For Modi, 2016 is critical. What he must do
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a finely-honed talent for surprising friend and foe.
His spontaneous — though choreographed — visit to Lahore has transformed the India-Pakistan narrative. The Congress has been left flat-footed.
The Lutyens' ecosystem is puzzled: it thought it had its man in the crosshairs. The loss in Bihar was supposed to have robbed Modi of his electoral invincibility.
The BJP’s weak-kneed performance in the Rajya Sabha and dissent within the ranks seemed to underscore the fact that Modi was losing his grip over both the party and the country. The ecosystem, as usual, got it wrong.
Modi’s swing through Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan last week achieved several foreign policy objectives. But it has also cast the spotlight on what commentators have lost sight of: Modi’s X factor.
The ecosystem, meanwhile, is livid. Under Modi, it has lost patronage. Journalists no longer get access. Instead they have to make do with selfies. Bureaucrats are promoted on merit: the government has put an end to the lucrative transfer raj.
Courtier historians, writers, artists and filmmakers, beneficiaries of patronage, have retreated to their ivory towers.
For Modi, 2016 is critical. Much of 2017 will be dominated by the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
In 2018 attention will turn to the 2019 Lok Sabha election. So 2016 is make-or-break year for Modi. For a large part of the past 19 months, Modi has focused on incremental rather than transformative changes.
The economy has been run with the vision of lawyers and accountants not that of economic evangelists. That clearly must change.
If the economy continues to underperform — with GDP growth likely to be 7-7.5 per cent, a full percentage point below previous estimates — politics will be the collateral victim. The year 2016 is the last year in which economic growth can be reignited. It takes time for the benefits to feed through to create jobs and revive investment.
There is no margin anymore for error: the clock is running down.
Clearly, assembly elections will dominate 2016. But apart from Assam, the BJP is unlikely to win any of the states going to the polls. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress has a lock on rural Bengal.
The BJP’s momentum, built up in the Lok Sabha election, has withered.
Kerala is another critical state where assembly elections are due in 2016. The BJP’s rapid inroads into the state and alliance with SNDP Yogam could divide backward caste votes between the Congress and Left fronts, making the Kerala assembly election the most closely contested in 2016.
Modi, meanwhile, will not repeat the mistake of over-exposure he made in Bihar where he addressed 31 rallies. Local leaders and BJP ministers will do the bulk of electioneering with Modi used sparingly for maximum impact.
Apart from assembly elections, where Assam could be the big prize, Modi’s key political challenge in 2016 will be to fashion a strategy to break the deadlock in Parliament. Much though can be achieved outside Parliament through executive order.
A joint session of Parliament, in which the NDA has over 400 MPs out of a total of around 790 Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs, is an option the government must consider. It will take much of the wind out of the Opposition’s sails.
What though about internal dissent within the BJP?
Allegations of corruption against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and earlier accusations against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj over Lalit Modi have effectively removed any future intra-BJP challenge to Modi’s leadership going into the 2019 Lok Sabha poll.
Interestingly, his fiercest critic LK Advani was among the first to praise Modi’s impromptu Lahore visit. The group of four (Advani, Yashwant Sinha, Shanta Kumar and Murli Manohar Joshi) has lately fallen silent.
But for Modi to make 2016 count, he has to focus on three issues. One, refurbish his cabinet with new talent and remove some deadwood.
Two, personally ensure that the February 29, 2016 Budget (it’s a leap year) is far better than the disappointingly pedestrian Budgets of July 2014 and February 2015.
Three, use the cachet he has acquired in foreign policy to energise his domestic governance. In essence that means delivering measurable outcomes and communicating them swiftly.
The government’s achievements are today being buried amidst the cacophony of a viscerally hostile media. A daily media briefing at 4 pm tackling every issue head-on is the only antidote to this. In the absence of information, disinformation fills the vacuum.
To recapture the X factor that won him a stunning mandate 19 months ago, Prime Minister Modi must first win the perception battle.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)