Prime Minister Modi Returns , 2019 : New Governance Agenda

This editorial reviews the historic mandate of India’s General Election of 2019, preceding nasty campaigns and futurist agenda for Mr Modi's second term.


Introduction
Elections have their place in [a] democracy, and it is the responsibility of the winner to take care of 130 crore people. Those who made us win or those who did not both are our (people). Kerala is as dear to me as Varanasi is 1 After a historic mandate of 23 May 2019 in the 17th Indian General (Lok Sabha) Election, the Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Damodar Das Modi visited Kerala to attend an Abhinandan Sabha 2 on 08 June 2019 organised by the Kerala unit of his party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the in Guruvayur where he made the above statement. Although the BJP has failed to win any seats in Kerala, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept the General Election 2019 winning 343 constituencies out of 542. 3 This is a clear win for Modi, personally and for his government. The BJP alone accomplished 303 constituencies as opposed to 52 by the Indian National Congress; 4 albeit the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) obtained 90 seats while the other 99 constituencies have been shared by so-called Mahagathbandhan (MGBan alliance of Bahujan Samaj Party and Samaj Badi Party, known as BSP+, who managed only 15 constituencies) and others-84. The detailed breakdown of the seat share is illustrated in Figure 1. Rash utterances, signature campaigns and slimy hatred, mime wars, arson, violence and killings have marred the elections. The Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee, a very bitter lady, went to the extent of calling PM Modi and Mr Amit Shah as goondas (Das,2019). 5 A group of about 600 theatre personalities and intellectuals signed a petition requesting the citizens of India to vote the incumbent government out of power urging the electorate to cast for "equality and social justice, and to defeat the forces of darkness and barbarism" (Dixit, 2019). Another group of 907 artists countered this petition and issued a joint letter entitled: Nation First Collective: an initiative by Creative Collective Trust pleading the voters to re-elect the NDA-led government (Sharma, 2019). The signatories stated: We, creative artists and persons belonging to the field of literature appeal to all our fellow citizens to cast their vote and exercise their right to elect the new Govt. without any pressure and prejudice.
We believe that during the last five years, India has seen a Govt. that has delivered corruption-free good governance and development-oriented administration. During this period, globally, India has acquired greater respect. It is our firm conviction that the continuance of Govt. led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the need of the hour.
Besides, when challenges like terrorism are before all of us, we need a "Majboot Sarkar" and not a "Mazboor Sarkar", and hence we need the present Govt. to continue (Dixit, 2019).
However, a day after the election results (that is, on 24 May 2019), in an article entitled Modi won power, not battle of ideas published in The New York Times, Amartya Sen was critical of the 5 a hired individual to commit a crime or cause damage performance of the first five years of the Modi government. He was also critical of the election of Ms Pragya Thakur from Bhopal, who was charged with the 2008 Malegaon blasts (Sen, 2019). Ideally, no accused should ever get into an avatar of a lawmaker.
There has been fierce criticism that a person with 'Hindu-terror' charges has won against a two-term former Chief Minister, Member of Parliament and a very influential person of the Congress, Mr Digvijaya Singh. Traditionally, Bhopal constituency has been a strong BJP bastion since 1989 with approximately 69 per cent of the population following the Hindu religion. Nuanced observation unveils that the opposition themselves are responsible for the win of Pragya Thakur by associating a heinous crime like 'terror' with Hindu religion, thereby fueling the emotional sentiments of the electorates of Bhopal. Indeed, to avoid antiincumbency but taking into consideration the winnability factors (such as class, caste and community), the BJP strategically steered a smart and a prudent move across the country in issuing tickets to the candidates. As a consequence, many sitting MPs were refused tickets. For example, Mr Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, who is a representative of the tea tribes and had won the 2014 General Election from Jorhat constituency, Assam was denied a ticket. Instead, the BJP fielded Mr Topon Kumar Gogoi, who hails from the Ahom community to contest against Mr Sushanta Borgohain of the INC, who also belong to the Ahom community. These pedantic strategies not only helped the BJP to an emphatic sweep but also increased the vote share from 31.1 per cent in 2014 to 37.4 per cent in 2019 (Election Commission of India). Interestingly, the vote share of the BJP in about 13 states (Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Delhi, Chandigarh and Arunachal Pradesh) was either equivalent or more than 50 per cent (Election Commission of India).
However, Pragya Thakur is not the only accused who was given a ticket; indeed, as per Arguably, Mr Modi's leadership, himself hailing from a humble background, chai wallah (tea seller) fits into the notion of 'counter-hegemony' (Pulla, 2017) as put forward by Antonio Gramsci (1999). According to Gramsci there are two faces of the notion hegemony: On the one hand it is contrasted with "domination" (and as such bound up with the opposition State/Civil Society) and on the other hand "hegemonic" is sometimes used as an opposite of "corporate" or "economic-corporate" to designate an historical phase in which a given group moves beyond a position of corporate existence and defence of its economic position and aspires to a position of leadership in the political and social arena (Gramsci, 1999: 20).
Mr Modi, who is considered as "the messiah (the saviour) of the poor" (Pulla, 2017: 4)  The key questions are, despite the indignant forms of abuses and criticisms against PM Modi and the NDA as a whole, why did the electorates manage to score a spectacular victory for the NDA and re-electing it for a second term-is it that the electorates have rejected the largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress and its PM face, Mr Rahul Gandhi?; or is it that PM Modi has been successful in reaffirming confidence amongst the electorates through some form of 'good governance' since 2014 visà-vis connection with the mass with its various flagship programmes/schemes, virtual connection through Mann Ki Baat (Heart's Voice) aired through All India Radio and Doordarshan; and revocation of some archaic statutes and amendment of some of the old legislation? Perhaps, the answer resides in the mixed bag of both.
Cascaded by the slogan-Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas (Collective Efforts, Inclusive Growth), the 2014 NaMo (Narendra Modi) wave emerged on the 'Gujarat Model of Development', which was played out as a synonym of Modinomics (for details, please see, Bhattacharyya, 2014) stemming from BJP's ideology of multidimensional progress and its inclusive vigour of For instances, Make in India "aims to build India a manufacturing hub under the mission -Manufacture in India and sell the products worldwide. Central to Make in India campaign is 'skill development' and 'creation of jobs' through the mobilisation of the 'youth power'" (Bhattacharyya, 2017: 1). Although it is unclear as to what extent his mission has been able to develop the skills of the youths and create jobs; but a job survey-Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2017-18 by the National Sample Survey Office's (NSSO) unravelled that unemployment rate is staggeringly high in 45 years, which stood at 6.1 per cent (rural areas: 5.3 per cent and urban areas: 7.8 per cent) and the participation of females in the labour market of urban areas at "the quarter ending December 2018 was 19.5%, compared with 73.6% for males". 10 Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest that Make in India has improved the ease of doing business in India. According to the latest World Bank Flagship report-Doing Business 2019: Training for Reform, India and China, the two emerging economies are amongst the top ten improvers of boosting business regulations. 11 Scoring 67.23 points, an improvement of +6.63, India ranks 77 (out of 190 economies) in the ease of doing business. In 2018, its rank was 100, which was a jump of 30 ranks from 2017. The indicators where the country improved its rank in 2019 from the previous year are-construction permits from 181rank to the 52nd position; trading across the borders from 146 positions to 80th rank; from 156th to 137th position in starting a business; there has been an improvement of seven points in getting credit (from 29th to 22nd position); similarly, there has been an improvement of five points in acquiring electricity (from 29 to 24th rank); and a meagre increase of enforcing contracts by one point (that is from 164th to 163rd position). 12 Similarly, under Clean India or Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which operates mainly under two ministries-Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (primarily) for rural areas; and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (urban) gained massive success in building toilets especially in the rural areas. As of 2014, nearly 600 million Indians used to defecate in open spaces (Bhattacharyya, 2014) (Frøystad, 2018;Lakshmi, 2015;Nathoo, 2015;Ramani, 2016). Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Toilet: A Love Story), the 2017 Bollywood film, directed by Shree Narayan Singh and coproduced by the Bollywood actor, Mr Akshay Kumar (who played the lead role) and Neeraj Pandey demonstrates the attitudes of the people succinctly in using toilets within their premises (Frøystad, 2018). Hence, simultaneous awareness building remains paramount for the successful execution of this mission.
As stated elsewhere, in its mission of 'social inclusiveness', the government has either revoked old legislation or taken initiatives to promulgate new ones. government has taken other significant steps to empower working women, the marginalised and the victims-be it, amendment of the Maternity Act from earlier 12 weeks to 26 weeks, provisions of work from home option, crèche facilities (please read, Singh, 2016); amendment of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act by awarding death penalty for the rape of minors below 12 years old (Singh, 2018); amendment of the Juvenile Justice Act ,2015 (Agarwal and Kumar, 2016) the need of which became paramount in the wake of the gang-rape of the 23-year-old Nirbhaya by six men in December 2012 (Bhattacharyya, 2015a;, where one of the perpetrators was a juvenile. Further, on 6 September 2018, the historic judgment passed by the Honourable Apex Court by decriminalising Article 377, 15 thereby legitimising consensual sexual acts amongst adults of the same sex (Kakoti Borah, 2018) obviously added indirect advantage to Modi's report card on 'good governance'. There is no doubt that the BJP was able to transcend the class/caste/religion divide-the results of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which previously used to garner votes through appeasement of caste and religion are evidence to this.
Two other radical moves taken by the Modi government has been implementation of Goods and Service Taxes (GST) aimed at streamlining the complex system of revenue collection (for a detailed understanding of this topic, please read Mahanta, 2016) and Demonetisation, through which the old currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1000 were withdrawn and replaced by new notes of ₹500 and ₹2000 (Pulla, 2016). Pegged at multiple rates, 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, and barring few goods-petroleum products, alcoholic drinks, real estate and electricity, the GST, which came into effect from 01 July 2017 witnessed a revenue collection of ₹900 billion for the period July 2017-March 2018, which further surged to 15 Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code was indeed a colonial piece of legislation introduced in 1864 during the British regime making homo sexual activities as illegal (Rajagopal, 2018). 16 Digital Payments: India, Statista . Retrieved on 21 June 2019 from, ₹1138.65 billion in April 2019, of which ₹ 211.63 billion is Central GST. The figure for State GST stood at ₹288.01 billion, while Integrated GST for April 2019 stood at ₹547.33 billion. Demonetisation, which aimed mainly at tackling black money, corruption and terrorism (Pulla, 2016), of course, had a robust but short term impact on the cash economy, the unorganised sector and micro, small and medium businesses. Although, it remains unclear as to whether the government could accomplish its demonetisation goals; that none of the political parties had 'curbing corruption' in their election manifestos demonstrates that because of the tightening of regulations in the government institutions, the pace of corruption has been slowly declining.
Nonetheless, the currency circulation, which was ₹17.78 trillion at the time of demonetisation drive in November 2016, has increased to ₹21.37 trillion in April 2019 (Alexander and Padmanabhan, 2019a). Besides, the cash-GDP ratio too is slightly lower when compared to the pre-demonetisation level-this ratio was 12.1 in 2015-2016, plummeted to 8.7 in 2016-2017 but surged to 11.2 in 2018-19 (Alexander and Padmanabhan, 2019a). However, one has to acknowledge that demonetisation has improved the cashless mode of the transaction (Bhattacharyya, 2017)-in 2019, the country's cashless transaction stood at the US $64,787million, which is obviously one of the roads to financial inclusion. 16 A 2018 report titled World Payments Report published by Capgemini also reveals that the country's cashless transaction, which has grown at 33.2 per cent stands second to Russia (36.5 per cent); China's cashless growth stands at 25.8 per cent, while South Africa's growth is at 15.1 per cent. 17 In the interim budget, 2019-2020, the then Minister of Finance, Mr Piyush Goyel, in his Budget Speech mentioned that "[i]n order to https://www.statista.com/outlook/296/119/digitalpayments/india 17 World Payments Report (2018). Capgemini. Retrieved on 21 June 2019 from, https://worldpaymentsreport.com/wpcontent/uploads/sites/5/2018/10/World-Payments-Report-2018.pdf promote a less cash economy, the presumptive profit rate has been reduced from 8% to 6%" (page 14). 18 The upcoming Budget should definitely levy lower tax rates to promote higher cashless transaction.
Before the demonetisation drive, another important flagship initiative launched by the Government was Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna-a scheme of financial inclusion of the poor (Singareddy et al., 2019). Launched under the Slogan-Mera Khatha, Bhagya Vidhatha (My Account would beget a good fortune) in August 2014, the scheme has made to the Guinness Book of World Records which stated: "[t]he most bank accounts opened in one week as a part of the financial inclusion campaign is 18,096,130 and was achieved by the Government of India from August 23 to 29, 2014". 19 As per available statistics, over 318 million bank accounts were opened under this scheme, which had a deposit of ₹792 billion (US$12 billion) (Singareddy et al., 2019). Although, there has been criticism that the majority of these bank accounts have remained inactive since its opening, however, the latest report published in The Hindu, Business Line (2019) unveils that: There has been a rise of up to 24 per cent in the average balance of these accounts across banks during the last one year, according to individual data available with major banks. Banks claim the surge is the highest so far.  (Sridhar, 2019) The report goes on to divulge that the percentage of zero balance accounts have reduced and currently stands in between 17-19 per cent (Sridhar, 2019).
One has to acknowledge that having an account even with zero balance is a strength in itself-a form of formal financial inclusion, which would ease an individual's woes when applying for loans for business or to become a beneficiary of a government/non-government programme including direct cash transfer. The implementation of Aadhar cards, a unique identity allowing biometric authentication, assigned to 1.24 billion people have only further strengthened the spine of the economy by reducing leakages and validating welfare delivery to the actual beneficiary (Padmanabhan, 2019). However, one has to confess that the concept of Aadhar was first propounded by the UPA (Padmanabhan, 2019).
Alongside, the hits and misses of the schemes of the NDA government, it is not to argue that the government under the UPA had a very poor economic scorecard. The comparison of some of the performance and slugfest of both the UPA and NDA are encapsulated in Table 1 households remain to be connected with electricity. 20 Evidently, the quality of these connectivities has been extremely poor with no regular supply (Alexander and Padmanabhan (2019b). It is saddening to witness that even the urban areas and metropolitan cities suffer from the 24X7 regular supply, steered by high fluctuations and load shedding.  ( (Choudhary, 2018). According to the official website, 7, 23, 25, 948 LPG connections have been made covering 714 districts. 21 Table 2 illustrates a detailed picture of the LPG connection. It is worth noting here that according to the Census of India (2011), while 72,435,303 households used kerosene as their key source of lighting, 897,760 households lived in darkness with no lighting facilities (Bhattacharyya,2015b). Despite the free LPG connection, the government continues to face challenges. This is simply because "LPG cylinders, even after subsidies, can be prohibitively costly for the poor. In addition, many households may simply be unaware about LPG's benefits; others may not know where to get a cylinder" (Alexander and Padmanabhan, 2019c).  (2018) programmes, the government should take initiatives for the implementation of a uniform civil code plus put an end to the ongoing Kashmir issue.