Minimum Government, Maximum Governance

“Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” was a promise made by Narendra Modi in his 2014 election campaign.  This raised the hopes of businessmen and pro-reform intelligentsia.  For most of us, the concept means limiting government interventionism and power of bureaucracy.  However, in his 2018 interview to Indian Express, Narendra Modi laid bare his utter ignorance of even the very meaning of the concept.  According to Modi, it’s all about clearing files in a short span.  He said files had to pass through 32 places in government previously, but now they reach him after just four to six stops in between.

When Narendra Modi has this kind of understanding of the very concept, it is no wonder that his government has disappointed most who were expecting an expedient implementation of the big bang reforms.  It is understood that first terms are prone to political compulsions.  You need to play to the gallery and undertake populist measures if you hope to be reelected.  However, two years into the second term, with such a political mandate, Modi government has not shown enough reformist intent.

Instead of a minimized government, what we have witnessed is government entering into all aspects of lives of Indians.  Government is telling its people what to eat (all the nonsense around beef eating), how to watch movies (only after a forced recitation of the national anthem), what to watch (browbeating of filmmakers to not employ Pakistani actors), and so on.  The Covid pandemic brought the brutal worst out of the police state.  Police were seen mercilessly beating the crap out of civilians who were out for an errand or to earn their daily bread. Institutions like the Supreme Court, CBI, Income Tax Department are used to rein in political opponents.  In the meanwhile, Air India was not sold in time and continues to bleed tax payer money, public sector banks just get merged and their privatization is no where in sight, government continues to create obstacles to foreign players operating in e-commerce (Flipkart and Amazon can’t give discounts), state governments continue to control surge pricing of ridesharing operators like Ola and Uber.  The list of government interventionism runs ad nauseam.

Narendra Modi has spent most of his time and attention on tackling the Chinese threat.  If he only bothered to get some expert advice and spent the same effort and time on improving the Indian economy, China would have given us a lot more respect than what we are getting now.  A stronger economy is a bigger and better deterrence!

I found this website recently.  It maintains a scorecard of thirty big reforms and the status of each.  I was saddened to see that only four were completed out of the thirty.  While four other reforms are incomplete, 22 were not even started upon!  Take a look at this scorecard.

https://indiareforms.csis.org/