TOI2019 ⁽¹⁶⁾

Read full article Transformational reforms had acquired great momentum, when in 2004 Lok Sabha elections the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee unexpectedly lost mandate. Under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which came to the helm, reforms came to a sudden stop. Then, during its second term, the UPA introduced several anti-growth policies reminiscent of the Indira Gandhi era. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to office in 2014, India saw a return to reforms with three important and politically difficult reforms introduced: Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, Goods and Services Tax, and Direct Benefit Transfers. Infrastructure building received a boost as well. That helped the economy shift to the average annual growth rate of 7.5% during the past five years from 5.9% during the last two years of UPA. India has now returned Modi with the same overwhelming mandate it gave him in 2014. Encumbered by wishful thinking, media pundits had used caste, religion and region-based calculations to predict a fractured mandate, even a hung Parliament this time around. But Indians thought differently: discarding all these considerations, they put…

Read full article Abstract: I had the opportunity, in a conversation several months prior to 2014 elections, to discuss with the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, the future course of economic and social policy. When it came to the health sector, I urged him to pay special attention to public health as prime minister. I reasoned that over the decades the government had gone deeply into the provision of medical services, which even private sector provided. At the same time, it had neglected public health, which only it can provide. The result, for instance, had been that drainage systems in our cities had become so badly clogged that even moderate rains resulted in stagnant water bodies that then served as breeding grounds for vector-borne diseases. I went on to add that the old tradition of parents inculcating in children the habit of washing hands first thing after entering home and before every meal had also been dying. As prime minister, through television broadcasts and other media, Modi could exhort parents to return to inculcating good personal hygiene habits…

Read full article I have maintained, since well before the Balakot airstrikes, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will repeat his 2014 election victory in 2019. This conviction is rooted in many factors. The first factor is Modi himself. No matter what some Delhi-centric journalists and intellectuals might say, he remains personally intensely popular with people. Through regular radio broadcasts, social media interactions, and personal appearances at hundreds of functions and rallies each year, he has successfully conveyed to the average Indian that he is sincere, hardworking and decisive. Many may have specific complaints about unfulfilled promises. But few doubt his unwavering commitment to the nation and its people. The second factor is Modi’s enormous energy and ability to communicate with the masses. These attributes make him one of the most effective election campaigners in India’s post-Independence history. During the 2014 campaign, he crisscrossed 3,00,000 km to address hundreds of rallies in person. Five years later, his energy is undiminished. With 150 rallies already planned and more in the works, he is poised to convert the election into a presidential-style contest…

Read full article Abstract: While digital technology now touches most Indians, there is insufficient appreciation of how far India has come within a short period. Digital infrastructure has greatly reduced friction in transactions whether financial or otherwise. This infrastructure and what will be built on it in the near future promise significant productivity gains. The best-known components of India’s digital infrastructure, of course, are what we now call the JAM trinity. It consists of the Jan Dhan bank accounts, Aadhaar biometric identity and mobile telephony. While these three components represent the front end, there is a lot more to our digital infrastructure. Two additional important columns of this infrastructure are Public Finance Management System (PFMS) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI). PFMS is an end-to-end solution for processing, tracking, monitoring, accounting, reconciliation, and reporting of financial flows into and out of the central government. It constitutes a unified platform for tracking releases of financial flows and their utilisation down to the last mile. Through the banking system, it connects the central government financial flows digitally to state governments, businesses and even…

Read full article At independence, India suffered from widespread poverty, abysmal social indicators and rudimentary infrastructure. It then went on to adopt socialism as the centrepiece of its development strategy, with attendant features such as licence permit raj, distribution and price controls, and autarkic trade policy. The result was meagre progress for almost four decades. The process of change began gathering steam only with liberalising reforms, first introduced grudgingly in the second half of the 1980s and then deliberately from 1991 onward. But with the first four decades nearly lost, despite progress in recent decades, India’s problems have remained massive. Therefore, as a critic, if you choose to evaluate any of India’s governments according to problems that remain unsolved, you can have a field day. That is precisely the approach critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have taken. Such criticisms prove nothing and indeed apply with greater potency to preceding governments. Genuine evaluation requires assessing the progress made by a government against that by other governments. If this correct metric is applied, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that…