Columnists
Did someone say we need a Government?
While the BJP claims to have taken several well-intentioned policy moves, the fact is that most of its schemes have been repackaged and it is nowhere towards improving governance
Typically, after a political party has contested the elections and has managed to get elected to power, there is a swift but unmistakable change in priorities that dawns upon the party in power. The party realises that it has to switch from loud and colourful speeches to the hard, not so glamorous and trying world of governing. Governing involves commitment, focus and a desire to see long-term change. It appears, however, that no one gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) this memo and going into its final year of Government, one would not be blamed to think that the past few years have just been a prolonged and frankly exhausting election campaign by the BJP.
In this column, I will attempt to examine how the BJP has gone about its attempt at governing our great nation which is facing a multitude of issues of public concern. These complex and extremely important issues range from food security, lack of employment, to ensuring financial stability and require a delicate and concerted effort by the Government in power. However, the BJP has adopted its own unique approach to governance.
Judge a book by its cover: A popular tactic of the BJP Government, led by Prime Minister Modi, is to rebrand existing schemes and policies that were put in place by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-led by the Congress. Shashi Tharoor has pointed out that close to 23 policies that the BJP Government claimed to have introduced were just policies and schemes that had been introduced by the UPA in the past. For example, the ‘Sardar Patel National Urban Housing Mission’ was essentially the ‘Rajiv Awas Yojana’. In fact, Parliamentary Committees that have been formed after the BJP came to power, have asked how simply changing the name of the scheme could help improve on the scheme or its implementation? Many have asked the same question about the other 22 schemes as well, but it seems like the Prime Minister and the BJP Government does not have the answer or are distracted by the next shiny scheme. The problem with this, of course, is that it indicates laziness on the part of the Government, wherein existing policies are neither improved upon or improving its implementation and, instead, much of the time is spent on finding catchy names for existing policies to help distract from the fact that things have not been improved upon by the existing Government.
Attention deficit disorder: To be fair, the BJP Government has not only ‘rechristened’ the schemes that were introduced by Governments of the past as their own but has also brought up a few new initiatives and schemes which it has marketed repeatedly. The only problem for this Government is that the easy part of any initiative is to make the announcement. The difficult part, however, is to follow through on the goals of the scheme and to ensure that such schemes actually benefit the people it is targeting. On that ground, this Government has singularly failed. In order to highlight these deficiencies, let’s look at the examples below.
Swachh Bharat: The ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ (SBA) was launched by the Prime Minister with great fanfare as he announced that “a clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150 birth anniversary in 2019”. The way things are progressing, however, it appears that the tribute to the father of the nation will not be a fitting one. The primary aim of the SBA is to encourage cleanliness. In order to determine whether this programme has been a success or failure, one can look at the impact of the scheme on the health of the community. Therefore, it is useful to see how the SBA has helped impact outbreaks of epidemics.
Although the scheme was and continues to be marketed relentlessly by the BJP, in terms of actual numbers on the ground, progress has been dismal. As per reports and studies that have been conducted, there is statistically no difference between the outbreak of epidemics before the introduction of the scheme and after. This is despite initially allocating huge funds to the scheme. Funds too, however, remain unutilised and does not appear to be reaching the appropriate areas. This, coupled with the fact that as part of the Budget this year, the Government has cut funding towards the National Health Mission, indicates that the Government is causing irreparable damage to the healthcare situation in our country. Therefore, in terms of achieving or making any progress to improve healthcare, the Government appears to talk the talk but is unable to walk to the walk.
Smart cities: Another initiative that the Government and the Prime Minister threw their weight behind is the ‘Smart City Mission’. Just like many other ‘initiatives’ that are close to the Prime Minister’s heart, the Smart City Mission has been a failure till now. In terms of pure numbers, as of January 2018, only 5.2 per cent of the total identified projects that were identified as part of the scheme have been completed and only 1.4 per cent of the total predicted investment of Rs 1,35,958 crore has been utilised!
The duration of this Smart City Mission is from financial year 2015-16 to 2019-20. We are in March of 2018 and as per statistics, 72 per cent of the identified projects are still at the stage of preparation of the project report for these projects. These are troubling numbers and makes one wonder if the Government is, in fact, serious about this initiative or if this is just another example of the Government’s attention deficit disorder.
A gobar approach: If you’ve heard the Prime Minister speak, you must have heard one of his infamous acronyms. Ranging from mildly amusing to absolutely ridiculous, some may argue that these acronyms are harmless fun and are essentially a way in which the Prime Minister aims to put across complex ideas simply. This argument could have been taken in the initial stages of the Prime Minster’s attempts at word play but currently, it borders on the absurd. Furthermore, recent examples of the use of such acronyms such as ‘TOP’ by the Prime Minister, which stands for Tomatoes, Onions and Potatoes, caused much amusement but betray a lack of seriousness that the Government seems to have towards issues of governance that do not require levity but serious examination. The problem, however, is that it appears as though the Government is more concerned about catching headlines or making twitter friendly acronyms rather than spending actual time and effort to govern.
Another example of the affinity that the Government has for acronyms is the Gobar-Dhan scheme, which stands for ‘Galvanising Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan scheme’. The Gobar scheme was announced during the Budget this year and focuses on converting cattle dung and solid waste to biogas, compost and bio-CNG. In terms of details regarding the Gobar scheme, we have little else to go by other than the words of the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister. However, I hope that the Government aims to follow through on this scheme and ensure that the goals of the scheme are met through concerted and committed action.
Ironically though, if the Gobar scheme is just another catch phrase scheme, which is forgotten about till the next acronym friendly scheme is announced, Gobar could be the most appropriate metaphor for the all-talk-no-action approach of employed by the Government.
(The writer, Jharkhand PCC president, is a former MP and IPS officer. Views expressed are personal and entirely of the writer.)
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