Narendra Modi’s popularity wanes in India as first year nears end

India's prime minister Narendra Modi completes a year in office on May 26th amidst increasing doubts over his efficacy as a competent and inclusive administrator, economic reformer and team player.

Over the past 12 months, the 65-year-old heading the country’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has been unable to deliver on the many promises he made on the election trail, triggering widespread public disappointment.

These included kick-starting the economy, boosting employment, industrial production and infrastructural development, improving education and healthcare and modernising India’s police and military.

But nebulous policies to retrospectively tax foreign investors – dubbed “tax terrorism” by the Indian media – and failure to provide incentives for manufacturing, have adversely affected India’s investment climate.

Economic initiatives

Earlier this week the government was further enfeebled, after failing to push through two crucial economic initiatives in parliament.

These were the Land Acquisition Bill – to make it easier to acquire land for industrial and infrastructural expansion – and the bill for Goods and Services Tax, to ensure a nationwide uniform tariff much like Ireland’s VAT.

An aggressive opposition in parliament’s upper house, where the BJP is in a minority, blocked both bills that have been postponed to the upcoming monsoon parliament session in July, further eroding the Modi government’s standing and ability to enact legislation.

At the same time, the cost of living has risen, with the price of commodities such as wheat, rice, vegetables and fruit soaring in the past year.

In a high-voltage election campaign Modi, who has a penchant for multicoloured waistcoats, almost singlehandedly propelled the BJP to power.

It replaced the corrupt and inefficient Congress Party-led federal coalition that had been in office for a decade.

The BJP managed, against all expectations, to secure India's first parliamentary victory by a single party in three decades, on the promise of ushering in vikas (development) and ache din (good days).

During his first few months in office, Modi’s enduring fiery oratory and grandiose promises earned him plaudits at home and abroad.

But what his supporters labelled the “Modi Magic” was seriously degraded when the fledgling anti-corruption Common Man’s Party trounced the BJP in Delhi’s state assembly elections in February. The BJP secured just four of 71 assembly seats.

High on rhetoric

“The BJP government is high on rhetoric and showmanship, but low on delivery,” said political analyst Seema Mustafa of the Centre for Policy Analysis in New Delhi.

Modi has centralised power in the prime minister’s office and is running a presidential, instead of an inclusive cabinet form of government, she said.

India’s minority Muslim and Christian populations, which comprise about 15 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively of a population of over 1.25 billion, also remain wary of the BJP and Modi.

Nine weeks after Modi assumed office, Hindu organisations affiliated to the BJP forcibly converted poor Muslims to Hinduism under a ghar vapsi or returning home campaign. Several churches were vandalised, reportedly by Hindu groups, and a 71-year-old nun gang-raped in eastern India.

Modi’s condemnation of all such activity was feeble at best. The shadow of the 2002 Muslim pogrom in Modi’s western home state of Gujarat, of which he was chief minister until he became prime minister, still hangs over him.

He was never indicted for the unrest in which some 1,200 people died, but the extent of the rioting under him, raises disturbing questions.

“The government seems to be more concerned with managing headlines than putting policies in place,” former BJP minister Arun Shourie said in a television interview that unnerved the government.

Big picture

“The situation is like many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle lying in a mess with no big picture in mind about how to put them together,” he said, elaborating on the growing sectarian unrest under Modi.

Meanwhile, on foreign policy Modi has been proactive, travelling to several countries in India’s immediate neighbourhood and to Australia, Japan, the US, France, Germany, Canada and China among others.

Many of these visits have been peppered with dramatic public appearances, some rivalling rock concerts, ensuring wide media coverage and boosting Modi’s personal image but for now, have delivered no dividends.

Workaholic

There is, however, little doubt that Modi is a workaholic, sleeping no more than four hours a day, a teetotaller, abstemious in his personal habits and a proponent of yoga.

Tales abound in official circles of his cabinet members and civil servants sleeping in their offices and working weekends to keep up with the tireless prime minister.