In terms of size, India is the biggest democracy in the world and with the democratic electoral process, people of India chose Modi to lead the country. This is for the second time when the Modi government came in power with an absolute majority. Back in 2014, people elected Modi for the first time with the hope of good days ( Acche din) in terms of economy and development, but to some extent, current government was unable to provide the same in past 6 years. We will see some of the shortcomings of this government.
The biggest failure of this government is in the domain of economy. Modi government failed completely to improve the health of Indian economy. The economic growth of our country is deteriorating continuously. The year 2019-20 has seen the record low in economic growth, and among the three sectors, agriculture and industry sector hit worst. Industrial sector growth was only 2.5 % which is very poor for an aspiring country like India, when the only possible way for Indian development is export, our manufacturing growth stumbles badly. The major reason for such slowdown in the manufacturing sector is the availability of credit in the market. Modi government failed to maintain the health of the credit market, we have seen the failure of many big banks and non-banking financial companies like IL& FS in recent times. Banks are suffering from Non-performing Assets(NPA) burden, as a result, banks are reluctant to provide capital. In 2014, BJP came in power on the pretext of handling inflation, but here also the country is facing higher inflation than before. In December 2019, food inflation gone in double digits and also the prices of cooking gas gone up. The cost of crude oil in the international market is currently very cheap in comparison to previous years’ prices, but the benefit of this low price is not being reaped by the common man, on the contrary government increased excise duty to nullify the effect of cheap fuel. The steps like demonetization, which turned to be a complete failure as more than 99% money came back in the system , proved very harmful to the growth of the Indian economy and its effect was felt in the market for more than 2 years. The majority of the support which BJP got was of youth, but the same youth is going through the crisis of unemployment, as the country observed the highest unemployment in the past 45 years. The government has completely failed in generating new jobs to absorb the available young workforce of the country.
Another big allegation on Modi government is that this regime distorted the autonomy of many crucial institutions, for example the high drama of CBI matter shows the favoritism of government. Then the resignation of former RBI governor Urjit Patel remain in so much controversy and manifested the differences between RBI and government over the transfer of reserves and government invoked section 7 of RBI Act to claim its supremacy over the Central Bank. The recent amendment done in Information Act was also seen with suspicion and experts alleged that government is trying to reduce the autonomy of Information commissioner office. The recent move in which the president nominated former chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi to the Rajya Sabha also invoked a debate that this movie will affect the impartiality of the judiciary.
Another big allegation on the Modi government is that this government is controlling media and most of the media channels are praising the government to earn more and more brownie points. We have seen the increased censorship on many books and journals in past 6 years. The place of India in freedom of press index is 140 out of 180 countries, which is evidently a very poor rank for a democracy like India. Also, the social media control of this government is very strong, any dissent against the government easily gets trolled and gets nagged on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Polarization is something for which this government is very infamous for. The party is very much clear on its stand of promoting Hindutva, which is not a bad thing when it comes to promoting any ideology, but the problem arises when the stakeholders in government and party spread hate against any particular minority, the bias of this government is very much evident when it comes to religion. Government also failed to prevent the incidents of attack on the minority in the name of cow vigilantism in the past few years. Then the latest Citizenship Amendment Act also shows the bias of the government and . The government also failed to stop the increasing hate-mongering on social media, which ultimately caused unfortunate Delhi riots.
The problem of pseudo nationalism also rise in past few years, people equated the nationalism with the support of this government and brand someone anti-national who raise voice against this government . For instance students of many reputed institutes like JNU, AMU and Jamia are being branded as anti-nationals or ‘tukde- tukde gang’ by many people and even media, this hate among people towards these institutes led to attack on these institutes. Modi government is promoting this pseudo nationalism from head to toe and make it a permanent narrative to ask for votes which we saw in the elections of Jharkhand and Delhi.
In its initial years Modi government did very well in the domain of diplomacy, in fact it can be said that it was the golden period in the history of Indian diplomacy, but in recent times Indian diplomacy failed in many aspects. First, we lost our prominence in the south and southeast Asia, China has captured the importance which India earlier had for countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar. It failed to some extent to contain the increasing dominance of China in our neighborhood. Second, the government failed to crack a good deal for India in regional comprehensive economic partnership ( RCEP). India is also losing its closeness with Russia, and on the other hand, China is getting closer to Russia by providing economic investment and trade. Though, we hold good relations with United States but at the same time, India failed to isolate Pakistan with US. The trade relations of India currently with US are also not so good, India lost its GSP status and recently US put India into the list of developed countries which will have an adverse effect on Indian exports to the US. Moreover, the abrogation of article 370 and the latest citizenship Amendment Act further aggravated the situation for India as we are facing criticism from all over the world for such discriminatory Acts. India lost its relationship with Malaysia and Turkey in past few months and recently our old friend Iran has also criticized India for the treatment of Muslims. Resolution against India was also passed in European union Parliament and India was also criticized by United States office of religious freedom just before the visit of Trump. International support which India is losing is not good because this is the time when India seeks more and more international support to strengthen our claim to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council( UNSC).
No government is perfect in the world, every regime faces some criticism so as the current government of India is facing. We discussed some points on which government should work and should take the economic development at utmost priority because poverty itself gives rise to many other social evils. At the same time the government should also take some steps to promote social harmony in the society.