India under Modi
- Seminar
- 749, Jan, 2022: p.10-14
IN late November of 2021, the Narendra Modi government passed the halfway mark of its second term in office. After he first assumed power, in 2014, he had asked for 10 years to transform the country. He is now more than three-quarters of his way through that period. How should we look back on what we have lived through, as we consider the outlook for the last quarter of a decade of Modi’s rule? The backdrop to Modi’s dramatic victory in the 2014 elections, when the BJP won a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha for the first time in three decades, was the portrayal of a paralyzed Manmohan Singh government caught in a web of scandal and struggling to stabilize an economy reeling from record trade deficits, rampant inflation, and slowing growth. The comprehensive mess in the banking system was not fully known then but was to become evident soon. The economic boom of the Singh government’s first term, when growth averaged well over 8%, and when the poverty headcount fell at a never before rate, had long been forgotten. The country was ready for a change of government and a new leader. – Reproduced