Originally Published 2017-12-19 06:30:02 Published on Dec 19, 2017
BJPs half-win in Gujarat
The David versus Goliath battle in Gujarat Assembly elections has ended expectedly with Rahul Gandhi failing to pry away the State from the BJP. But the Modi magic has been dented, particularly with the slim margin of victory and the loss of his home constituency of Unja. With a 41% plus vote share the Congress has reasserted its political credibility in the state. Of course, it remains to be seen, how well the glue, which holds the Congress together, sticks. State level legislative assemblies do not function in a manner which provides the opposition a forum for high profile “statesmanship” as should be the norm in parliamentary democracies. It is pretty much a zero-sum game with the executive getting most of the face time. So, will the Congress leave the BJP in the dust, in the general elections of 2019? Yes, it may, unless the BJP takes five corrective steps – broaden its core leadership; roll out public jobs; junk Hindu consolidation; push federal decision-making in education and health and go hell for leather in rolling out infrastructure. First, the BJP should seriously consider bolstering the public profiles of their state chief ministers and rely on them to win the state elections rather than just on the Prime Minister’s charisma. MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan are coming up for elections in 2018. It is ironical, that such homilies were once regularly directed at the dynastic Congress, which had systematically decimated its state level leadership to ward of “pretenders” to the Gandhi fiefdom. Today, it is the BJP, once a party of open entry and merit, which needs to go back to the future. 2019 will be traumatic if state level BJP leadership sits on its hands, whilst only the Shah-Modi combine toil. Second, if young voters are to be attracted to the BJP, it is jobs, which will do the trick. There is precious little the BJP can do, over the next two years, to turn around the gloomy situation on jobs in the private sector. But there is nothing to stop it from recruiting youngsters for government. Done strategically, every person given a job, creates hope in at least ten others. If government can increase employment by a million people, ten million others feel hopeful. Even in the civilian (excluding the military) part of the central government, employment has declined by around 2,00,000 since 2001. There are 4,20,000 unfilled positions today. In the broader public sector, which includes all state and local governments, employment has fallen by 2 million since the peak, in 1995, of 19.5 million. Filling up these 2 million jobs provides hope to 20 million youngsters. This is a no-brainer. Third, the strategy of Hindu consolidation is dead in the water. Prime Minister Modi must revert to his 2014 vision of a multicultural, meritocratic nation for the good of all citizens, with no obeisance to caste or religious divides, for narrow political ends. Hindus are not under threat in India, nor is their culture under threat of being swamped. The minorities need to feel that they are a minority, only nominally. That being a minority is only an arithmetic fact. That what they can achieve for themselves, their families and society, is limited only by their own inhibitions and not by an unsupportive state architecture. Just as surely, putting the young in touch with their roots; correcting history, where it may have been written with a bias; building a national consensus on language and cultural policy, are all legitimate State objectives. State actions seem menacing only when they are a cloak for achieving partisan political ends. Fourth, political federalism has taken a backseat beyond implementation of the GST. The central government must broad base this principle with respect to areas in the concurrent list of the constitution, where both the Union government and the state government have a mandate to legislate. Education and health are two key areas. Clones of the GST council could be formally created in education and health, to make decisions on allocation and utilization of funds, participative and consensual. India lags, even many developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa, on education and health metrics. Joined up action; significant expansion in the public education and health services; leveraging technology to improve the quality of services and a doubling of budgetary outlays in both sectors are reforms which can be implemented in the short term. Just focusing on these basic services can spread a warm, nurturing glow amongst voters. Fifth, focus on completing last mile gaps in infrastructure rather than new projects to maximize value creation. Jobs, better connectivity, lower transaction costs – all flow from public investment in this sector. Some innovation is needed. Crowd sourcing small infrastructure can reduce the fiscal burden. More significantly, this makes private citizens and entities feel like partners not just recipients of public largesse. Assuring decent returns on private funds contributed in this manner will help. Think – functional street lights; road over or under passes for pedestrians; public toilets; better public transport; better water supply. The fiscal situation is already under severe stress. The money will need to be found by reallocating the existing funds. Additional funds to the tune of 3 per cent of GDP need to be directed towards health, education and infrastructure. Cutting back on defense allocations and starving peripheral departments of funds can achieve this objective over the next two years. The BJP has been on a winning streak thus far. It is now time to defend the political fortress it has built. How it goes about doing so, will make the difference between a fractured, weak India in 2020 or a progressive, forward looking nation, fulfilling citizen aspirations.

This commentary originally appeared in The Times of India.

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Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Sanjeev S. Ahluwalia has core skills in institutional analysis, energy and economic regulation and public financial management backed by eight years of project management experience ...

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