The Modi government came to power 3 months ago by making tall promises to people and creating an impression that whatever the UPA was doing was evil and only the BJP could and would deliver ‘achche din’. So what do we have on our plate after 100 days?
Inflation continues to stay high and the government seems clueless about how to rein in rising prices of vegetables. The failure of the govt to ratify the WTO treaty led to a global outcry that India had scuttled a hard earned international trade agreement and left us isolated. The fanatic elements in the Sangh Parivar have found new strength and are up to their agenda of communalising the atmosphere and creating a sense of insecurity in the minorities while the Prime Minister looks the other way. Mr. Modi is showing signs of running the government like a dictator. He is more obsessed with self publicity and to achieve that goal has no qualms in insulting his cabinet colleagues. Hence, the press is fed with stories of how the PMO rejected the Home Minister’s choice of P.A. or the Foreign Minister is not included in his delegation on trips to other countries. From his paying obeisance to Parliament in front of TV cameras, to cleaning govt offices, and keeping the new minister’s disciplined – everything is done with the single minded objective of boosting the image of Mr Modi. After lying to the people, Modi now carries the burden of unrealistic expectations. People are realising that their daily concerns of price rise, social harmony and Achche Dinare a distant dream.
The people have shown their resentment and answered their discontent by voting against the BJP in the recent bye elections. Stunned by the defeats, the party has resorted to raising communal bogeys like ‘love jihad’ to polarise sentiment. The party should realise that nobody in India can be detached from the constitution which says that ours is a secular republic because people from many shades stay here.
Another issue of poor governance can be seen by the government’s naive attempt to force schools across the country to screen the PM address to students on Teachers Day. The HRD Ministry made this autocratic announcement and later, in face of opposition from the schools, retracted the decision. From hiking the railway fares by over 100% and later retracting, by their I&B Minister stating that the govt had never promised to reduce prices in 100 days, by conveniently forgetting the black money issue, by bullying the UPA appointed governors to submit their resignation to disallowing the claim of the Congress to the Leader of Opposition post, this government has shown its intention to adopt a path of confrontation. And this does not augur well for a democracy.