The day Indians were voting in the second phase of a staggered general election, Jet Airways halted its operation after running out of money, which threatens almost 20 thousand jobs. Pictures of Jet Airlines' employees crying were far from the dream Prime Minister Narendra Modi had shown to the country in 2014.
Mr Modi had become the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy in 2014 on the pack of promises to create 20 million jobs, 100 smart cities, bullet trains and the eradication of corruption, among others.
"He will change the country," Mr Lal Krishan Advani, former BJP president and Mr Modi’s political godfather, had said in Ahmedabad on April 1, 2014.
Has Mr Modi transformed India? Many experts in Australia who keep close tabs on India are not sure if he's changed the country. Author and ABC producer Amruta Slee says Mr Modi has delivered very little.
“When Modi came into power he did it on the back of a surge of optimism. He promised a lot of things, which if I had been a young voter, I would have thought this sounds like a great guy. He promised jobs, cleaning up corruption and economic development. Those sound like ideal things. He promised an end to corruption which I think is a huge problem in India. On that issue alone a number of people voted for him. Since then I think he has delivered very very little. He has not delivered in terms of jobs. Certainly, he has not cleaned up corruption. No huge changes are going on outside of urban areas. Younger people in India that speak to think they have no future."
India has leapt 65 spots in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ ranking over the last four years standing at 77th among 190 countries. However, unemployment has become a problem. The government defended its record on jobs, but reports are suggesting India lost jobs instead of creating them. A report by the Bengaluru-based Azim Premji University said at least five million Indians lost their jobs between 2016 and 2018.
Dr Alexander Davis of La Trobe University points to the problem of jobs, especially in rural areas.
“His (Narendra Modi) promises of development, particularly in rural India seem to have not been fully realised. Rural jobs have not materialised in the way that he had promised in the previous elections.”
However, Dr Davis gives credit to the government for pushing economic reforms.
“I think Modi has largely got the machinery of the Indian state working and he has made the government operate a little bit more effectively. Lots of people that I meet said some the reforms that he had made, particularly the economic reforms had made their day to day life easier in some way,” said Dr Davis, who is researching on Indian foreign policy. He finds no real transformation in India’s foreign policy.
India’s global image
Prime Minister Modi has claimed to have transformed India’s image. He made 41 foreign trips, visiting 59 countries including Australia in 2014.
“[The] entire world sees India with great respect today,” said Mr Modi during his regular address to the nation ‘Mann Ki Baat’, in March last year.
Dr Davis disagrees.
“I know they say in the BJP’s manifesto, ‘we have made India proud on the world stage again’. I think that has probably been the purpose of a lot of his foreign policy. He has used the international stage to grow a sense of nationalism. And I think that has been done largely for domestic electoral reasons, but I have my doubt that he has been that transformational in terms India’s foreign relations.”
However, Dr Davis says India-Australia relations have improved “slightly over the terms of Modi’s Prime Ministership".
“When Modi visited he gave a speech to the Australian parliament which seems to have gone down very well. But in terms of India’s relations with Australia, the foreign policy issues seem to have gone forward a little bit. There is a naval exercise going on right now that we probably would not have expected 5 or 10 years ago.”
Amruta Slee observes the naval exercise more as a symbolic gesture that is not changing anything substantially.
“I think in terms of economic investment, which is really we are talking about, there has long been a sense that India is the next China. That has never really happened, and there are a number of reasons why. I think Modi has not managed to put in place the kind of stability or the infrastructure that would make Australian companies invest largely in India,” said Ms Slee adding, “I think Australians are now starting to understand that this is the guy who, like strong men leaders around the world, is covering up the holes in their political plans by talking up violence against minorities. Modi himself has been diplomatic on Muslims and other minorities. But he has definitely not clamped down on various ministers within his BJP Party. That is coming to the notice of the west and Australia as well.”
Anti-minority agenda
Prof Assa Doron said minorities have suffered abuse in the past few years
An expert in the anthropology of contemporary India, Prof Doron of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific said in an atmosphere promoting Hindu nationalism, cow vigilantes now feel quite empowered with reports of violent incidents against Muslims and Dalits.
“Reports from civil society organisations and social commentators have observed that the current regime under Modi is not protecting the rights of disadvantaged groups. This may well be due to programs and policies that tend to favour the Hindu majority, over other minority communities,” says Prof Doron, author of the book ‘Life on the Ganga’.
Much of Prof Doron’s fieldwork was carried in Varanasi which is the electoral constituency of Mr Modi. Prof Doron was in India recently, and he observed the beautification projects in the city and river front.
“Modi's Clean India campaign is certainly visible in terms of the investment made for the development and beautification of the Ghats along the river.” According to Doron, “Varanasi remains a very important place to demonstrate that cleaning India’s most sacred city is achievable, and purifying Ganga Maa (river Ganges) is a paramount objective for India and the world to see. So you do see cleaning and beautification, but it remains doubtful whether there is more substantive change going on,” said Prof Doron whose most recent book co-authored with Robin Jeffrey, ‘Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India’, examines Mr Modi ‘Clean India’ campaign.
“I do think we should give credit to Modi who as he came into office put waste and sanitation at the forefront of his government’s agenda. I think this has meant people, and also officials and politicians are increasingly becoming far more conscious of the need to tackle the problems of waste and sanitation in rapidly urbanising India."
'Less space for dissent'
When it comes to discussing changes in India over the past five years, many commentators have pointed out to the silencing dissenting voices both in the media and across civil society.
People feel that in the current climate, it is conformity rather than critical thinking and disagreement which is encouraged, says Prof Doron adding: “The government has been very much promoting those who support and glorify its nationalist political ideology.”
Amruta Slee echoes this opinion and does not chew her words when criticising the PM for this.
“He replaced his core promises with a really negative view of India. He has been bad of Indian democratic institutions. He has been really really bad for India’s multi-ethnic, multi-national kind of core. He has waged a battle against Muslim minorities and other minorities as well,” said Ms Slee.
This view has echoed in many news reports highlighting incidents of mob lynching and cow vigilantism. A recent report from Human Rights Watch details how 44 Indians – 36 of them Muslims and the others from minority groups – were killed between May 2015 and December 2018. A further 280 people were injured.
Jayshree Bajoria of Human Rights Watch, who published the report 'Violent Cow Protection in India: Vigilante Groups Attack Minorities', told SBS the attacks are not a simple reflection of a growing animal rights movement, but an attack on minorities propagated by India’s ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Many experts believe the space for dissent is shrinking in India. Incidents like sending journalists to jail and suspending teachers for speaking against the government have amounted to this feeling for shrinking space for dissent.
TV journalist Kishore Chandra Wangkhem spent many weeks in jail after being arrested under the National Security Act, for social media posts criticising the BJP and Mr Modi. He was released by the high court earlier this month.
In March, at least seven government school teachers in the northern state of Uttar Prades were suspended for posting comments critical of the ruling regime on social media.
Many public figures have been trolled and threatened for expressing their anti-government views.
“It seems to be a real surge in sort of online trolling in the Indian public space. This certainly predates Modi, but it does seem to have gotten worse in the last five years that there is less space for dissent. You saw that the other day Congress said they would get rid of sedition laws and the BJP representative came back and said we would strengthen sedition laws. It sends the shivers down your spine,” Dr Davis said.
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