Modi's three-nation tour showed weakness, not strength

It is most unfortunate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen to break convention by severely criticizing previous governments on foreign soil. In global diplomacy this is not done. You will never hear US President Obama attacking his predecessor, George W Bush’s policies outside America.

Modi described India under the earlier regimes as “scam India” before a big audience in Canada. The PM boasted that his regime was “removing the dirt accumulated by previous regimes”. Presumably, this also includes the “dirt” accumulated by the NDA government as well as many BJP governments ruling various states for the past 15 years.

In Germany Modi addressed the NRIs and spoke about how the previous regime had “ freely distributed coal mines like handkerchiefs”. Of course, Modi was totally unmindful of the fact that the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh had also independently given away coal mines worth over Rs 1 lakh crores to the private sector companies which were also declared illegal and cancelled by the Supreme Court. The former CAG, Vinod Rai, said he did not have enough time or resources to assess the losses that had occurred in the case of coal mines given away by state governments directly through their public sector mining companies. Of course, Modi has no patience for these details when he sweepingly accuses previous regimes of creating “gandagi”.

In fact the Prime Minister got so carried away by his own rhetoric that he claimed his government had done in 11 months what the previous regimes could not do in decades. The PM must avoid such hyperbole on foreign soil. Such exaggerated claims get badly exposed in a complex political economy like ours.

The larger point is Modi has been making too many claims, like he did in Germany and Canada, of bringing immediate transformation which appear to remain in the realm of wishful thinking. The reality on the ground is not very different from what it was 11 months ago when he took charge as Prime Minister.

By all accounts, the bureaucracy at the Centre and States have mostly not adjusted to his style of functioning. Though the bureaucracy does not speak openly but it privately admits that many of Modi’s grandiose ideas cannot be implemented on the ground. Many senior bureaucrats are still not conceptually very clear about what exactly 'Make in India' means, if one goes beyond the slogan. There is very little attention to details.

Another example of Modi’s hyper imagination relates to the Jan Dhan Yojna which, in his foreign tour, he described as the greatest scheme devised in independent India for the poor of the country. The fact is banks have been pushed by the government to create 14.7 crore accounts as of 31 March 2015. The real story is out of these 14.7 crore accounts 8.5 crore accounts still have zero balance. This writer has spoken to public sector banks and insurance companies and they all say it is not practical to maintain zero balance accounts as it costs Rs 125 per account to the bank to just maintain an unused account. It costs an extra Rs 100 per bank account to give a Rupay debit card as promised by the government.