Why Modi government is laden with policy failures?

Arun Shourie, former union minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's NDA government once said: "A person who is psychologically secure will not be nervous of any situation and a person who is psychologically insecure will never allow others who have a base of expertise to come near (him)."

If we look at the last few years of Indian governance, India has been slowly sliding downhill with respect to government policy. Most of the policies are either hurriedly formulated in a haste or implemented worst. A policy ideally should be able to stand the test of hindsight i.e. it must be looked back in appreciation long after being implemented. Most of the policies have not been able to stand the test of hindsight in recent years, rather they have been colossal failures, hurting the country. A classic example of a government public policy that stood the test of hindsight is Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). It is an Indian labour and social security measure that aims to guarantee the 'right to work'. It was passed in 2005 by the then UPA government led by Dr Manmohan Singh. This policy helped pull around 273 million people out of abject poverty from 2005-2015, which led to the World Bank calling it a stellar example of rural development. Another revolutionary policy was the Right to Information (RTI) act. It helped in increasing transparency and made the government accountable. There are a few more but let's focus on the failure in policy part for now.

Let's first look at the big policies that we came up with but turned out to be a failure. Right from the bat comes the name of Goods & Service Tax (GST). Hailed as the biggest economic reform since liberalization, it made a lot of noise but the shoddy formulation and implementation made sure it did more harm than good. Experts believe the policymakers need to go back to the drawing room and redo the whole system. Too many slabs and too many exceptions are making it complex, opposite to what it set out to achieve. Another reform to curb black money prior to GST was the demonetization exercise in which 500 rupee and 1000 rupee tenders were deemed not legal. Again, it led to widespread pain the informal economy of the country, eventually severely hurting the Indian economy and India's consumption story, while it is safe to say it had no real effect on the black money ecosystem, it has certainly led to high levels of unemployment in the economy. How does massive unemployment affects an economy is well known and we are witnessing the consequences of it now. The Insolvency and bankruptcy code (IBC) is a step towards the right direction but we need to wait and see how it pans out in hindsight.

So why is it that so many policy failures are being witnessed in recent years? There are many answers to this but leadership comes right at the top. From the last six years, the government at the centre is NDA government run by PM Modi. Now we have all heard the story of struggles that led him to be PM from Chaiwallah to PM, nobody has any proof of it but that's what he says so we will take it on face value. Modi government is considered to be strong as it received majority on its own without any allies. This majority gives them enormous powers to bring in legislation and pass laws. They have the right kind of mandate to push with reforms. But on the contrary we see a lot of hasty policy decisions and then in hindsight it looks failed. This government is criticized by many intellectuals including Mr Shourie, who was a cabinet minister in Vajpayee government, as highly centralized and the ministers do not have much say or freedom to do anything. Almost all decisions are taken from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and nothing moves without its consent. The centralization of power is usually a trademark of strongmen leaders who do not trust, or have faith in their ministers to do the right job.

While centralization does make sure everything is looked by the PMO, it is in fact not the best practice. Centralization leads to the government not using most of its minister's know how and expertise, while pushing the policy without much deliberation. Since the PM is the only person who takes the call, the decision doesn't remain democratic and inclusive. Take for instance an episode like Demonetization. RBI's letter later mentioned, it advised the government against demonetization. Also, many ministers including the finance minister were acting as if they are shell shocked with the decision. Historical data suggests a well thought out, deliberated, democratic and open decision passes the test of time and seldom goes wrong, whereas decisions taken in haste and without proper consultation mostly backfires.

Another reason that seems to be derailing the policy aspect of governance is the overly emphasized focus on optics. We all know how Mr. Modi likes to be in the limelight, he is one of very few politicians who have learnt the art of media headline management. While this media management can help win elections to an extent but doesn't take away the meticulous work and thought process that goes into formulation of a government policy. A government policy needs the best minds putting in a lot of thought process, discussions, debates and innate understanding of the ground level problem that the policy is looking to tackle. Unfortunately, these cannot be substituted by a well-planned media event. We have so many examples of this like Make in India, Digital India, Stand-up India, Start-up India etc. All these programs were launched with much fanfare around massive media and event management but unfortunately, we don't even hear about them now. Thus, a lack of coherent well planned and thought-out long-term strategy is also contributing towards policy failures.

Policies that are only formulated to contribute to the Prime Minister's advertisement campaign and election winning strategy have been seen to have a short shelf life. Off late we have seen many programs being launched without full budgetary allocation just to put banners and advertisements everywhere. The government usually end up spending almost half of the program's budget on advertisements to prop up Mr. Modi's image. 'Pradhan Mantri Kisan Yojna' is a prime example. It was launched just a month before the general election and payments were made retrospectively by two months. Actually, if you see closely most of the 'Pradhan Mantri Yojnas' in the last few years have been more of a propaganda tool than actually benefiting people on ground. Take for instance 'Ujjwala Yojna' which gave gas cylinders to poor households. It was launched with much fanfare and amidst media glare but the policymakers never thought the refilling cost of cylinders is so much that it can't be afforded by the people who are supposed to be benefiting out of that policy. Eventually the beneficiary could never refill the cylinder and went back to original earthen stove burning wood etc, to cook food.

Mr. Modi unlike his predecessors Dr Manmohan Singh and Mr Vajpayee doesn't believe in social harmony as a driving force towards nation building. While this is not a policy related point but is really important in today's context. Mr. Modi's government has caused a kind of social upheaval in the society whether knowingly or unknowingly is debatable. There is high level of polarization in the society. People even fight at home due to this polarization related to communal tensions, policy differentials and overall love and hate of their leader. This has never been seen before in post liberalized India, a shade of this was visible in Indira Gandhi. An individual PM has become more important than a country. Whenever an individual becomes so polarizing and causes an upheaval in the society, the society feels divided and historically a divided society has never prospered collectively. A divided and polarized society is never happy and optimistic. Their hope gets tied to an individual rather than their country. This explains the slippage in India's ranking in happiness index and other important indicators that reflects the health of a democracy.

Let's talk about the governance breakdown during this public health crisis of Coronavirus. India was fairly insulated after the coronavirus wreaked havoc throughout the world. India had plenty of time at hand to deal with this situation by carefully preparing in advance. India reported its first case in January, yet we went ahead inviting world leader for his 'Namaste Trump' rally in Ahmedabad putting hundred and thousands of people together in a stadium in close proximity neglecting any social distancing norm. Later Mr. Modi addressed the nation many times but it was some carefully thought out even management task given to 'balcony' owning people either to bang utensils, or light candles etc. Now of course these measures were not going to help curb coronavirus or save us from it. So, the virus started spreading leading to Mr. Modi again addressing the nation and without any prior notice locking down the entire country in a span of four hours (very much like demonetization). As citizen we would think that our government must have thought about the repercussions of its decision with the almost unlimited state machinery at its disposal. But this again turned out to be a hasty decision and India saw its worst migration since independence, where people were forced to walk many a mile to go back to their villages and hometown having been let go by their employers. Many people died during this man-made disaster of a decision. Later the same government after almost two months of people walking on streets arranged trains to take them home. This clearly shows the lockdown was again a show and spectacle by the government without any thinking or knowledge about its populous. We did not even utilize the lockdown period to prepare ourselves for the pandemic but thought that lockdown is akin to cure i.e. the lockdown is going to remove coronarius. This turned out to be another failure on the part of the government and upon unlocking the virus again started spreading like wildfire. Now India is in the top four countries suffering from this pandemic.

Our foreign policy has been in tatters and remains badly exposed. All our immediate neighbours with whom we share our sovereign borders have become hostile towards us. This wasn't the case always. Nepal the only other country with a Hindu majority population also went against us. Reasons some say is the hostility shown by the Modi government by putting a blockade on Nepal in its first term. Sri-Lanka has moved its loyalties to China ever since Mr. Modi came to power. China has already been in confrontation with us twice, once in Dokhlam and now deadly clashes and military build-up in Ladakh. It is a separate topic on what is causing India-China stand-off around LAC but the India-China border tension is becoming a new normal. This is leading to boycott made in china calls from nationalists while the liberals are saying PM Modi has undermined India's interests by refuting Chinese intrusion into Indian territory. All this after Mr. Modi visited China a total of nine times and five times as Prime Minister. While all this happens how are we as a country going to manoeuvre our way through this geopolitical conundrum? Answers are hard to find. 

Conclusion:

Government and public policy are a serious business and needs to be undertaken with unhinged focus and clarity of thought. It needs immense amount of back-end work, research, trials, before being fully formulated and implemented. Once we start diverting our attention towards event management and not so much on the policy, the diversion causes hasty and botched up formulation of policies which then transcends into failure. Excessive centralization of power in the PMO is not a good sign for public policy. Policies need the combined wisdom of a lot of intellectually stimulating minds coming together to study, discuss, debate and improve upon a certain policy framework. Once you centralize it to an extent where no minister is left with any powers to even know about which policy is going to be implemented when, this system becomes dangerous. Our forefathers put this process of parliamentary democracy after much thought and centralization of power is never inherent to it. Mr. Vajpayee had one of the best cabinet India has ever had. That decentralization of power is what India needs. It's too big a country to be managed by a single person.