Is Modi turning poor-friendly?
In a Parliament speech last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, "You may have several opinions about me. Modi has less knowledge in this. Modi has more knowledge in that. But one quality of mine which you cannot disagree with is my political acumen."
Seconding his speech, I believe that indeed, Modi is a pragmatic politician and if news reports in 2016 are any indication, it appears that he is ready to start the year afresh and rectify his mistakes which have hurt his party's electoral prospects.
In 2015, India suffered its fourth consecutive drought. The prices of dal (pulses) touched the roof. Maharashtra witnessed 3,228 farmer suicides, that is eight suicides per day. Other states too witnessed several suicides and crop failures. There was minimal job creation in rural areas.
The promise of acche din for the poor and impoverished faded.
With such dreadful conditions back home, Modi travelled abroad extensively in his bid to strengthen India's foreign policy. I strongly believe that apart from giving rise to the usual jokes and memes, Modi's foreign visits indeed hold significance, but given the distress rural India was reeling in, he was widely criticised and several negative perceptions floated around.
"Modi toh bas ghumta rehta hai" (Modi only keeps travelling abroad). "Desh ke bare mei kuch karte nahi bas videsh ghum rahe hai" (Modi doesn't do anything for India but only goes on foreign tours). "Kya achhe din ek jumla tha?" (Was "achhe din" just a fake promise?)
In politics, perception is all that matters. Truth and logic hardly do.
The result?
The year 2015 was a disastrous year for the BJP electorally. Bihar, a state with a significant rural population and the state which the BJP had strongly hoped to win, slipped out of its hands. Furthermore, it performed badly in the Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat civil polls as well.
Even in Modi's own constituency Varanasi, the BJP lost in 50 out of 58 seats in the panchayat polls.
On the contrary, in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had performed extremely well in the poorest parts of the country, on account of their fancy promises. But clearly, BJP's dismal performance in rural areas proved that it hadn't been able to live up to expectations and a sense of disappointment was creeping in among the rural masses.
The central government's inaction and neglect of the rural economy was a significant factor. At a time, when farmers and their families didn't have a good harvest season, the skyrocketing prices of pulses only added salt to their wounds.
But developments in the last few weeks indicate that Modi has decided to take tough but populist decisions with a bid to resurrect the BJP's image in rural India. Though he may well earn the wrath of his supporters and attract criticism from right-wingers, his past track record is a proof of his conviction to move ahead with his decisions.
The government is gearing up to launch the National Food Security Act (NFSA) with an allocation of Rs 1,30,000 crore, according to a report by The Economic Times. The scheme, which will be a repackaged version of the UPA's Food Security Act will reach out to 70 crore beneficiaries across 27 states.
As part of the planned rollout, some 1.8 lakh fair price shops across the country will have electronic point of sale devices to authenticate beneficiaries at the time of distribution and also electronically capture the quantum of grains distributed to each family. The number of these shops, at 70,000 now, will increase to 5.52 lakh by March 2017.
Furthermore, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) which was vehemently opposed by the BJP and ridiculed by Modi, as mentioned above, was termed as a "national pride" by the rural development ministry amidst indications that government support for the scheme will further increase for boosting productivity and job creation in rural areas.
Ironically, in the same Parliament speech (described at the beginning), Modi had attacked the Congress and called the MGNREGA a living example of the Congress' failure to ensure development in the country. He ridiculed the Congress by saying, "Let the people know that even after 60 years of Independence, they have to dig holes. This is what the Congress has achieved."
However, right-wing economists and supporters aren't happy as the current NDA dispensation looks like a repackaged version of UPA-2, focusing too much on subsidies and dole-outs.
In a recent editorial titled "Modi and Jaitley may be setting themselves up for another flop Budget" for Swarajya, R Jagannathan argued, "The Centre should be winding down all centrally-sponsored schemes one by one, including the Food Security Act, and instead use the money saved to improve defence, infrastructure and public sector banking, which are starved of capital."
Economist Surjit Bhalla wrote an editorial in the Indian Express arguing that the MGNREGA doesn't help the poor at all.
However, Modi knows that his vision of a developed India and proposed reforms will only be possible over two terms, not one and therefore, if the BJP wants to seek a second term in 2019, it must regain the voters' confidence in rural areas.
Will Modi's pro-poor gamble work in the long run? Only time will tell.