{"id":8593,"date":"2017-01-24T19:58:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T14:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kashmir.today\/?p=8593"},"modified":"2017-01-24T19:58:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T14:28:00","slug":"narendra-modi-pulling-india-back-1970s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=8593","title":{"rendered":"Narendra Modi is pulling India back to the 1970s"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Barkha Dutt (WashingtonPost.Com)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOur problem is that there is too much democracy in India\u00a0\u2014 that\u2019s why difficult decisions never get taken,\u201d declared Sunil Alagh, marketing consultant and supporter of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The bon vivant was responding to the uproar over Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s shock decision to invalidate 86 percent of India\u2019s currency<\/a>. Alagh\u2019s\u00a0lament betrayed a longing oft expressed by the country\u2019s affluent and well heeled\u00a0\u2014 a craving for the precision and order of authoritarian leadership. \u201cYou know, we need someone like Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore,\u201d can be heard in many swish Delhi drawing rooms, whose attendants are in any case inoculated by wealth against the vagaries of India\u2019s economy.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the same day as Donald Trump\u2019s election in the United States, India faced its own disruption\u00a0\u2014 when Modi declared that 500- and 1,000-rupee notes\u00a0\u2014 virtually all the cash in one of the world\u2019s fastest growing economies\u00a0\u2014 would now be worthless. In a country where 90 percent of all transactions are cash-based,<\/a> the decision came with only four\u00a0hours of public notice. The stated aim of the move was to shut down the parallel economy run by tax-evaders. But what followed was chaos\u00a0\u2014 amateur execution and shabby planning contributed to mile-long queues, ATM machines that had not been recalibrated for the new 2,000-rupee notes, banks that ran dry before mid-day, panic-induced hoarding and broken supply chains. In rural India especially, daily-wage workers could not be paid their cash salaries, sometimes for days on end.<\/em><\/p>\n

Alagh\u2019s impatience with the raucous debate around demonetization and his desire for governance-by-diktat were a throwback to that much repeated clich\u00e9 about the only time emergency was imposed in the world\u2019s largest democracy\u00a0\u2014 \u201cat least the trains ran on time.\u201d Ironically, the political leader responsible for the iron-fisted curtailment of civil rights in India in 1975 was from the other side of the political trenches\u00a0\u2014 Indira Gandhi, the Indian National Congress prime minister, who is still admired by millions for her take-no-prisoners brand of toughness.<\/em><\/p>\n

The audacity of Modi\u2019s demonetization decision and the centralization of power it represents\u00a0has drawn many parallels with Indira\u2019s actions in the 1970s. His notes ban has especially drawn comparisons with Gandhi\u2019s move to nationalize India\u2019s banks in 1969. Modi\u2019s\u00a0speech<\/a> at a mammoth political rally at the onset of 2017 virtually replicated a slogan from hers in 1971. Where she had dared her challengers\u00a0\u2014 \u201cThey say\u00a0\u2014 remove Indira, I say, remove poverty\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Modi bellowed to enthusiastic approval; \u201cThey say\u00a0\u2014 remove Modi, I say, remove corruption.\u201d Apart from the curious third-person referencing of themselves (perhaps appropriate for the personality-centered, cult-building political style of both leaders), the striking parallel with the \u201970s\u00a0is the increasing levels of executive power given to the state. Statism may have been normal for a socialist-era Gandhi, but where does it reconcile with a party that ran for office on theslogan <\/a>of \u201cMinimum government; Maximum governance\u201d?<\/em><\/p>\n

Modi asked India for 50 days for the system to breathe easy again after demonetization. Two months on, we must ask: What exactly did his decision achieve?<\/em><\/p>\n

Advocates of the demonetization efforts argue that liquidity in the banking system and the subsequent lowering of interest rates will create its own stimulus. The government points to increased tax collections from April to December 2016 counter notions of a demonetization induced slow-down.\u00a0 However the All India Manufacturers\u2019 Organization says there has been<\/a> a 50\u00a0percent dip in revenue and a 35\u00a0percent drop in jobs in the micro small-scale industries sector as a result. Last Monday, the IMF downgraded<\/a> India\u2019s growth to 6.6\u00a0percent, a full percentage point lower than its earlier estimate, because of the jolt from the ban on high-value currency notes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Was all this grief worth the gain? The actual aim of demonetization remains unclear. If the purpose was to cleanse the system of of illegal wealth\u00a0\u2014 what in India is colloquially known as \u201cblack\u201d money\u00a0\u2014 the target was misplaced. Only 6 to 10 percent of India\u2019s unaccounted money is held in cash; those ducking the taxman mostly divert their big bucks to gold, real estate and tax havens in Switzerland. Secondly, now that all the banned notes are back in banks, the Modi government has to confront a piquant question. Did it miscalculate how much \u201cblack\u201d cash there was in the system or have\u00a0tax thieves found a way to launder their wealth? People deposited about<\/a> 90\u00a0percent of the 15.4 trillion rupees that were removed from circulation, sharply contradicting the government estimate that a sizeable amount of unaccounted wealth would not reach the banks. So the original aim\u00a0\u2014 to call out the money-hoarders\u00a0\u2014 pretty much failed. The goal post was then hastily shifted to emphasize digitizing the economy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet, there is no visible outrage from the Indian public because of Modi\u2019s masterful management of the political messaging. By branding his decision as a \u201cfight against corruption, black money, fake notes and terrorism,\u201d Modi has converted demonetization into a test of courageous patriotism. Playing on Gandhi\u2019s mantra of being a messiah for the poor, Modi astutely positioned the notes ban as a modern day morality play where \u201csacrifice\u201d is key to being a good citizen. Modi himself drew the Vedic analogy of the currency ban being like a \u201cyagna,\u201d a \u201cpurification\u201d ritual that would cleanse India. Hardship is now a virtue, a sacrifice to attain a Hegelian notion of the common good. If Gandhi spoke conspiratorially of the \u201cforeign hand\u201d out to destabilize India, an emotional Modi has spoken of those who \u201cwon\u2019t let me live\u201d for the crackdown on currency. In an age of strident hyper-nationalism, the BJP has craftily encouraged the narrative that those opposing demonetization are fat-cat traitors who are too indolent to be part of a great national movement.<\/em><\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s blend of disruptive individualism, strongman politics and old-style welfare economics falls back on more government, rather than less, as the primary vehicle of change. The \u201970s deja\u00a0vu has confirmed one thing\u00a0\u2014 \u201cModinomics\u201d is not quite the right-of-center Thatcherite model that many of his supporters may have expected. Indeed, in India, we are back to the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning TV journalist and anchor with more than two decades of reporting experience. She is the author of \u201cThis Unquiet Land: Stories from India\u2019s Fault Lines.\u201d Dutt is based in New Delhi.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

Follow @bdutt<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Barkha Dutt (WashingtonPost.Com) \u201cOur problem is that there is too much democracy in India\u00a0\u2014 that\u2019s why difficult decisions never get taken,\u201d declared Sunil Alagh, marketing consultant and supporter of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The bon vivant was responding to the uproar over Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s shock decision to invalidate 86 percent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}