Why Modi can't afford to do just Mann ki Baat from ramparts of Red Fort

Can Prime Minister Narendra Modi muster courage to announce "real reforms" in sectors such as railways, retail and banking from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15? Can he bring in a Bill to curb conflict of interest in public office? Can he announce a legislative embargo on politicians’ involvement in business of sports? Can he make political funding transparent? Modi has asked people to make suggestions on what they expect to hear in his Independence Day speech. Certainly they don’t want more sermons or launch of another set of new schemes. Now this is a wish-list that he must pay heed to. It is not merely a list of expectations, but a broader set of reforms that he must commit to the nation to retain their confidence.

Despite being a majority government the shattered and frustrated Opposition could give them a tough time during the monsoon session. This definitely means that the substance of NDA government’s worries lies beyond the haze of parliamentary rivalries.

The Modi government appears shaky on Indian democracy’s three core values. The first being that under no circumstances should the government be seen to be trying to curb the freedom of expression. Secondly, irrespective of minority and majority, the government must demonstrate its capability to take the opposition along. Finally, any compromise on transparency parameters in high positions of public office can dangerously undermine the government's credibility.

The government should have mended its ways after the Information Technology Act Section 66-A was dismissed in March this year. This was ample proof of the government’s intent to curb the freedom of expression. Its unwillingness to accept the basic right to privacy in Supreme Court (Aadhar case), ban on websites, curbs on right to information and interference in autonomous institutions or notice to TV channels on the coverage of Yakub Memon’s hanging, further indicates that the government is not at ease with some of the basic freedoms.

In parliamentary democracy, a government can maintain its integrity only when it manages to carry the opposition along. As evident, the 15-member opposition before Rajiv Gandhi’s majority of 413, though negligible has been recorded in history as the power of miniscule minority.

BJP should have been extremely strict about maintaining transparency at higher positions. On the contrary, while foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was making an appeal in the Lok Sabha about Lalit Modi’s ailing wife, the past business relations of the Swaraj and Modi family were looming in the background.

The irony lies in the fact that nobody understands the significance of these values better than the BJP itself, whose entire political journey has been a saga of fighting the Congress over these values only. But within a year after coming to power, the BJP has turned the same Congress into the greatest advocate of freedom of expression, the importance of opposition and campaigner of transparency.

The other slippage of Modi government is no less troublesome. Modi should not forget that he had come to power advocating free markets, privatization and radical reforms, but in over one year time all he has done is implementing the UPA’s policies. The kind of governance that has emerged under his leadership does not display courageous decision making on issues like rail and banking reforms, subsidies and administrative reforms. This is despite the fact that 11 states are ruled directly either by NDA or its allies.

Just like Congress, BJP has been launching plethora of schemes, building new missions, spawning a new bureaucracy and innovating new ways of distributing subsidy. Nobody has an objection to social schemes, but, instead of showing some courage to reform governance, new missions and schemes have been superimposed on the old system. That is why every mission is devoid of even token success.

Although Modi was expected to establish new benchmarks of democratic values and liberalization, which will not only be different from the conventional Congress type governance, but will also compensate for BJP’s lapses as opposition. Nobody knows why the Modi government is hell bent on proving that big achievement brings its own anti-climax.

Those who assumed Modi’s rise to power in 2014 was the country's largest political transition must give it a second thought. The actual transition has come now when Modi has spent a year in power. Soaring expectations, soaked in ennui, peeve and disillusion, have begun to come down. This is for sure that when Modi addresses the country on August 15, the citizenry would not be interested in his Mann Ki Baat alone. They expect a clear message on governance to ensure that they have not apportioned the burden of their high hopes on weak shoulders.