The year gone by has been a difficult one, and the government at the Centre will have to think of a massive regenerative act on the economic, social and political fronts to get back to a stable fulcrum. The economic outlook has not conformed to the promise held out in the official economic survey.
Agriculture is in a near crisis situation. Presumably it is this which prompted finance minister Arun Jaitley to suggest recently that the government desired to promote irrigation in the coming year. Investment in the economic system is yet to pick up. Government has faced crucial setbacks in Parliament on reform-elated measures. Interestingly, indications from the mid-year assessment of the finance ministry, which became available in mid-December, are that economic growth at the end of year will be about the same as at the end of the last year of Dr Manmohan Singh’s UPA-2 government.
This has to be a matter of mortification for the Narendra Modi government which is operating in a far better international environment than before with the world price of oil and commodities plunging and shoring up our current account situation. The current growth of the economy is fuelled by public expenditure and private consumption in the absence of encouraging export earnings and private investments.
At the people level, employment is not expanding, and the prices at the shop level for ordinary folk, especially for essential daily household goods, remain high, causing much distress — and making the promise off “achche din” something of a disdainful joke. On the political front, too, the BJP took a hit in the year gone by. The beginning of the year saw a crushing defeat for the ruling party in the Delhi Assembly election, and the end of the year found the BJP meeting a humiliating reverse in Bihar. The former is among India’s richest areas per capita and the latter among the poorest.
The campaign in both had been led by Mr Modi personally and his hand-picked party chief Amit Shah, to the exclusion of all other prominent party personalities. The year ended with a cabal of senior party leaders — led by L.K. Advani — speaking about the “emasculation” of the BJP, and this was followed a little later with a massive campaign mounted against finance minister Jaitley from within the ruling party and also the AAP government in Delhi.
Politically and socially, the “beef” controversy and the angry national discourse on “rising intolerance” took the sheen off the Modi government and raised questions internationally. On the foreign policy front, relations with most neighbours are in an unsatisfactory state. With the bigger regional and international powers, the search for a high-level consonance is yet to show results. Much work lies ahead for the country’s first full-fledged saffron government.
