May 06, 2024

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MODINOMICS HITS &MISSES

THE ADVANTAGE OF DOING ONE'S PRAISING FOR ONESELF IS THAT ONE CAN LAY IT ON SO THICK AND EXACTLY IN THE RIGHT PLACES,' wrote Samuel Butler in his novel, The Way of All Flesh. While tabling a White Paper in Parliament this February, which compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic agenda over the past decade with that during Manmohan Singh's tenure, Union minister for finance Nirmala Sitharaman said, “From the Fragile Five (under Manmohan Singh), we moved to the League of Top Five in just above a decade.” It is true that the Indian economy has moved from being the tenth largest in the world when Narendra Modi took over from Manmohan Singh in 2014 to now being the fifth largest with a GDP of $3.7 trillion (Rs 308 lakh crore). And from the depths the Indian economy had sunk to during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Modi government has resurrected it by clocking an impressive 7.6 per cent growth in FY2024. This has made us the world's fastest-growing large economy. Achievements that have become the leitmotif for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s war cry for Election 2024 and its bid to win a third consecutive majority at the Centre. Referring to himself in the third person, the prime minister in campaign rallies talks of 'Modi ki Guarantee' while enunciating his vision for a Viksit Bharat (Developed India) by 2047, when India will complete a century of Independence. There is also the more immediate promise of becoming the world's third largest economy in the next three years that he says will vastly improve the lives of the poor, the youth, women and farmers if he is given a third term. Butler's comments about self-praise are apt even when it comes to denouncing others. To counter the BJP's economic pitch, the Congress, the country's main Opposition party, not only simultaneously released a Black Paper where it sought to counter the criticism against Manmohan Singh's economic track record, but also listed the Modi government's “failures”, including “high rates of unemployment, economic catastrophes such as demonetisation and GST that have only increased the divide between the rich and poor and devastated the future of millions of farmers and daily wage workers”. If the BJP can't stop singing its own praises, the Congress can't stop taking it down in its election campaign, with Rahul Gandhi calling it “a battle for nyay (justice) against dus saal anyay kaal (10 years of injustice)” and declaring a war on unemployment, rising prices and inequitable growth, turning them into the party's prime economic plank.

CONGRESS `EQ' VS BJP `IQ'

Five years back, an upbeat Congress in Chhattisgarh went into the 2019 general election riding high on the success of the 2018 assembly polls in which it had won 68 of 90 seats and unseated the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state after one and a half decades. Good fortunes seemed to await even in the Lok Sabha election. However, in stark contrast to the assembly election outcome, it was the BJP that emerged victorious, winning nine of the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh. Now, with the state voting in three phases for the 2024 general election, the question on most people's minds is whether the Congress can pull a BJP on the BJP, and reverse the verdict of the 2023 assembly polls, which saw 54 of 90 seats painted saffron. It won't be an easy feat, concede political observers, as the BJP retains the one weapon in its arsenal that had helped it steal a march over the Congress in 2019--the overwhelming public support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Yet, despite that draw, the Congress is not out of the race in Chhattisgarh, feel someThe three-phase polling schedule in the state has been drawn up primarily with an eye on security arrangements in Chhattisgarh's Maoist-hit areas. While Bastar, a hotbed of Maoist insurgency, voted on April 19, Mahasamund, Rajnandgaon