Promise of a new India

PM's message was for an increasingly prosperous nation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort hit all the right notes and was clearly, also, a ramp-up to his general election campaign. The speech was his fifth as prime minister and thus his last before going back to the people and facing re-election. This was highlighted by his choice of base year — 2013, which was just before he took office. He has, over the four previous speeches, used this occasion to launch or defend major policy initiatives. Swachh Bharat, Make in India, and so on were introduced on previous such speeches; and last year the speech extensively defended the government’s two big economic moves of demonetisation and the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST. This year’s speech was no exception. Mr Modi projected himself as an impatient agent of change and pledged to carry on the tasks he had started in 2014 — keeping up the pace of economic reforms and the time-bound implementation of schemes that would help usher in a new India by 2022, besides cutting corruption and improving the quality of living. As expected, he declared that a new health provision scheme would be rolled out next month. The new scheme is likely to be a major part of the ruling party’s appeal to the electorate in the campaign season.

It could be argued that India has reached a certain stage of development where the formation of more advanced systems of social protection is inevitable. India’s existing welfare state is geared towards the basics: Preventing deaths by starvation, ensuring enrolment in primary and middle school, and so on. As the population of a developing country becomes richer, however, the demands on the state become more complex. Health care becomes an issue, including hospitalisation — what the new scheme is due to address. The quality of education, not just its provision, becomes a subject of debate. More efficient public infrastructure is demanded, even in previously smaller towns and cities. In other words, citizens expect their public spaces and services will match their own increasing private consumption. That the latter has grown considerably is one of the lessons of the recent round of the National Family Health Survey. The 2015-16 round of the survey has shown that two-thirds of Indians own a television set and almost a third own a refrigerator. This is particularly true in the largest urban centres.

Yet the purpose of building better infrastructure, whether social or physical, is not just to match private consumption or the demands of those in society who are increasingly better off, but to also ensure that the benefits of growing prosperity are more evenly spread. The NFHS round examining household possessions also indicates vast regional and social disparities. The north-west and the south of the country have reached a certain level of prosperity; the east and plainest heartland of the north are largely left out, with the possible exception of Mizoram and the Kolkata metropolitan area. Bihar, Assam and Eastern Uttar Pradesh are particular laggards in terms of private asset ownership. Thus, it is vital, as the state expands and diversifies its responsibilities in response to India becoming more middle-class, that questions of geographic and social disparities are constantly kept in mind. In his speech, Mr Modi has done well to emphasise the speed at which his government has and will move on developmental work in all parts of the country.