the immense idea of the Sanatan Dharma to a dismal creed. There has been digital ‘parivartan’. Most Indians now have bank accounts, but there is little money in them. And, because the private sector has not seen the boom it expected, there is still no sign of the 12 million new jobs India needs to create every year.
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