‘Ji sir, you are great’ is all PM Modi wants to hear, says former IAS officer Jawahar Sircar

Jawahar Sircar, a retired IAS officer, who served as Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati, has slammed the governance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He served as CEO of Prasar Bharati from 2012 to 2016.

Jawahar wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he had served two years in Modi's government and discovered, “'ji sir — you are great' is all he wants to hear”. He had written the statement in a tweet about an article on former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan.

"Raghuram Rajan says a small set of economists and others around PM Modi are advising him on disastrous policies. So true. Like him, I also served 2 years in Modi Regime—to discover that 'ji sir, you are great' is all he wants to hear. India suffers."

On Sunday, Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan said, India is in the midst of a "growth recession" with signs of deep malaise in the Indian economy that is being run through extreme centralisation of power in the Prime Minister's Office and powerless ministers.

"To understand what has gone wrong, we need to start first with the centralised nature of the current government. Not just decision-making but also ideas and plans emanate from a small set of personalities around the Prime Minister and in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

"That works well for the party's political and social agenda, which is well laid out, and where all these individuals have domain expertise. It works less well for economic reforms, where there is less of a coherent articulated agenda at the top, and less domain knowledge of how the economy works at the national rather than state level," Rajan wrote.

Stating that previous governments may have been untidy coalitions but they consistently took path of further economic liberalisation, he said, "extreme centralisation, coupled with the absence of empowered ministers and the lack of a coherent guiding vision, ensures that reform efforts pick up steam only when the PMO focuses on them, and lose impetus when its attention switches to other pressing issues".