Narender Modi (PM of India)

PM Narendra Modi’s 100 days: The beginning of a long journey

Just when people accustomed to the high voltage 24X7 blitzkrieg election campaign felt the Narendra Modi persona was beginning to lose steam, he came back with a bang on August 15. Confident, personal and completely out-of-the-box, the Prime Minister’s path breaking Independence Day address showed who the quintessential Modi is.

He is different. And we found that out on Day Zero – May 26, 2014 when he was sworn in as the 15th Prime Minister of India in an aesthetic setting and in the presence of SAARC leaders, besides other dignitaries and renowned faces of India. It was his first ‘first’ among many others which followed.

The invitation to regional heads was meant to be the single stone that would kill two birds. Essentially a man who has been in the public space all his life, he has his finger on the pulse of the nation. People were craving for change and a hugely distinct swearing-in ceremony sent out a clear message that things would be refreshingly different from now on. Second, the diplomatic outreach showed his own thirst to be counted as first among global statesman; clearly for Modi, India was not enough on his platter.

It was the same insight and stimulating freshness that came across a fortnight or so back on Independence Day, when Modi appeared once again to be a man in a hurry to speed by milestones. Dressed in a traditional attire and flowing headgear, Modi breached security cordon to meet children and did not use bullet proof glass enclosure as he spoke extempore from the ramparts of Red Fort in an oration, which my hunch tells me was possibly amongst his best, if not the best.

His words sounded simple and practical as he touched topics like female foeticide, departmental and ministerial infighting, poverty, cleanliness, providing toilets, promoting ‘Made in India’ brand and the need to change mindsets so as to arrogate responsibility on the male gender for ensuring women’s safety. The art of politics is to woo, and woo he did in style as his words seem to touch the hearts of the common man, whether they were actually as sincerely meant as they sounded cannot be said. For nothing can ever be said with certainty about Modi, who is more and more of an enigma with each passing day.

Governance and National Issues: A fresh Start

Modi has publically proclaimed that his mantra of governance would revolve around the pledge of “minimum government, maximum governance” – his Cabinet includes 23 senior ministers and 22 Ministers of State.

The first visible signs of shake up came within five days of his assuming office - on May 31, he scrapped all existing Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoMs) and GoMs. By next week, he had met and heard out secretaries of all government departments, told them that they could use a direct line with him whenever they needed and, importantly, they would not be shunted out on the whim of a minister. Following the meeting a note was sent out giving 11 directions to improve work culture, timings and hygiene. A further 19-point guideline for bureaucrats mandated them to maintain political neutrality and take decisions solely in public interest.

Modi further scrapped four Standing Committees of the Cabinet besides reconstituting several others. Parliamentarians were given strict instructions on attendance, speaking in the House and, in a bid to end sycophancy, asked to “stop touching feet”!

Never have ministers been put so much on their toes, because Modi has made it clear that a berth in the Cabinet in not a cosy cot of privileges, but a lot of hard work to resolve problems and help oil the wheels of development. All Ministers were asked to prepare a 100-day agenda, as well as give presentations of what they would achieve at the end of the period. Clipping their wings, the diktat is that ministers would not have a say in making senior appointments including for their own personal secretaries!

At the national level, BJP government under Modi appeared pro-active and systematic when the first crisis of evacuating Indians from Iraq confronted it.

The government brought in the Judicial Appointments Bill which seeks to reform the process of appointing SC judges by discontinuing the collegium system and rather setting up a six-member body.

And even as a major landslide in Nepal threatened Bihar, the PM despatched a team of experts to the neighbouring country as well as evacuated four districts of the state. He is believed to be monitoring the flood situation personally.

On the environment front, Modi has picked up the Ganga clean-up project, a mission he has pledged, in his constituency Varanasi, to accomplish. The Ganga Action Plan, the government, has assured will be ready by end of this year. Crores of money have already been spent over the decades to clean the sacred rivers Ganga and Yamuna, but without much success. If Modi is able to pull off this feat, he will earn the blessing of millions of Hindus and environmentalists alike.

International Affairs: Making his presence felt

Modi made his inaugural international splash in Brazil at the BRICS summit, where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Dilma Rousseff of the host country. Besides warming up to international diplomacy in Rio, he hammered a good deal in getting the presidency of the proposed USD 100 billion BRICS bank at a time when China had claimed the right to its headquarters in Shanghai.

His official debut had actually taken place in Bhutan earlier, but that was more of a symbolic gesture. He was well received there though he did fumble in their parliament calling Bhutan “Nepal” by mistake, twice in his speech. Normally, he is holding international parleys in Hindi rather than English, which is a wise decision considering his ease with the national language.

The other neighbour on Narendra Modi’s radar was Nepal, a country where China is making fast diplomatic inroads. His USD 1 billion line of credit and proposed 'HIT' (Highway-Iways- Transways) formula turned out be a true hit with the Nepalese, while his holding prayers in Pashupatinath Temple, tugged at the people’s Hindu heart strings.

The Prime Minister’s next visit will be to Japan, a country with which he had developed a special relationship during his days in Ahmedabad. The trip will also be his longest abroad, and in the tow will be a high-powered business delegation, which is expected to ink several significant bilateral deals.

The biggest vindication that Modi has got though is from the United States – Barack Obama has invited him to the White House next month. The invitation is of pertinence considering that he was denied even a tourist visa earlier owing to his perceived role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Obviously, the US is keen to make amends and Secretary of State John Kerry was heard praising Modi's poll slogan of 'Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas’ (everyone together, everyone’s progress).

Modi has also achieved a personal feat of surpassing the White House in terms of the number of followers that he has on Twitter, which must feel like sweet revenge.

Business & Technology: Waiting to Exhale

The Sensex has been on a bull run ever since polls predicted Bharatiya Janta Party(BJP) was coming to power, and the economy is likely to remain a priority area for Narendra Modi considering that it was his business friendly approach and infrastructure record that he had tom-tommed as Gujarat Chief Minister, but his finance minister Arun Jaitley’s 'sanjeevani' Union Budget failed to impress especially on the concern area of ways to narrow the fiscal deficit.

Even on price rise, common man has got little reprieve and an agency hired by the government is predicting higher inflation on food products like onions in coming days. Trying to ease things for sugarcane sector, the government raised import duty from 15% to 40%, but this may actually help traders more than the poor farmers.

The government had pre-empted opposition by announcing a hike in fares on trains before the rail budget, and though it should have been a part of the budget, the tariff hike was genuinely long due.

It is the fundamental changes which Modi government is planning to make that will genuinely boost the economy and bring accolades – things like single-window system to clear projects, building coastal expressways, labour reforms, nod to higher FDI in insurance and arming SEBI with more powers.

An investigation ordered into foreign funded NGOs and how those could be working against national interest and negatively impacting development might be both interesting and useful.

Another watershed could be the dissolution of the Planning Commission and its replacement with a new 8-member panel of experts. The Planning Commission was first set up before Independence and then formalised in 1950 in a closed economy scenario and could have passed its use by date.

Modi’s aspiration of transforming “Scam India” to “Skill India” will also find resonance in a country that is starved of vocational training and over-skewed towards academic grades.

He minced no words when he warned Defence Research and Development Organisation team that time would not wait for them; while Modi’s 'Ye Dil Maange More'(this heart yearns for more) speech at Indian Space Research Organisation, confirmed his vision of putting technology to good use to remove poverty and improve defence systems.

Besides, his dream of e-health, and Digital India where every Indian will have a smartphone by 2019 could be a real game changer, as the device would put into the hands of each citizen unlimited access to information.

Controversies & More…

The Prime Minister has visited Jammu and Ladakh, but border skirmishes and ceasefire violations on Line of Control from the Pakistan side are continuing, a matter of concern that is yet to be tackled to satisfaction. On the Kashmir issue, the Indo-Pak foreign secretary level talks were cancelled under strained circumstances after Hurriyat separatists met the Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit despite India requesting him to refrain from inviting them.

Whether the talks should have been called off at all and whether Hurriyat leaders meeting should have been the issue over which this drastic step was taken is a matter of debate, but the bonhomie that had been created with Modi-Sharif meeting in New Delhi followed by the ‘sari-shawl’ diplomacy has certainly evaporated.

But talks with Pakistan is not the only controversy Modi has courted. He began his tenure by contentiously bringing an ordinance which allowed his choice, Nripendra Mishra, to take over as his Principal Secretary. He then went ahead with a clean sweep of Governors who were UPA appointees and, particularly, his bête noire Kamla Beniwal was sacked just two months before her tenure was due to end despite her accepting a transfer to Manipur.

A storm was also created by the nearly orchestrated booing of non-BJP/NDA chief ministers at events that they have jointly attended with the Prime Minister. The first incident took place in Kolhapur where Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan was heckled. One could have dismissed it to be a spontaneous outburst of people against a very unpopular leader, but when there was a repeat performance against Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana’s Kaithal, things started looking fishy. An anxious Hemant Soren wrote to the PMO asking for an assurance that such an unsavoury incident should be prevented when he meets Modi at Ranchi, but the Jharkhand CM was also not spared.

It is difficult to believe that hooting can take place thrice over in similar circumstance impulsively, but the incident at least is in the contradiction to the promise “Pradhan Sevak” Modi had made on Independence Day when he had put faith in taking everyone along and governing by “Sahmati” (consensus) and not “Bahumati” (majority).

Possibly the issue causing maximum vexation in the opposition ranks is the government’s determined bid to not grant the Leader of Opposition (LOP) post to the Congress. Having done miserably at the hustings, Congress could not garner a meagre 10% of the total Lok Sabha seats which is a requirement to get the LOP position. However, the Speaker’s decision not to concede on the point that Congress is still the largest opposition party is being construed by many as pettiness, including by the Supreme Court, which has rapped the government for keeping the issue hanging.

The most recent controversy though relates with the tiger’s own den – Home Minister Rajnath Singh is in the eye of a storm related with alleged misdoings and a possible corruption case related with his son Pankaj Singh. Though both the PMO and Rajnath have strongly denied the “rumours”, it is clear that Modi will have to deal with the hazards of being in power and vulnerable to the transgressions of others.

Overall, it has just been 100 days and it is still Narendra Modi’s honeymoon period. Signs are that it is a job well begun. The Prime Minister has proven that he is a man of foresight and ideas; that he has courage, we all know, for he has overcome insurmountable difficulties, challenges and blemishes on his road from Gujarat to New Delhi.

In him there is the grain that has made a majority of Indians feel that he can deliver. The vote for him was unprecedented and the mandate given to him could not have been more reassuring, and thus, equally, the responsibility will be most for him to bear.

Whether he would be able to translate the blueprint of his dreams into a reality that could put India on the springboard of the next phase of epochal change remains his biggest test.

This is a chance for him to prove that he can match his imagination with execution, a chance that could put him in the league of the tallest leaders the country has ever produced, a chance that India is waiting for him to seize with bated breath.