Indians trust in Govt highest
Below is a relevant piece by Tavleen Singh. Since this circle is open for criticism, can we discuss how the Modi Govt should go to maximum governance minimum government?
We do not need foreigners to confirm that Narendra Modi remains very popular. The results from Uttar Pradesh confirmed this already. But, for what it is worth, a recent survey by Forbes magazine puts India at the top of countries with ‘the most confidence/trust in their government’. The survey found that 73 per cent of Indians trust the Modi government. If a similar survey were done in newspaper offices and TV studios, the result would have been very different. It is true that there are a handful of ‘nationalistic’ news channels today that believe criticism of the Prime Minister amounts to treason, but by and large my fellow travellers in hackdom continue to despise Modi. I know this because of the taunting that I routinely face for being a ‘Modi bhakt’.
My strenuous opposition to cow vigilantes hunting and killing Muslims has caused me to be abused viciously on Twitter by other Modi bhakts, but in media circles I am seen as a supporter of Modi. It is true that in this column I have often shown support for certain things he has done. I totally support the abolition of the Planning Commission, the Swachh Bharat and Beti Bachao programmes. I totally support the Prime Minister’s emphasis on planned urbanisation and the recognition that India is not going to be primarily rural much longer. But, the real reason for my support is that politically I am a conservative and economically right wing. I believe India could have been the richest country in the world if we had not been held back by Nehruvian socialism. In my view, the economic reforms done by P V Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh in the early Nineties brought the only real prosperity India has ever seen.
So when candidate Modi talked of withdrawing the State from business and giving us ‘more governance and less government’, it was music to my ears. I had hoped that by this midway point in his term, the Prime Minister would have delivered on those promises. Air India should not just have been sold long ago but officials responsible for building up losses of nearly Rs 50,000 crore should be named and punished. If Vijay Mallya can be punished for not paying up Rs 9,000 crore, then why should Air India officials not be punished too?
If the Prime Minister meant what he said about government not having any business to be in business, then we should by now have at least seen government hotels sold. In Delhi alone there are at least three government hotels that are decaying before our eyes, and they sit on some of the most expensive real estate in India. The three are the Akbar, the Centaur and the Samrat. The NITI Aayog is said to have drawn up a list of public sector companies that need to be got rid of, so why have we seen so little action?
On the ‘more governance, less government’ front we have seen the opposite happen. BJP chief ministers have led the charge by snooping into people’s kitchens to see what kind of meat was being cooked and by making such a noise about cows that it is surprising there has not been more vigilantism in the name of our holy cows. Beef hysteria whipped up this way resulted not just in shameful lynchings, but the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in industries related to cattle. Traditional animal fairs like the one held for centuries in Pushkar will probably not survive for long. The worst of it is that the industries threatened with closure employ very poor people.
The Prime Minister routinely urges overseas Indians to come back and invest in making in India. And there has been much hullabaloo about government-sponsored entrepreneurship programmes. They have not worked because governments cannot create entrepreneurs. Indians are among the most enterprising people in the world and for decades they have been held down by socialist policies that give officials the power to interfere in the minutiae of running businesses. The reason why overseas Indians have not flocked back to invest in the homeland and why Indian businessmen are not investing either is because the atmosphere is not as ‘business-friendly’ as the Prime Minister appears to believe it is.
Meanwhile, we have seen such an explosion of cultural conservatism that it is making India look quite ridiculous. The recent effort by the Censor Board to snip words out of a documentary on Amartya Sen is an example of this. So if the Censor Board and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting were abolished in one fell swoop, it would send an important message. These are relics of socialist times when officials behaved like thought policemen. There are other government departments that deserve the chop and the sooner this happens the more real governance there might be. more
We do not need foreigners to confirm that Narendra Modi remains very popular. The results from Uttar Pradesh confirmed this already. But, for what it is worth, a recent survey by Forbes magazine puts India at the top of countries with ‘the most confidence/trust in their government’. The survey found that 73 per cent of Indians trust the Modi government. If a similar survey were done in newspaper offices and TV studios, the result would have been very different. It is true that there are a handful of ‘nationalistic’ news channels today that believe criticism of the Prime Minister amounts to treason, but by and large my fellow travellers in hackdom continue to despise Modi. I know this because of the taunting that I routinely face for being a ‘Modi bhakt’.
My strenuous opposition to cow vigilantes hunting and killing Muslims has caused me to be abused viciously on Twitter by other Modi bhakts, but in media circles I am seen as a supporter of Modi. It is true that in this column I have often shown support for certain things he has done. I totally support the abolition of the Planning Commission, the Swachh Bharat and Beti Bachao programmes. I totally support the Prime Minister’s emphasis on planned urbanisation and the recognition that India is not going to be primarily rural much longer. But, the real reason for my support is that politically I am a conservative and economically right wing. I believe India could have been the richest country in the world if we had not been held back by Nehruvian socialism. In my view, the economic reforms done by P V Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh in the early Nineties brought the only real prosperity India has ever seen.
So when candidate Modi talked of withdrawing the State from business and giving us ‘more governance and less government’, it was music to my ears. I had hoped that by this midway point in his term, the Prime Minister would have delivered on those promises. Air India should not just have been sold long ago but officials responsible for building up losses of nearly Rs 50,000 crore should be named and punished. If Vijay Mallya can be punished for not paying up Rs 9,000 crore, then why should Air India officials not be punished too?
If the Prime Minister meant what he said about government not having any business to be in business, then we should by now have at least seen government hotels sold. In Delhi alone there are at least three government hotels that are decaying before our eyes, and they sit on some of the most expensive real estate in India. The three are the Akbar, the Centaur and the Samrat. The NITI Aayog is said to have drawn up a list of public sector companies that need to be got rid of, so why have we seen so little action?
On the ‘more governance, less government’ front we have seen the opposite happen. BJP chief ministers have led the charge by snooping into people’s kitchens to see what kind of meat was being cooked and by making such a noise about cows that it is surprising there has not been more vigilantism in the name of our holy cows. Beef hysteria whipped up this way resulted not just in shameful lynchings, but the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in industries related to cattle. Traditional animal fairs like the one held for centuries in Pushkar will probably not survive for long. The worst of it is that the industries threatened with closure employ very poor people.
The Prime Minister routinely urges overseas Indians to come back and invest in making in India. And there has been much hullabaloo about government-sponsored entrepreneurship programmes. They have not worked because governments cannot create entrepreneurs. Indians are among the most enterprising people in the world and for decades they have been held down by socialist policies that give officials the power to interfere in the minutiae of running businesses. The reason why overseas Indians have not flocked back to invest in the homeland and why Indian businessmen are not investing either is because the atmosphere is not as ‘business-friendly’ as the Prime Minister appears to believe it is.
Meanwhile, we have seen such an explosion of cultural conservatism that it is making India look quite ridiculous. The recent effort by the Censor Board to snip words out of a documentary on Amartya Sen is an example of this. So if the Censor Board and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting were abolished in one fell swoop, it would send an important message. These are relics of socialist times when officials behaved like thought policemen. There are other government departments that deserve the chop and the sooner this happens the more real governance there might be. more
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Oct 31
Unfortunately it is true that Congress who ruled our country for more than 5 decades became emboldened and gave corruption by its party workers a free hand. However it is a fact that the congress leaders against whom corruption charges were leveled were instrumental in bringing in development(though at a higher cost). The Bridges and underpasses and town planning done during congress rule is a proof of their work.Several projects which were at the finishing stage, BJP claimed credit for the same on completion as they came into power in the center. It is a fact that almost all the News Channels now toe the line of the I & B Ministry now in hands of BJP at center and mostly there is a projection (misleading at many times) about the reforms which though planned originally by the Congress and the BJP had vehemently opposed it tooth and nail is now being usurped and those ideas and plans are now being rolled out as their own think tank. If you see our country now....it was never so divided on caste line as it is now. We are not able to contain one Kashmir but if the free hand given to the cow vigilantes and the witch-hunting of minorities continues, we may see many Kashmirs in different states.... this is how because of overconfidence the USSR ( Soviet Union or Russia as you may know it) became fragmented into CIS now. When a party is in power at the center, it has a complete hold on all agencies. Can you justify how 22 ministers of AAP were immediately booked on charges of rape...with not even the victim identified but simply on a complaint this was done. And a Gujarat MLA who came all the way to Ghaziabad, when a woman filed a complaint of rape against him, the authorities instead did a turn around and arrested the woman filing a case of extortion on her and absolving the minister. Similar complaint was lodged against another senior BJP Leader who took a researcher to a Gurgaon farmhouse and molested her but even that case was swept under the carpet. Did the P.M. utter even a simple word of sympathy or convey his pain at the 200 + deaths which happened due to demonetization? No... some sacrifices are a must for a gain and all who toe this line can do so because their parents, sister or kith and kin did not queue up for withdrawal or depositing old currency. I was near RBI to see what was happening in February as I had a couple of old Rs.500/- notes which I discovered in my old travel bag ( left over from my last tour spending ). One lady approached me seeking help in exchanging old notes offering me 30% commission....her distress was evident. On inquiry I found that that lady's old mother had saved up money for marriage of her son and daughter and most currencies were in the old Rs.100, 500 & 1000 which became obsolete. This savings came to light only in January and after that the lady was running circles trying to get her mothers savings exchanged...like this there would be many people...rural folks who did not have a bank account.... the hosiery manufacturers at Tirupur ( Tamil Nadu ) saw exodus of Bihari workers in the wake of demonetization and they never returned. The story is the same in many industrial units....farmers suicide has never been so much but who is bothered? The P.M. did not mention or reassure the T.N. farmers who were in Delhi protesting for a month but our PM went abroad on his visits. Though I am for development, I am yet to be convinced that this Government can usher in true reforms which can lead our country in establishing itself - rather from the look of it, the P.M. seems to be doing all the exercise of establishing himself as a Global Leader...who knows if he gets a better opportunity, he may transition from India to some world body...sacrificing India for greater glory. more
Jul 20
Trusting a government or opposing it is a matter of personal choice. We do not know Modi personally and so any opposition to him or his policies is based on what outcome they give. For example, we know demonetization has failed in holding black money though Modi claims otherwise. Such things will continue in democracy. Modi and his appeasers such as you need not bother about that. Appreciation and criticism are part of this game. more
Jul 19
