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Overwhelming mandate presents Modi with an opportunity to tackle bad debts in state-owned banks

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stunning performance in the recent Assembly elections puts him in the sweet spot to pursue economic and administrative reforms that can substantively boost investments and jobs, his core poll promise since 2014. Several of these reforms are low-hanging fruit, and others may be tougher and demand a longer term agenda. Both varieties are, however, within the realm of possibility in the afterglow of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) huge popular mandate in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh and the fact that it now controls more than half the country’s state legislatures, on its own or