Modi’s policies – Old wine in new bottle?

By Deepak Parvatiyar

May 14, 2015

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At least about four months ahead of the last general elections, when the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had unveiled his party’s economic vision for the country, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s mouthpiece, People’s Democracy, had stated:  “The BJP’s vision of “high growth with a mix of social welfare schemes” is nothing else but a rephrasing of the UPA’s (United Progressive Alliance government’s) agenda of “liberalisation with inclusive growth”.”

Straightaway, the Marxists  had accused the BJP of “aping the Congress’s trajectory of economic reforms…”

Mark the word “rephrasing” and “aping”. These are strong words for a political outfit, the BJP, which fiercely positions itself as a “party with a difference” which is ideologically poles apart from the Congress.

 Yet, these words have returned to dog Modi merely months after he took charge after leading his party to an overwhelming majority in the general elections. This time it is not just the Left, but also the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, which now attacks the Modi government for repackaging its policies and schemes under new names! The nomenclature is a bone of contention also because names do matter for credit hogging in chauvinistic politics. The debate also rages on why Modi should take credit for the good works of someone else – to be more precise, his political opponents?

On 10th May this year, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ambitious Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana (APY), Congress leader R.S. Surjewala, attacked Modi by stating that these schemes “again established the ‘NAMO’ style of governance i.e., nothing-original, message-only”.

Surjewala, who is In-charge of the Congress’s Communication cell, claimed the schemes were “nothing but a repackaged Aam Aadmi Beema Yojana (AABY), Rajiv Gandhi Shilpi Swasthya Beema Yojana (RGSSBY) and the Rashtriya Swasthya Beema Yojana (RSBY)” of the erstwhile Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. He went on to urge the Prime Minister to “now work beyond media-covered, credit-taking launch events and take the benefits to the people”.

The Congress has, for quite some time now, been accusing Modi of running a ‘copycat’ government by merely recycling and repackaging the erstwhile UPA government’s key schemes. It stakes its claims also on Modi’s prominent schemes such as the ambitious Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana for financial inclusion, claiming that the scheme was just  the repackaging of the UPA’s  Swabhiman, that was launched to bring basic banking services to the unbanked villages, as Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

The raging debate also continues on whether Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative was borrowed from the UPA’s National Manufacturing Policy, 2011, which envisaged increasing the share of manufacturing in Gross Domestic Product to 25 per cent by 2022? And whether his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was just an extension of the UPA’s Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, which had the objective to eradicate the practice of open defacation by 2017?  And so on.

But wasn’t this expected in the absence of, what the CPI(M) claimed to be, an “alternative economic vision” of the BJP?

It may be mentioned here that it is well chronicled how way back in 1991, the BJP had extended critical support to the then Congress government  at a time when the Congress “had stolen a significant part of the BJP’s economic programme”. In the wake of an unprecedented economic crisis, the then Congress Prime Minister (who ironically, is now disowned by the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress party) had made a paradigm shift from the Nehruvian model to liberalise the economy, and the BJP had settled down in favour of the reforms and liberalisation.

At present, there are two dimensions of the whole issue:

1)      The issue of proprietary

2)      The redressal of existing problems

Proprietary does matter and makes history. Consider the fascinating stories relating to liberalization of Indian economy in 1991. It is well documented that it was the Congress, who under late Rajiv Gandhi had prepared the reform blueprint during the Chandrashekhar government (1990-91) that existed because of the support from the Congress. The Finance Minister at the time, Yashwant Sinha, still rues that had the Congress then not brought down the Chandrashekhar government, he would have been labelled the first reforming finance minister! The credit finally went to Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Finance Minister in Rao’s government, who was actually not the original choice even for the position! (He was made the Finance Minister only after I.G. Patel turned down the offer).

This brings us to the issue of redressal of existing problems.

It is pertinent to point out Modi’s statement in Lok Sabha in March this year, which he made in face of the attacks from the Opposition on his so called ‘borrowed’ policies: “Many times I hear that the schemes are not new. They are the old ones. The issue is not that. The issue is the problems are old.”

Modi had then gone to the extent of listing a number of schemes that he claimed were originally launched during the tenure of Atal Behari Vajpayee but were copied by the UPA ̶ “Vajpayee government had started Multi-purpose National Identity Card, you changed it to UID. Vajpayee government had Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana. That became the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Scheme. There was a Freedom of Information Act, you brought a Right to Information Act.”

 To this, the Congress had then even threatened to bring a privilege notice against Modi for being “economical with the truth” and “misleading the House”.  Congress’s Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi went into the details of such policies in the Upper House to claim that the prime minister had “compared apples with oranges, gold with dirt”.

Yet this credit hogging is a trend that, like many government schemes, are not recent.

To make policies and schemes is one thing, and to execute them is another. At the same time, due credit to the initiator of the policy is a fiduciary obligation not just of the political bigwigs but of the society on the whole. Isn’t this the only way to express one’s gratitude by acknowledging one’s contribution towards society? Modi does don the mantle of upholding such values. After all, besides being a politician, he is also the prime minister!