The power of focus

An Indian prime minister's job is daunting by almost any yardstick, writes Kanika Datta

With the 2019 elections looming, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoped to catch a little of the stardust of his predecessor when he opted to walk the 5 km route behind the funeral cortege of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This was ironic, given the distinctly uneasy relationship between the two in their heydays. The differing shade of their saffron politics is not the only distinguishing factor between India’s most polarising prime minister and one who drew admiration across the ideological spectrum. One is considered to have mismanaged the Indian economy big time; the other was remembered as a competent economic manager.

Without straying into details of GDP growth under two National Democratic Alliance regimes and two United Progressive Alliance ones — the subject of intense social media polemic ever since news of the back-series appeared — it is obvious that Mr Modi is aware of his failings in the very area in which he was supposed to have been a champion. As he trudged, visibly tired and windblown, behind Mr Vajpayee’s flag-covered coffin in the humid heat, it was hard to escape the notion that he could have spared himself the trouble had he emulated his predecessor’s shrewd minimalism in economic policy-making.

An Indian prime minister’s job is daunting by almost any yardstick. A million mutinies and a billion argumentative Indians confront anyone who opts for this designation. No one would have known this better than Mr Vajpayee, a dispassionate surveyor of the chaotic political scene in multicultural India from Jawaharlal Nehru’s time.

So, like his good friend P V Narasimha Rao, the other prime minister who is considered one of India’s best, he understood the power of focus and chose his battles accordingly. Mr Narasimha Rao’s hand was forced by a balance of payments crisis to dismantle the licence-permit raj and open India to foreign investment. That was Mr Vajpayee’s economic inheritance, so to speak, and he chose to enhance it by focusing on a handful of policies.

The biggest, which commentators wrote about extensively after he died, was the Golden Quadrilateral, in its time the biggest infrastructure project in post-independence India, to connect Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. To fund this, he commandeered existing road funds raised from cesses and, most importantly, empowered B C Khanduri, minister of surface transport, to get things done. Empowerment in this case meant a direct line to the PMO. The progress was neither perfect nor linear — which project in India ever is? — and the original project was completed only in the UPA’s time. But it certainly set the dynamics for one of the most visible changes in India.  

Disinvestment was the other major plan, and under Arun Shourie, the government jettisoned all the absurd complexities of bundling and unbundling that hindered the early attempts at privatisation and openly opted for privatisation that saw hotels and natural resources companies pass into private hands. His government also ended the senseless feud under the H D Deve Gowda/I K Gujral governments with Suzuki for control of India’s largest car-maker, eventually exiting altogether. Disinvestment proceeds even crossed the target in one year. Again, the process was not flawless, as wily private promoters tried to game the system, prompting CBI investigations many years later. But no regime since has achieved quite the same traction on disinvestment.

India may not have been shining at the end of Mr Vajpayee’s third term in office but it looked a lot less tarnished than before he took charge. The UPA, which unexpectedly beat the NDA coalition against all odds thanks to a better choice of allies, rode the global boom that lifted all boats in the first term, and then proceeded to sink into the Slough of Despond in the second term by serial corruption scandals and slow-footed economic management.

“Policy Paralysis” was the accusation then, and the energetic Mr Modi rode to power promising development and jobs, projecting himself as the anti-thesis of the tired, corrupt regime in power. But he did so by adopting one of its worst practices. This was to dissipate his energies by launching a barrage of schemes. Some of them were new labels of old ones, all accompanied by heavy propaganda. The initials grew longer and progressively more unwieldy as the days went by without any noticeable dent on jobs and development. Here is a shortlist: Swachh Bharat, Digital India, Startup India, Make in India, MUDRA, Jan Dhan Yojana, DDUGJY (Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana), PMUY (Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana), UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana), UDAN (Ude Desh K Aam Nagrik), PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana)…

The upshot of this scattershot approach is that the pluses — the creation of the bankruptcy architecture and the auction of natural resources — have been subsumed by the things for which Mr Modi wants to be least remembered: Demonetisation and the rushed implementation of the Goods and Services Tax. Moving beyond these setbacks ahead of 2019 will take more than a long march.