Narendra Modi vs. Manmohan Singh

I thank BSH for the debate. I’m sure this is going to be an interesting one! Before I get into the comparative showdown between Narendra Modi (Prime Minister, BJP) and Manmohan singh(PM, Congress), I’d like to give a brief history of the Indian politics, just so we have an idea of where we are coming from. Congress has been associated with the Indian national struggle since before the independence. It was in fact the first party to govern the newly independent India under the leadership of Jawahar lal Nehru. He died in 1964 and was ascended by his daughter, Indira Gandhi (who declared a state of emergency after being found guilty of electoral malpractices). She, predictable lost to Janata party in the next elections that were held in 1977. However, JP was a hastily formed party that sought to reverse the dictatorship-esque characteristics that the Congress party was unfortunately degrading down to. It couldn’t sustain itself, and dissolved in 1979, Indira Gandhi came back. She was assassinated in 1984. She had two sons, both of whom were assassinated separately in 1980 and 1991. Given the death of ALL the sons/ daughters in the Gandhi dynasty, the only possibly option for the once great party to sustain itself was to elect the wife of the late Rajiv Gandhi as the president of Congress. Problem solved, right? Except for one little thing, his wife wasn’t even Indian. Yeah. Sonia Gandhi, the president of the INDIAN national Congress, is Italian. The only reason she came to India was because she fell in love with Rajiv Gandhi, she had no ties to India prior to that. So finally, why does this matter in a Manmohan Singh- Narendra Modi debate? Because India is a parliamentary democracy. The success of any Indian Prime Minister depends on how the party structure is framed. Congress has a Italian president, who has quite a hold over what he does. Manmohan Singh was declared the Prime Minister ONLY because Sonia Gandhi wasn’t an Indian resident, and couldn’t legally be declared the Prime Minister. Thus there is this unofficial distribution of power at the centre, with a unanimous support for Sonia Gandhi, but Gandhi nominating ManMohan Singh in her place. There are allegations that MS is merely a proxy prime minister, with the real power residing in the hands of Sonia Gandhi. This brings me to my first point. 1. Manmohan Singh is a weak Prime Minister- Manmohan Singh is a great man (no sarcasm here). He pulled India out of a possible bankruptcy in 1991 when he was the finance minister, by liberalizing it. There’s no evidence that he engages in corruption, and he brought about the Indo-US nuclear deal- which was a definite win at the time we were sparring with Pakistan almost daily and there was an imminent threat of war. HOWEVER, he has no control over his cabinet. Nobody listens to him, and he has no leadership skills. His only defence when scams over scams are discovered under his leadership was to reiterate that HE, personally, hasn’t done anything corrupt. Which is pointless and borderline insensitive when the nation was banking on his statements on the matter. The Commonwealth games scandal (which brought international shame)[1], the 2G scam[2], Coal mining scams[3], corruption was leaking through the social structures, and all he could say was that he was incorruptible and he would step down if he was found guilty. No promise of a swift response, of a ironclad retribution to the defaulters, nothing. Rapes were happening left, right and centre, each more gruesome than the other and people were OUT ON STREETS protesting against it, and he made a 2 minute statement devoid of emotions, without any promises, nothing, ending it with a ‘is this good enough?’. [4] People were out there, protesting at the weak anti corruption redressal system, with Anna Hazare actually on a fast unto death supported by millions of people, and he did bare minimum to control the situation. Three of his cabinet ministers tried to diffuse the situation, and failed miserably. I believe Sushama Swaraj adequately addressed the complete ineffectual governance of MS when she said at a parliamentary session that “Normally, our prime minister doesn’t talk, but when he does, then no one [in his cabinet] even listens to him “. He did not respond to the accusation. One of the foremost duty of the Prime Minister, apart from being the harbringer of good economic and political systems is make sure that the public believes in the system. Nobody believed in him. The only reason he was the Prime Minister was because Sonia couldn’t be. And he, unfortunately, knew that too well to stick his head out. [5] 2. Policies: Populist and regressive A country needs three basic components to function well in the long run- a good education structure, employment structure, and a good safety net to ensure people can avail the benefits of the above two. Manmohan Singh failed on all the three parameters. The entire focus of the education policy was to bring in more children, rather than to improve the quality of education. Indian Education system fared one of the worst in the PISA study conducted in 2009. It came second last, ranking 72 among 73 countries. In the study conducted by Pratham, proportion of class 3 students who could read a class 1 text was as low as 30%, a dip from 50% in 2010. Just over half the class V students could read a class 3 text. The report, worryingly, points out that the learning levels in 2012 actually showed a negative trend. We have had schemes, but none of them focus on quality. Its all focused on universal coverage of a bad system. [6] Regarding jobs, it is true that our GDP did improve in UPA’s governance, but more than half the growth in GDP was due to improvement in tertiary sector, a sector where India does not have comparative advantage. It provides employment only to around 23% of the workforce even though it contributes more than 50% to the GDP.[7] Thus the benefits of growth have been severely limited to only the privileged class, which can avail the benefits of the precious few good educational institutions and participate in the booming IT sector. There has been a pressing need for a revamp of the labour law structure (to kick start the manufacturing sector) but the bills have been stuck in the parliament for years, with people bickering over it for years. The agricultural sector contributes only around 17% of the GDP, BUT employs more than 50% of the labour force. This has obvious repercussions on the wages and productivity and living standards of the people engaged. The only reason they haven’t migrated is because the manufacturing sector has not generated enough jobs, and the tertiary sector requires skills that they do not have. The safety nets have been riddled with corruption, with the assured food/ money leaking out of the system. People are simply not receiving the money they are assured for social security, neither are they receiving the food. [8] [9] MS failed because he couldn’t address any of the above problems. Narendra Modi has: (a) Not only STARTED working on a majority of the issues even though he has just been elected as the PM, (b) He actually has a pretty strong track record in Gujarat, (where he was the Chief minister prior being the PM) 1. He is strong: NM is regarded as a strong leader, regardless of where you stand on the issue. He has leadership qualities, ans a strong fan following. People believe in him, and his party believes in him (as was evidenced by the election campaign, which was highly Modi centric) [6]2. Issues: Recognition of primary education institutes in Gujarat is indexed on the school results rather than a huge beaureocratic structure like the rest of the country (where recognition is based on certain physical characterstics like the playground size/ school area/ classroom size, etc). Rules of requirement have also been relaxed, opening up recognitions for a lot of schools that were providing quality education but were just not adequate in terms of physical infrastructure. There is a continued focus on QUALITY of education, rather than the bribe an institutre can pay to get recognition. [10] There have been major job creation efforts recently, where the focus has been on skill creation- rather than just opening up- so that the benefit of opening up accrue to Indians, rather than MNCs. For rapid creation of jobs in the manufacturing sector, the government will strategically promote labour-intensive manufacturing. Employment opportunities will also be expanded by promoting tourism and agro-based industries. "Job creation is the primary thing in Gujarat's development model. When the entire world is passing from the era of 'Job-war'. When China is attempting to take over the entire job market, we focused upon generating new job opportunities," Modi said. [12] Lastly, the public distribution system in Gujarat has been a stalwart for the Indian system. Modi implemented innovative reforms in the broken system by computerizing the entire operation, making it almost impossible for the middlemen to leak money/ food from the entire chain. It improves accountability and transparency of the entire process. [13] Thus, Modi is a decisive leader (who enjoys popular support in a heterogenous highly vocal democratic society) and has been working to improve quality education, jobs, and reduce corruption.He has successfully done this in Gujarat, so he has a positive track record. He is going to be much better than Singh, since he's focussing on the core issues that the previous govt was completely ignoring. And is in a position to implement them.[1] http://tinyurl.com...;[2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...; [5] http://tinyurl.com...; [6] http://tinyurl.com...; [7] http://tinyurl.com...; [8] http://tinyurl.com...; [9] http://tinyurl.com...; [10] http://tinyurl.com...; [12] http://tinyurl.com...; [13] http://tinyurl.com...;[14] http://tinyurl.com...;