BJP's key to winning 2019 polls
In a crucial election year, a Budget which was neither populist nor profligate, higher World Bank ratings, or inching up the "Ease of Doing Business" radar cannot translate into direct electoral dividends. Because the aam aadmi knows nothing of economics, IMF or GDP, but will vote his preference based on two factors: personal prosperity, and if he experienced superior ease of living (EOL) during the Modi regime.
Ground reality
The Prime Minister is now in full campaign mode, and it is heartening his focus is on EOL as the key metric to gauge if last-mile progress percolated down to the bottom of the pyramid, which is entirely within his powers to enforce implementation.
Because when there is a real transition into prosperity, the feel-good factor is unmistakable across strata, which has thus far been elusive, as Modi’s policies have yet to touch the masses.
The struggle for independence envisaged an inclusive society built on the principles of Samyavad, a social order that is just, equitable, and egalitarian, which included liberation from economic oppression. Seven decades post-independence with widening income disparity and concentration of economic power in the hands of “the 1 per cent holding 73 per cent of the nation’s wealth”, ease of living is achievable for them because of the purchasing power of the affluent, while EOL remains a distant dream for the rest of Bharat.
Budget 2018 attempts to position BJP as the messiah of the poor with higher rural outlays, increased spending on literacy penetration (currently as low as 58 per cent among the STs), and health insurance penetration (which is as low as five per cent). Health and education carry huge weightage in the EOL and Prosperity Index which is a more comprehensive scorecard of vikas and based on multiple parameters. To measure EOL, World Bank factors-in data like: median household income; inequities in wealth distribution; housing; transportation; also intangible aspects such as leisure; environmental quality; judicial pendancy and scale of corruption, and in the Indian context, it could add, vigilante violence.
Ambitious schemes
Can a government nervous about its economic delivery, now turn the wheel in its favour in its last year by addressing much of what should have been rolled out in its initial two years? Because agrarian distress cannot be mitigated within two crop seasons, nor can the transformative hospitalisation insurance scheme take shape within a year. Because implementation has been the biggest drag in all BJP’s well-intentioned ambitious schemes, from Make in India, to Swachh Bharat or Start Up India and Smart Cities.
While the Modi sarkar deserves credit in moving the needle on EOL for rural India with village electrification, affordable housing, toilet construction, free LPG scheme, Jan Dhan, DBT transfers, and the Mudra loans, much more needs to be fast-tracked before elections, as EOL impacts the living standards of a critical mass of population.
If GOI could climb 30 places in the international Ease of doing Business, EOL is a more do-able goal as it’s about systemic controls entirely within the government’s administrative powers. Citizens want less interaction with the government, so do the business community, and commendable changes are being affected through e-governance, lessening the need to visit government offices for permits, licences, attestation of documents, and with the repeal of archaic 1,400 central and state laws.
Political dividends
But lower bureaucracy-level corruption persists, for which a possible solution could be incentivising babus by rewarding performance through delivery-based wages, as is done by corporates. Importantly, there is a negative perception about bureaucrats who are seen as saboteurs to the implementation of Modi’s ambitious plans, as “the key people in the Modi government are obstructionist Lutyens zone officials.”
Taxpayers are antagonistic when they have to shell out for what the state should have provided for law and order by maintaining private guards; in lieu of right to clean air, having to spend on air purifiers; spend on generators for 24x7 electricity; opt for private schooling instead of state-of-the-art academics, and visiting private hospitals instead of government hospitals.
Improved EOL is a function of GOI optimising budgetary allocations with speed and efficiency, without leakages through pilferage, to afford the best civic amenities for citizens as a reward for taxes paid. To reap political dividends, the Modi Sarkar must keep the focus on EOL as a developing theme, which could become another synonym for vikas and parivartan, and a campaign-claim closer to being achieved in lieu of mitigating agri-distress or the shortfall on jobs that were promised in 2014.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)