Discordant notes

IN governance, performance most often is about creating popular positive perception than actually delivering verifiable outcomes. And that may be a reason why governance is seen as an art and not science. That leaves enough space to talk about with broad numbers from a high pedestal, and, so, there is an avalanche of commentaries on two years of the Modi government.   

TWO years back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech full of melodrama to the Parliamentary party meeting of the BJP had promised to share the report card of his government with them in 2019. Five years must have looked quite a long time. So, Modi amended his promise, and shared the report card of his government -- not with the BJP MPs, but the people -- from the ramparts of the Red Fort after a year passed off since his assuming the charge. A year after, Modi launched "Vikas parv (Development festival)". 

His MPs are a miffed lot. Those striking discordant notes with the Modi government from the ranks

of the BJP MPs are gaining in strength. Bhola Singh, Hukum Singh, Jagdambika Pal and a few more have been throwing away tact to criticise the government during the Lok Sabha proceedings. A large number of BJP MPs openly rue to the secretaries of the Union ministers, that they're having tough time facing people in their respective constituencies.

"It's we who face people. It's we who will seek votes in 2019. The Modi government came to power because we won elections, and not due to his ministers, who para-dropped from the Rajya Sabha to seats of power," one BJP MP was heard loudly telling one aide of a minister.

The BJP MP Hukum Singh was more acerbic when Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh sought to suggest that a web portal to electronically link all markets will come as a boon to the farmers. "The farmers are throwing the onions to garbage after failing to get remunerative price. They're being offered as low as 50 paise a kg for onions in Nimanch in Madhya Pradesh. What will these farmers do with your web portal," Hukum Singh blared in the Lok Sabha. Radha Mohan Singh predictably paled.

But when the Prime Minister never tires talking of his App and web portals, his ministers would only follow the suit. So, the likes of Smirti Irani and Piyush Goyal blurt out several Apps of their ministries when the MPs in the Lok Sabha seek to know answers to basic issues. 

IN 2003, a group of bureaucrats sought to please the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. They

brought forth numbers and data to suggest that the time was apt to launch a 15-day long "India Shining" campaign. Vajpayee concurred. Late Pramod Mahajan got the wind of the move and sought a presentation from the enterprising bureaucrats. He instantly fell in love with the idea. And, he turned the 15-day "India Shining" campaign into an year long affair.

The bureaucrats wanted to caution. They knew it would be suicidal for a ruling political alliance to become part of such a brazen campaign for such a long time when large parts of the country form an oasis of darkness. Yet, they did not have the nerve to express their reservations to a man who was known as a bully. In 2014 people delivered verdict, and stated unequivocally that they did not believe at all in the idea of "India Shining".   

The self-adulation bug had bitten Vajpayee in the fourth year of his tenure. Modi would have made people believe that the event of his mere occupying the 7, Race Course Road had changed the fortune of India for better. Last month, he launched a 10-day long campaign -- Gramoday se Bharatoday. This month his government launched 15-day long "Vikas parv". 

The April campaign failed to enthuse people in the rural parts of the country. The agricultural growth last year was 1.1 per cent, and the average for last two years has been 0.5 per cent. The Monsoon, unseasonal rains and hailstorms have played havoc with the farming community. One fourth of the population of the country is under the spell of drought, which has affected 1.25 lakh villages. The suicide by farmers has taken the form of an epidemic. Not only farmers, but even the cattle-stock is bearing the brunt of the failure of the government to reach waters to parched regions.

MODI in his maiden address to the Lok Sabha ridiculed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In the next two years, the Opposition kept alleging that the Centre had not been releasing funds under MGNREGA to the state governments. Former PM Manmohan Singh too alleged that the dues to the states amounting to over Rs 10,000 crores remained unpaid. The next day when Union Minister of Rural Development Birender Singh was asked on Manmohan Singh's allegation, he claimed that there was no outstanding at all. 

That he was bluffing was known when the Supreme Court ordered the Centre to release the outstanding MGNREGA dues to the state governments. It was the Supreme Court again which ordered the Modi government to take immediate steps for the drought affected regions and the people. The rural parts of the country have to look up to the Supreme Court for deliverance from the pain. For Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, it amounted to the judiciary destroying the legislative and executive wings of the democracy "brick by brick". He would not admit that the non-performance of the government always invites the judicial scrutiny.           

     

The swagger of the growing number of youth in small towns of the country suggest their lack of faith in the system. They feel that they have been let down. That they possess degrees but no jobs frustrate them. The engineers are taking up clerical jobs. The doctorates are seeking jobs of police constables. Those with master degrees do not mind wearing uniforms of security guards in the metropolitan cities. 

The jobs are hard to find by is the story of the day in the country. The economists concur that the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth in the range of six to eight per cent only allows status quo. They argue with empirical evidences that for India to add more jobs the GDP growth must surpass eight per cent. But the higher growth trajectory is arguably not possible with a "tough task master" leadership, but deep and strong structural changes, which Modi has not yet shown stomach to undertake.       

POSTSCRIPT

It's stupid to expect change in two years' time. But the path on which one embarks for a long journey may suggest the outcome. In the first two years' of the Modi government, a few sectors have arguably outperformed, which include the Railways, Road and Shipping, Power. But there is a long list of outright non-performers, which include Agriculture, Rural Development, Water Resources, Telecommunication, etc.

Fraud path of Paytm

VIJAY Shekhar Sharma calls himself a capitalist, hippy and founder. In five years' time he now boasts of a billion dollar company in Paytm. He did not lay any brick or mortar in his climb up the ladder. He sold one website to launch another, and there he's now dipping his hands into the pockets of Jack Ma of Alibaba to become more fatter. 

Sharma comes from the city of dust and oriental learning for minority community. But Aligarh never made names internationally for either its insatiable hunger for dust or for the Muslim University, which came up with liberal British support, who in return for the favour insured "The Raj" with divide and rule policy. Aligarh made names nationally and internationally for its copyright on "Jugaad" technology.

That Jugaad is now internationally accepted as a word to describe the habit of finding a solution through whatever means speaks volume for the achievement of Aligarh. Thus, the city not only bathes each moment in swirling dust, but also sprays herself with smoke emitted by generator sets mounted on wooden carts, which outnumber the manufactured four-wheelers there.

SHARMA did not bring any innovation in his path which led him to the billionaire club. He aped what the Americans did decades back. True to all capitalist economy and consumerist society, greed comes out as surest source of success of any business. Aligarh knows the value of greed better than any other city, and so it throws all norms to the winds to get to the ends. Sharma truly belongs to Aligarh. And, thus, he made greed of the people his business model. 

Business grew and data expanded. Customers flocked for cash back offers. No technological innovation was required to become big, as telling it aloud that the App or Paytm website pays back was enough to broaden the customer base. The likes of Ratan Tata and Jack Ma of Alibaba too poured their monies to make more money by tapping the business of greed.       

The Paytm is essentially a wallet. But the greed of Sharma to become a big player took him to the path of cheating the customers. Sounds wired that a new age entrepreneur with funding by venture capitalists like Ratan Tata and Jack Ma could be essentially a crooked fellow who is out there to make quick bucks at the expanse of customers! It would not sound so, with an illustration.

YOU visit Paytm and opts for a recharge of pre-paid mobile. You pay Rs 515, the Paytm says there will be full talk-time along with extra time. But your mobile phone is actually given a talk time of Rs 1. What happened to Rs 514?

The search for this answer is through a 48-hour long ordeal. The Paytm would say, deal with the

Airtel. "We are only a payment gateway," says Rishi of the Paytm.

He's technically right, that Paytm has an RBI license as a wallet in the form of a payment gateway. But take a look at the Paytm portal. It operates and functions as an e-commerce marketplace and has an ecosystem on the lines of Flipkart and Amazaon where it allows sellers to sell their products. And, thus, it's not just a payment gateway. So, Rishi lied actually, but he's doing a job in a firm where lying appears to be a culture.

Rishi and all his associates at Paytm would so say, "go and settle it with Airtel". So, Paytm essentially is an e-commerce marketplace where it takes no accountability for false promises and failure to deliver the promised services. Thus, deception looks well-knit and camouflaged.

But, yes, what happened to Rs 514?

The answer is not yet forthcoming, and now the time has come to drag Sharma. "I really feel terrible the way one of our team member (s) took judgment on the issue," said Sharma when he was confronted. 

Then he informs that the Rs 515 paid to Paytm gave an international roaming facility to a mobile

phone which is being used in Godda and Jharkhand. The user has no plan to go abroad, and the recharge was not done for such a purpose. So, the Paytm has an extraordinary ability to give an international roaming facility when talk-time recharge is sought. He also asks the customer to talk to the cellular operator.

Thus, Sharma, who is chief executive officer (CEO) of the Paytm, is in a business where he is not accountable for false promises, cheating, deception, and fraud, but would pass on the onus to an organization whose doors the customers never knocked. Is there any better business in the world than this?

Yet, when confronted, Sharma asks for solution from the aggrieved customer asking how should the process be developed that the customers are not cheated. Thus, he admitted that the Paytm process is flawed. And, yet, the likes of Ratan Tata and Jack Ma are investing in a flawed firm.

Frogs sometimes jump off well, and think that they can own the ocean too. The internet entrepreneurs are such frogs who're taking too many customers for a ride with impunity.

A thug state

"I find the prohibitionist a negative person. To ban drinking has as much chance of success as an attempt to ban sex. One unfortunate outcome of prohibitionism anywhere in the world is that it promotes hypocrisy as well as disrespect for the law," wrote Cedric Day, a British bureaucrat, who worked in India in 1960s.

In Cedric Day's descriptions, Nitish Kumar and Arvind Kejriwal should be outright negative persons. But, yet, Kumar can well take refuge in the fact that a large number of women for years had been pleading him for curbs on drunken ruffians in the state. 

No such alibi exists for Kejriwal. That a few elites began loud-talks of toxic Delhi air was reason enough for him to latch on an opportunity to host another event, and engage people on a large scale in a mass hysteria. The darling of television sensed that an event affecting most of the people in Delhi would draw curtain on his fulsome failure on all the grand promises he made to grab power. And, thus, Delhi is hosting the spectacle of the second phase of "Odd and Even scheme" for four-wheeled vehicles.

MITHILESH Kumar (name changed), who stays in Vasundhara area of Ghaziabad,

works in Delhi, and has no option but to commute in his car. The nearest Metro from his home is about seven km away, and no convenient mode to complete this last mile connectivity is there, which explains his bond with the car. 

But the first day of the second phase of "Odd and Even" scheme made his "even" car ineligible to hit the roads. So, he called an Ola cab, and an SMS buzzed his cell phone.

"...3 times peak time charge is applicable on this booking...," read the Ola message. In a hurry, he did not read the message, and rode the cab to his office. But the driver's demand and simultaneous Ola message asking him to hand over Rs 994 left him gaping. And, then he read the first message.

Yet, he did not understand "3 times of the peak charges". The driver cleared his head. "Since there is a massive demand and supply mismatch for cabs due to "Odd and Even" scheme, the formula is arrived at of three times more than peak charges. It could be much higher if demand is more...," he expounded the formula. 

Mithilesh Kumar's car stayed at home, but he rode a four-wheeled vehicle only, and was fleeced three times more money than he normally would have paid. The "Odd and Even" scheme looted him. Yet, Delhi did not see less number of cars on his account. 

Incidentally, he has paid road tax for 15 years in advance. But Kejriwal has not yet said a word if the road tax would be returned, since freedom to ply on roads has been curbed. Kejriwal, in fact, has not yet answered allegations levelled against him and his government in the purported sting operation where palms were greased with crisp papers embossed with Gandhi's image and singed by RBI Governor for distributing CNG stickers (exempt from "Odd and Even").

ASHOK Kumar Walia is a bachelor and a doctor by profession. He had been Minister for PWD, Health, and Urban Development during the 15 long years of the Sheila Dikshit government in Delhi. 

Once he went to Tokyo. There he saw flyovers dotting the city all around. He came back, and told his officials that Delhi needed flyovers. The road congestion was so long and painful, that most of the motorists would be stuck at traffic signals for 15 to 20 minutes. Walia began building flyovers. The Supreme Court in the meantime mandated migration of public transport to the CNG mode. Delhi became better and cleaner.

Walia went to Tokyo again after a gap of about a decade. He saw flyovers over flyovers. He enquired from his hosts, "why do you need flyovers over flyovers?".

"The original flyovers were choking due to rise in vehicular population, and, hence, new flyovers over them were needed," quipped the Japanese host.

The Delhi minister came back and told his officials the need for flyovers over flyovers. An elevated ring road over the existing ring road was planned. 

But Walia and Sheila Dikshit by then had become unwanted in a city where the Gandhian activist Anna Hazare and motley of television channels glibly allowed Arvind Kejriwal to become an answer to all the ills afflicting Delhi.   

The elite camp-follower of Kejriwal glibly argue that many western countries have also tried such a formula to curb pollution. But no such people has yet stopped using four-wheeled vehicles to commute to their work places themselves. 

That Delhi has a remarkable elasticity to dip in their pockets to buy a second car is a fact not worth repeating. Such a plan failed miserably in Mexico. And, Delhi is more closer to Mexico than London surely is lost out to the logical minds of the camp-followers of Kejriwal.

A tourist from Madhya Pradesh was arguably the first person to be challaned on the commencement of the second phase of "Odd and Even" scheme. He told the cops that he had not known of such a thing since he had been driving for a couple of days. But he had to part with Rs 2,000. 

HE may have rightly thought that sometimes the state is a thug, and encourages people to become a bigger thug.

Lost to chatters of Gymkhana club

What if oil prices had not crashed by about 80 per cent from its peak? 

In a few hours, India will know finer details of the third General Budget of the Narendra Modi government. Indian economy is huffing and puffing to stay just a little above seven per cent mark. 

A year of collective shock to Modi's economic incrementalism called creative by some has passed by. Admirers of Modi exude sense of resignations. His foes betray exultation. People at large give a sense of disbelief, and seek refuge in collective silence.

A government sitting on a bounty of over Rs 1.50 lakh crore of oil windfall has mostly been on expenditure freeze. The fiscal deficit is well within target. But all other targets set in the Budget for 2015-16 coming close to the timeline suggest authorship of some drunken economic lunatic. Direct tax collection is off target by 10 per cent, and suddenly woken up tax men are doing some crazy things to make nightmarish reality little less acerbic.

Indian economy had a joy ride for a bout a decade from 1999-2008. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) flew past magical eight percentage points. But the journey 2009 onward has been down the hill.

The decade long golden run of Indian economy was arguably not fueled by great software export or manufacturing expansion. It was a golden gift of the weather God. The Monsoon had been steady. The government incentive to produce foodgrains enabled farmers to sweat to sweet income. The farmers had money in their pockets to go out and buy. Additionally, the government splurged on rural income, pouring at least Rs five lakh crore by way of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and its various earlier avatars and Pradhan Mantri Gram sadak Yojna (PMGSY) in that golden decade. 

Afterward, the government got wiser, knowing that its rural splurge was past the line to give political dividend anymore. And, the powerful stream suddenly turned into trickle. 

The weather God too got angrier. The Monsoon rains turned wobbly. The spread was not even. The year 2008 brought a pause to the golden agrarian run. Many parts of the country came under the spell of drought. And since then the drought areas had only been geographically shifting, while some like the Bundelkhand, Marathwada, Vidarbha, parts of Karnatka and Gujarat staying under long spell of dry weather. 

The parched land dried rural splurge stream battered the Indian economy by 2013. The GDP growth kissed five per cent. The Modi government's first year saw a major sub-normal Monsoon. A year later, his government watched clueless to the blow of the unseasonal rains and hailstorm. Another year later, the Monsoon left large parts of the country parched. 

And Modi never believed in rural splurge. But the economy crawled back to seven plus mark, but the Manmohan Singh's time of jobless growth stayed with Modi too. 

With jobs not in sight and rural income gone, the facade of India's robust economy has been exposed to all. 

The governments without exception have been fascinated with those flashing degrees from Harward University and its likes. Such tribe penetrates the government echelon with ease. Those who had never seen a village in their lives manned the Ministry of Rural Development not long ago. Those who are enamoured with American economic flamboyance had been eyes and ears of P Chidambaram. With the change of the government, the tribe has not gone away, but only changed their robes.

Arun Jaitely had apparently lobbied hard to get into Ministry of Finance when Atal Bihar Vajpayee was Prime Minister. All lawyers turned politicians dream of becoming Finance Minister. But Vajpayee had a good measure of caliber of all around him. And, Jaitely was not allowed anywhere near North Block. 

India's irony is such a man is now Finance Minister who to his credit has not a single idea original to him which could inspire an awe. Millions of people in the country are now awe-struck to the poverty of ideas of the North Block.               

If oil had not crashed by about 80 per cent from its peak, India would have seen Modi government as UPA-III in much worse form. Difference is arguably just of an accidental gain from outside.

Indian economy is sadly slave to chatters of the Gymkhana club. And, only idlers go to a club.