A lot of importance is laid on the first hundred days of any government. Thanks to former US president Franklin Roosevelt, this 100-days’ yardstick has become a measuring tape and weighing scale for any new dispensation that take charge. Roosevelt, who took the reigns of a sagging US in his hands during the Great Depression, is remembered for pulling the country back from the brink in just a sliver over three months, thus introducing before the desperate socio-economic and political auditors of the world, a litmus test for the new team at the helm. Modi won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with a sumptuous mandate, hence the expectations from him were and continue to remain high. We were force-fed that “achhe din aane wale hain (good days will soon come)” during the election campaign by the BJP. So, now let’s examine how Modi has fared so far, with the caveat that 100 days in a mammoth country like India is a pretentious and unreliable yardstick to evaluate a new government.
In my opinion, it will be premature to either be extra gung-ho or indifferent about Modi. However, credit must be given where it is due. Even if Modi beats drums for an evocative photo-op in Japan, he has little to drumbeat about at home in terms of economic revival as yet. Having said that, it is imperative to reiterate that it is still early days. But what he HAS been able to achieve is remarkable nevertheless and is priceless in the South Asian context. He has created an environment – almost a fear psychosis in the minds of government servants – where people have started taking their work seriously. That is a major, major achievement in an indolent society, where a government job was synonymous with “aish” (sorry, no language other than Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi can express this better). Government employees now are mandated to reach office by 9.30 am. Soon, biometric attendance registers will be installed at the entry gates of all government offices and the in-and-out times of each employee will be updated on his/her unique ID card called Aadhaar, like the CNIC card issued by NADRA in Pakistan. So, for the rest of his/her life, a government employees will know when s/he entered and exited office on a given day.
[quote]The whole world now knows that India doesn't have enough toilets[/quote]
I report for a leading Indian news channel, which means I roam the corridors of power and corporate houses alike. Ever since Modi has assumed office, government servants’ work is more streamlined, deadlines are met, requisite office hours are clocked, absenteeism is slowly being wiped away and they are mindful of the modern-day monitor, the closed-circuit camera watching them over. Modi, known for his liking for cleanliness, soon after taking charge, ordered a thorough clean-up of government offices, paan-spitting was strongly discouraged, old and unused papers/files were asked to be burnt and offices swept clean of needless junk. The PM has often been heard at public platforms advocating the need for better sanitisation. The whole world now knows that India doesn’t have enough toilets for its users. I was also rebuked by a Pakistani on Twitter recently that I should stop tweeting about the Azadi and Inquilab marches in Pakistan and concentrate on getting toilets built in India. Long-serving bureaucrats who were earlier chatty and informative, have suddenly been put on the silent mode. Journalists are facing a serious challenge in their news gathering process. All we can muster now in the name of news is from the vibration that these bureaucrats on the silent mode emit. Newly appointed ministers can’t appoint their personal assistants on their own without checking with the PM. Those bureaucrats who have been known to be close to the previous government, have been kept at an arms length from key offices. So quite the control freak, Modi.
The sense that I get when I meet people in the corporate world is that business sentiment in India is now much more positive than it was three months back when we had a PM who was one of the best known economists in the world. I hear similar, familiar lines like: “Modi is good for corporate India,” “foreign investors feel it will now be easier for them to do business with India”, etc. Pity, Modi’s predecessor’s fancy degrees in economics and a World Bank job experience didn’t get investors this confidence that comes from a man who has no educational training in business or economics, but hails from a community which is known to sell a comb to a bald man. The Gujarati community. Modi’s recent trip to Japan ended in an Ikebana of monetary takeaways for India. And we thought foreign policy was his weak point.
Yes, foreign policy in the Pakistani and Indian context is incomplete without a strategy to deal with one another. Modi surprised one and all when he invited Pakistan PM Mian Nawaz Sharif to New Delhi to be a part of his oath-taking ceremony. A shawl for your mother, a saree for mine followed. Much love. Starved of such warm gestures, Indians and Pakistanis populated the social media with the familiar pappiyan-japhiyan posts, myself leading from the front. And then came the rapture when the foreign secretary-level talks scheduled for August 25 were cancelled abruptly when the Pakistani High Commissioner decided to go ahead with the meeting with Kashmiri separatist leaders against which he had been warned by the Modi government. This step, in my opinion was unwarranted but is being hailed by a majority in India as a manifestation of Modi’s strongman image. In my view, the foreign secretaries should have been allowed to meet and this objection could have been tabled there which was the right channel and forum for Indo-Pak bilateral ties instead of one curt phone call. Disagree we must, but not posture.
One hundred days is too impatient a time frame to judge the PM of a 125 crore-strong nation. But if a litmus test is to be performed, Modi gets accolades for creating a good work ethic in government offices. The rest should fall into place automatically.