The 2020 vision

Without economic growth, Mr Modi will struggle to fulfil his agenda

India’s economic growth has been slowing steadily over the past several quarters and forecasts suggest there is little reason to believe it will pick up in the foreseeable future. In this same period, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s headline actions have been focused on fulfilling the social agenda that delivered two massive majorities in Parliament.  But his party’s shrinking footprint in the states ought to offer him a timely pointer to the perils of prioritising the Hindutva manifesto at the expense of the economy. The fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) footprint has shrunk from 71 per cent of India’s land-mass to 35 per cent after the loss of Jharkhand, plumb in the middle of the uproar over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), is the most potent indicator of this dichotomy. He and Home Minister Amit Shah’s campaign in Jharkhand demonstrated an oblique understanding of this tribal electorate. Growing joblessness and the Naxalite menace are the chief concerns here; Mr Shah spoke instead of building a “sky-kissing” mandir in four months in Ayodhya. Earlier, in Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital, the party lost seats and failed to win a decisive majority on its own in spite of a booming stock market, enabling smaller rival parties, led by its own disgruntled pre-poll ally, to form a government despite the BJP’s attempts to dilute constitutional proprieties.

 

Both recent losses question Mr Modi’s understanding of the difference between national and state elections. It is possible for the former to be fought on the relatively abstract big ideas. But state elections typically involve bread-and-butter issues. This was already in evidence in Goa in 2017, and an engineered floor crossing in Karnataka. The party’s loss in the big three heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in December 2018 should have been a wake-up call, since the critical issue in all three was deepening rural distress induced in part by the 2016 demonetisation and the hurried implementation of the goods and services tax in 2017.

 

Apart from announcing an ephemeral farm income support scheme just before the code of conduct for 2019 Lok Sabha elections kicked in, Mr Modi had not absorbed the message from the ground. Instead, he embarked on a high-stakes gamble in sending the Indian Air Force into Pakistan and chose to interpret his commanding second parliamentary majority as a carte blanche for bigger, bolder Hindutva — reading down Article 370, turning Jammu & Kashmir into Union Territories, pushing through the CAA and announcing the National Population Register (NPR) exercise. As the pushback from non-BJP states and now even BJP allies to the CAA/NPR combo has shown, Mr Modi’s Hindutva project remains hostage to the states. His experience as chief minister of Gujarat should tell him that no social agenda can be achieved without setting the groundwork for economic success. He squandered the opportunity afforded by his party’s powerful grip on Indian states to push through the tough economic reforms (such as on land and labour laws) needed to offer India a sustainable growth momentum.  Now, by extending the “strong India” agenda to the economy — raising tariff barriers, for instance — he is doing the economy a lot of harm. Rising unemployment in a country as young as India represents both the dangers and the challenges Mr Modi faces going into 2020.