If we go by Rahul Bajaj’s recent remarks to a TV channel, India Inc may be scared to speak out about the shortcomings of the Narendra Modi government, and also that top banker Deepak Parekh, an outspoken critic of the government, has been “silenced”. This is surprising, to say the least. One hopes Mr Parekh clears the air soon as it is difficult to believe how this could have happened.
Mr Bajaj’s assertion that crony capitalism cannot exist under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is significant. Mr Modi, of course, keeps his distance from India Inc, whose agenda is in any case not the nation’s agenda. But Mr Modi’s ministers, including the finance and power ministers, after all freely interact with industrialists. One agrees with Mr Bajaj about the government’s many shortcomings on the ease of doing business, which is critical to attracting domestic and foreign investment.
The PM has set the roadmap and it is now for others, like FM Arun Jaitley and MoS commerce Nirmala Sitharaman, to deliver. These ministers should be made accountable for translating their own decisions in to action. Why leave implementation solely to bureaucrats — the same set of people behind the policy paralysis in the Manmohan Singh government? It is significant Mr Bajaj maintains corruption is rampant.
This is scary as the promise made by Mr Modi in his high-octane poll campaign was a corruption-free government. They were his two pillars, the other being development. One hopes that Mr Bajaj’s criticism is acted upon, swiftly!
