A hit and a miss: Modi’s two big ideas

There are two big ideas that India’s prime minister is committed to, and he has demonstrated this commitment over the years as a leader.

The first is to birth a developed nation by 2047.

India is to become like the United States and China — a great power that is influential and wealthy. There is, however, no theory of change that supports this big idea, nor is there a visible pathway. Narendra Modi wants to get it done, but he does not know how; he hasn’t known how since the start.

His courtiers recognise this and show it by going silent when the economy is in its usual or default mode, which is to deliver indifferent growth. But they crawl out to scream ‘fastest growing economy’ and so on in when there is a bump. Usually, this is accompanied by a denigration of Jawaharlal Nehru and his horrible policies, though Nehru never gratuitously sabotages India's economy. He never put the poorest, most vulnerable Indians through the kind of hardship brought on by Modi's masterstrokes, such as the demonetisation of November 2016, which sucked out overnight 86 per cent of the cash circulating in the economy.

For two years and three months before Covid hit in March 2020 — that is, for nine straight quarters — the rate of GDP growth had been slowing. Why? The government did not say because that would have meant accepting that there was no plan, no real pathway. Once the pandemic passed, and growth came to fill in the chasm left by the lockdown, the trumpets were taken off the wall again and hosannas sung to the master’s glory.

Now that there is again talk of a slowdown, you can hear the sounds of silence from the cheerleaders.

Modi's most important champion on this front is Arvind Panagariya, economist and professor at Columbia University. He was drawn to Modi because he imagined Modi to be, like himself, a free-market man.

He resigned as deputy chair of the NITI Aayog (the chair is Modi) in September 2017 to return to the US. Since then, he has been a critic of the government’s protectionism. He believed that India’s tariffs on things like tyres and television sets, which came in 2020, would reverse the ‘gains’ of demonetisation, which was to formalise the economy — and encourage instead the creation of micro and small enterprises. He said he was worried that the ‘wrong turn’ Modi took towards protectionism in 2017 had not yet been reversed.

After the Atmanirbhar Bharat plan was made public in August 2020, Panagariya said Modi’s ‘policy mistakes’ on international trade were undoing the good work done in 1991.

‘What has this policy achieved in six years?’ he asked, questioning Atmanirbhar Bharat. ‘Imports of electronics goods have gone up from $32.4 billion in 2013–14 to $55.6 billion in 2018–19, while exports inched up from $7.6 billion to $8.9 billion over the same period. Predictably, protected and subsidised, several mobile phone assembly firms have come up during these years but they have not added up to a vibrant electronics industry. Nearly all locally owned firms are small by global standards with none that is about to turn into an export powerhouse.’

It may surprise the reader that a person with these views is a champion of Modi, but it is true. A headline from 3 February 2021 says: ‘Arvind Panagariya calls Budget 2021 “mind-blowing”, says hopes from PM Modi now coming true’.

No, sir, the hopes are not coming true.

The problem here is the assumption that Modi had some strategic direction in the first instance. It is hardly Modi’s fault that Panagariya saw himself and his free-market ideology in the person of Modi. Panagariya flitted between adoration and deification of Modi one day and producing a paper the next day, the key thesis of which was that India’s best growth years were actually from 2003–14.

So why do Panagariya and others like him still remain in awe of the Prime Minister? It is because of the second big idea that India’s prime minister is committed to — to demolish constitutional pluralism and install a majoritarian state, where religious minorities are second-class citizens existing on sufferance.

Here, unlike on the economy, there is an extremely successful programme.

The results are before us, and whether you support the prime minister or oppose him, there is no denying his success on this front. 

The BJP is, in fact, legalising discrimination, exclusion, harassment and persecution of minorities. Laws or government diktats on what Muslims eat, what they wear, where they may live and work, who they can marry, how they may divorce, how much representation they’ll be allowed (or not) are commonplace, so widespread they no longer make news.

This has become such an ingrained part of India’s politics that a reversal is hard to imagine in the medium term — of, say, 15 years.

For this project, unlike the economy, Modi has a clear pathway — and he’ll continue to have in his court those who keep looking for signs of his greatness elsewhere, such as in the economy.

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel's writing can be read here.