By Badri Narayan
Mahatma Gandhi famously said that our development-oriented work should uplift the last man standing in the queue. Recently, I met such a ‘last man’ of our society—Ramdhani, belonging to the Musahar community and living in a village near Phulpur in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. He gave me his evaluation of the development work that has happened in the last decade which impacted his life, saying, “Pakka ghar mila, bijuri lagi, nalka laga ba, raashan patayi milat ba, jeevan ka dukh door ho gawa ba. Ab hamka ka chahi? Bachwan ke berojgari chhuda, padhayi karwaun” (I got a pucca house, electricity, water supply, and food. What else do I aspire for? I will ensure my children don’t fall into unemployment and send them to school.” For me, it is the account of a last man during the 11 years of governance under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This hope for a future and growing capacity of upward mobility among the marginalised is one of the big achievements of the Modi government.
The Modi-led NDA government completed the first year of its third term on June 9, making it the ideal time to discuss the progress of the country in the past year. In my view, it is not easy to segregate this one year from the impact of PM Modi’s governance. The goal of his governance, since the last 11 years, has been ‘Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat’ (One India, best India). This Shreshtha Bharat mission is evolving phase-wise. The first phase is to achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat in 2047. So, for some policy analysts and social scientists, the Modi government is evolving in a continuation of its first phase, which started in 2014. There is no rupture or break in the continuity of missions and goals of the NDA government. Even then, action-wise, as well as considering major policy decisions and their implications, this year was remarkable in the history of Indian governance.
This year of Modi 3.0 will be remembered for strong policy decisions while maintaining balance with ally parties, equipping governance with new technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, and responding to the terrorist attack of Pahalgam through Operation Sindoor. In this regime, the NDA government announced a national census with caste enumeration. This decision is perceived as something which will influence Indian society and polity deeply in the long term. This decision has various risks—opinion conflict within the party and alliance, the rise and growth of social conflict, and various political polarisations, full of possibilities of political gains and losses. It was a bold decision taken to strengthen social justice measures for the empowerment of marginal and backward communities. It was also politically important because of two reasons—first, it is going to generate data for various castes which may help us in reviewing the distribution of developmental resources in society, as well as in understanding the trends of distribution of social justice resources. Second, it will weaken mobilisational politics around caste, which the opposition has been trying to cultivate around the caste census issue. Persuading party members, leaders, and cadres for the same and obtaining a consensus among NDA’s political parties were big challenges on the path of this decision. However, all this was overcome as not only did the Modi government announce its decision for holding national census with caste enumeration, it also announced a timeline for the same.
Another important and impactful decision was passing the Waqf Board Bill. This decision caused a significant reaction among people of the Islamic faith and the Supreme Court was approached against the same. However, a section of the Pasmanda community, with some others, supported it. This decision may have far-reaching political impact. The people of a certain community may be polarised in the upcoming elections against the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), but it is believed by some political analysts that such a decision may help in the proper utilisation of religious resources and help in equal distribution among the marginal members of this community.
As observed, PM Modi is trying to digitalise India and, by extension, its governance. In this first of year of his third term, the Modi government has started working towards sensitising and preparing our administrative workforce to equip itself with AI. Recently, I attended a seminar in Delhi on the use of AI in education organised by a think tank named CPRG. Here, government officials and educational experts tried to evolve a canon to use AI in Indian education to achieve the goal in the New Education Policy 2020. A tech week was organised in Mumbai a few months ago regarding the creative use of AI in national development.
Like earlier, the Modi government, in concord with its zero tolerance policy against terrorism, launched Operation Sindoor in retaliation against the Pahalgam civilian attack. It caused a war between India and Pakistan which continued for three days. At the policy level, this attempt was different from the BJP government’s other initiatives— it was declared that any terrorist action would be considered as an act of war against India, and would be dealt with by our army. Operation Sindoor is not a one-time action—it will continue for a long time as a response to any terrorist attack.
Owing to the other developmental initiatives to achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat in 2047, India became the fourth-largest economy of the world. With remarkable success in infrastructure development, the Modi government has been working to achieve better developmental indicators in the human development sector, including fields such as education, health, and disaster management. In my view, PM Modi’s governance is a continuum within which the social, economic, and political impact of the BJP-NDA government’s entire work of the past 11 years may be assessed. The first year of Modi 3.0 may be perceived as a year of new initiatives and the cumulative impact of what this government did in its entire tenure.
The writer is director, GB Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad.
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