Modi's pro-poor focus promises big electoral gains for BJP
The call given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah to party chief ministers to give their best by delivering on pro-poor schemes will help the BJP cross an important frontier on its way to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The call comes when Modi's imaginative, pro-poor, enabling and empowering schemes, quite different from those under the UPA's dole-based model, are beginning to have an impact, which is helping the party shed its pro-businessman image for the first time since its emergence in 1980.
Reports from across the country indicate that schemes like Mudra loan, Jan Dhan and Ujjwala are impacting people on ground positively, as is the MyGov experiment. MyGov is a digital platform where the government invites suggestions of good governance from common people and implements the innovative and doable ones, thus allowing the Modi government to establish direct relationship with the people in an ideal atmosphere of government-people partnership.
The prime minister's Mann Ki Baat also falls in the same category. Many suggestions coming to the prime minister for the Mann Ki Baat have been implemented by the government, which has helped the government create a powerful empowerment model.
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| PM Modi delivering his Mann ki Baat. |
However, Modi and Shah's call to the BJP chief ministers also comes at a time when a part of the success of these initiatives and some of the good work done by the Modi government are under the threat of being nullified by the Opposition's anti-Dalit campaign against the BJP.
In fact, Modi and Shah's initiative is perfectly timed. As many as 21 crore bank accounts have been opened under the Jan Dhan scheme which ensures bank accounts for all the poor of the country. The scheme has dealt a body blow to middlemen in India's subsidy structure as the subsidy amount now directly gets deposited in the accounts of the poor.
Plus, inclusive steps are teaching the poor to save money. Savings in these new accounts have reached Rs 39,000 crore. The number of beneficiaries of the Mudra loan scheme for middle and marginal businessmen and artisans has crossed 3.50 crore. Under the Ujjwala scheme, everyday 25,000 below poverty line (BPL) families are being supplied subsidised LPG cooking gas connections, thereby freeing them from the drudgery of cooking on chulas.
Modi and Shah have also directed the BJP chief ministers to ensure that not just the pro-poor plank of the party is strengthened through good governance but also that there is no discrimination along caste or religious lines while implementing pro-poor schemes. Also the chief ministers are said to have been directed to rein in cow vigilantes by strengthening the existing cow protection police networks, formed under the law and ensure that the vigilantes' role is restricted to merely informing the police about illicit cow trafficking.
A source close to the prime minister said: "Modiji is firm on the promise he had given to many Muslim delegations before and after he became the prime minister that his government would never discriminate between Hindus and Muslims while implementing development schemes and that in the event of something going amiss on this the Muslims were free to complain to him."
Fortunately, even Shah, despite being close to Hindutva hardliners, is with Modi on this, a fact he made very clear while addressing the BJP chief ministers.
What the duo want is that the BJP state governments play the role of facilitator in the implementation of government schemes in their states and also broaden the scope of projects like the Aadhaar card-based Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) by adding their own state schemes to the DBT.
Clearly, RSS-BJP icon Deendayal Upadhaya's ideology of Antyodaya was never translated into action on the ground in such a powerful way as now and Modi and Shah are keen that it gets translated into political returns to the party.