Sahi vikas, not really Mr Modi

In his maiden Independence Day speech on August 15, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi innocently declared: “Brothers and sisters, I am an outsider for Delhi… I have no idea about the administration and working of this place… but during the last two months, while being an outsider, I had an insider view and I was astonished.” He then proceeded to describe the rot in India’s governance structures that he inherited: “It seemed as if dozens of separate governments are running at the same time in one main government. It appeared that everyone has its own fiefdom. I could observe disunity and conflict among them. One department is taking on the other department and taking on to the extent that two departments of the same government are fighting against each other by approaching [the] Supreme Court.” In his view, it was “this disunity, this conflict among people of the same country” that was holding back this country from going forward. In fact, he went ahead and stated that the time had come to give a serious thought to the question: “Do we have a national character?”

Forget two separate ministries or even two separate departments, merely four years down the line, here we are faced with an unprecedented infighting within a single organisation of the government — the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) — which incidentally is directly under the PM’s control. On Friday, the Supreme Court will hear the petition of the CBI Director, Alok Verma, who was unceremoniously sent on leave in the middle of the night as he sought to take action against a colleague, Rakesh Asthana, who is widely seen to be close to Mr Modi. In fact, by the looks of it, Mr Modi’s government seems to have penalised not just Mr Verma but other junior officers in his team who were investigating Mr Asthana. Mr Verma’s obvious grouse is that the security of his tenure has been unjustly violated and no attention was paid to the due process. The process for throwing him out requires the PM, the Chief Justice of India and the leader of the main opposition party to consult and arrive at a decision. If the holder of such an office can be sent on an indefinite leave without following due procedures, it would not only make a mockery of the very notion of a secure tenure but also set a pernicious precedent for future governments to get rid of officers who threaten to investigate the government itself. Indeed, in his petition, Mr Verma has hinted to the government being uncomfortable about some of the investigations. What further makes the government’s stand dubious is its choice for the interim CBI director, M Nageshwar Rao, who reportedly has a chequered past.

Anyway, at one level, it really doesn’t matter how things develop in this case. What this episode shows is the fact that four years since the PM questioned India’s national character, we are back to square one in a manner of speaking. To be sure, this is not the first time when the current government has witnessed infighting. Recall how in 2016, the environment ministry, as well as the power ministry, were fighting it out with the water resources ministry in the apex court with regard to the building of new dams on the Ganga river. We all know how clean the Ganga is despite millions being spent on it. It is quite possible that some or many of the cases that should have been investigated by the CBI will now suffer because of the massive infighting in the government.

None of this is sahi vikas, contrary to the government’s slogan — saaf niyat, sahi vikas — that it had unleashed on unsuspecting citizens at the completion of its four years of being in power. It was rather curious that the PM, who made “vikas” (which could either mean growth or development) as the singlepoint agenda when he campaigned in 2014, had chosen to add the word “sahi” in the new slogan. By adding sahi, the PM was presumably wriggling out of any direct questioning on economic growth as measured by the gross domestic product. It was understandable because GDP growth under his government is not too different from the much-reviled UPAII. By prefixing sahi, the focus now is on desirable or correct growth/development.

However, even if one was to keep questions on niyat (or intentions) aside, key policy decisions of this government can be questioned on the correctness or desirability of their approach. One big problem with Mr Modi’s approach to development is that one policy after another places the proverbial cart before the horse. For instance, for sanitation under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the entire focus has been on physically creating toilets. As some researchers have shown, this has led to many toilets being created — both on paper and on the ground — without really achieving the objective of sanitation. Why? Because the behavioural change was largely ignored. Moreover, the other aspects of sanitation have been completely ignored. A rather ironic and unfortunate tale is the plight of manual scavengers, who are still crying hoarse at the government's abject neglect. In Jan Dhan Yojana, too, the government felt that merely opening bank accounts was enough to create financial inclusion. Again, behavioural aspects and infrastructural inadequacies were largely ignored. Another, patently incorrect development (or galat vikas) was the formulation of UDAY, a policy that the government claimed would resolve the crisis in the power sector. But this too failed to suss out the real issue holding back the power sector in India: Lack of pricing reforms.

There are other policy examples but let me end with the government’s odd approach to job creation. While independent researchers suggest that increasingly economic growth in India is creating fewer jobs and that steps like demonetisation have actually led to job losses, the government, instead of understanding these issues, continues to harp on payroll data. Independent scholars are at their wit’s end trying to explain the difference between formal jobs and informal self-employment or indeed between formalisation of existing jobs as against creation of fresh ones, but to no avail.

Which part in all of this constitutes “sahi vikas”, Mr Modi?