Pseudo seculars and anti-nationals are the titles conferred by the BJP activists to those who criticize Mr. Narendra Modi – The Indian prime minister. I’m neither an anti-nationalist nor I believe in the secularism of the opposition parties. I followed Mr. Modi actively for past 13 years, from the time he participated in the Hindustan Times event in 2005 with Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai and answered all the media questions without fear. I listened to all his debates across all the channels, followed his election rallies in 2014 campaign. I strongly believed media hounded him for the Gujarat riots, tried to take him down and persecuted him for all the wrong reasons. Mr. Modi deserves a lot of credit for winning the 2014 national election despite so much persecution from the media, if it were anyone else they would have written his political obituary. Mr. Modi fought all the forces within his party and outside and emerged victorious.
Being a fan boy, I followed him as a Prime Minister of our country for the past four years and I am totally disappointed. He became prime minister amidst so much hype and fanfare and people have given him absolute majority first time after 1984. The people had a lot of expectations on him that he would transform the country and take country to newer heights. I feel most of the people are disappointed with his policies and he did not take any initiative that would truly transform the country. With one MP majority the former prime minister of India Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao has transformed the country with his economic policies. People expected Mr. Modi would bring reforms in the economy, labor laws, privatization, companies act, land reform, agriculture, employment, and youth. He did not take any such initiative to transform our country
The first good initiative he took was to call all the SAARC leaders to his swearing in ceremony and all of them attended. But I don’t think that it had helped in improving the relations with those countries especially Pakistan. The relationship with the neighboring country is much worse compared to the earlier period. Mr. Modi has spent so much on his foreign trips and has given a boost to the foreign policy. He takes credit for much of it ignoring the Foreign Minister Ms. Sushma Swaraj. It looks like they don’t work together and are not on the same page as he handles most of the issues through PMO and own team than loop her in on the key initiatives. She responds well to the citizens on twitter and tries to help them wherever she can.
The elevation of Mr. Amit Shah to the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party is a wrong decision. To Mr. Shah’s credit he has delivered meticulously and performed par excellence than any other past presidents of BJP.In any scenario his performance is outstanding. Two power centers of the party from the same state has upset the ranks with in the party. With Mr. Modi being the prime minister, Mr. Shah would have wielded high influence already even if he is not the president of the party. But his muscular attitude and his ambition to form governments in all the states has upset most of the allies with in NDA. No allies of the NDA are fully happy, we can quote shiva sena, TDP, JDU, LJP as examples. It is Mr. Shah who is responsible for the weak relations with all the allies. Knowing that the BJP doesn’t have strong presence in the south he harbored wrong ambitions to form governments in states like Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. That upset regional parties like TRS and TDP. There is a strong prediction that Mr. Modi will not win absolute majority in the 2019 election, and Modi Shah combination cannot get the support of the allies with their attitude. For example, if you take West Bengal it looks like a war between TMC and BJP workers and not like two democratic parties trying to make their point. Modi Shah combine forgot that you have to be humble in victory and respect their allies.
Mr. Modi has won successive elections in most of the states after 2014. There is an increase in cow vigilantism and without the support of the establishment the cow vigilantes cannot be emboldened as they are now. Killing of people on the name of cow is terribly wrong and it needs to be condemned at the highest level in the strongest of terms. Mr. Modi did not deliver on the promise of cleaning of the river Ganga and the responsibility was assigned to Uma Bharti. The government failed miserably in cleaning up river Ganga and the government was reprimanded by the supreme court on this matter many times. The administration has not frightened the minorities but they definitely failed in controlling the vigilantism. After winning the UP-state election we hear stories of vigilantism but not of development.
Mr. Modi has failed terribly on the promise of stronger relationship with states. It is in the BJP manifesto that they will improve the relationship between the Centre and states. It looks like it is much worse now with opposition parties complaining no cooperation at all. The states where opposition parties are in power complain of step treatment and not providing proper funds for their development. The promises made to the state of Andhra Pradesh as per the reorganization act are not delivered. Mr. Modi promised in Tirupati that he will give special category status to Andhra Pradesh and backtracked on that promise and all the promises he made to that state. BJP with drew support from Jammu Kashmir government and all the blame has been assigned to the PDP. They have failed terribly in improving the state of J&K. In Bihar they formed an illegitimate alliance with the JDU as people did not give mandate to them to form the government.
Mr. Modi’s initiative of Demonetization is the biggest failure the country has seen. He has crippled the economy and made it cash less and could not announce till date how much money has returned to the banks. People are still suffering from no cash in the ATMs and no one knows when it will be resolved. People lost faith in the banking system and are scared to put money in the banks. People have believed that Mr. Modi had taken a daring initiative and still supported him in the elections of UP. But now people lost faith and patience on him as he could not make the system better. The other initiative is of the GST which he opposed tooth and nail as CM of Gujarat. The implementation of the GST is the worst with companies and people not knowing what to do. The GST has hit the states revenue and I hear that many companies are closed because of it. The failure to bring petrol and diesel to GST is also the failure of the government. The value of rupee to dollar is at all time low and the prices of petrol and diesel are all time high. The economy is in a bad shape and they could not control the price rise of essential commodities, he did not take any out of the box initiative to improve it.
Mr Modi did not keep his promise on Women’s Reservation Bill as it is not passed. He promised to setup fast track courts to convict elected representatives, no work on it at all. No major initiatives on Agriculture, Education, Youth affairs, Enterprises, Employment and providing opportunities to the youth. No data on how many jobs are created as part of the Make in India Initiative. No major employment initiatives have been taken to create jobs to the youth. No major work on irrigation or building dams for water to the agriculture and farmers. No MSP increase to the farmers until elections approached. No improvement in the farmers lives as still farmers are committing suicides across the country. No reform has been brought in the education sector rather than changing the curriculum to suit their interests.
Mr. Modi’s speech is repetitive and he is always on election mode delivering the same speech all the time. Swach Bharat, Electrification of 18,000 villages, providing loans as per mudra scheme but no data on the amount of loans given and the jobs created through them and the successful companies that are setup with that amount. I don’t see these as huge successes with the mandate he got, people expected that he would transform the country and much more. He could have achieved so much with the mandate and he has done so little.
Krishna Ch
