What 'historic steps' are expected from year one of Modi's third term?
Plus, a truly incredible interview with the new tourism minister.
Welcome back to India Inside Out, where we are still digesting the results of India’s general elections, even as a charged-up Opposition uses its numbers and momentum to take on the re-elected Bharatiya Janata Party in the now much more evenly split Lok Sabha, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi attempts to signal continuity in governance.
Before we go further, a couple of plugs:
In June, I wrote for the Stimson Center’s South Asian Voices about ‘India Shining 2.0’ and what the surprising election results might mean for India.
On the Election Tricycle, we spoke to Art Goldhammer about the huge surge in support for the far Right in France, and then discussed the fallout from the first US presidential debate and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that are putting wind in Donald Trump’s sails.
Lotus gazing
Conventional wisdom in politics suggests that the first year after an election is the best time to push through the most contentious policies. The idea is to take advantage of the political capital generated by an election victory, and blunt any Opposition pushback by pointing to the mandate delivered by the electorate.
This hasn’t always applied in a straightforward way to India. The Indian electoral calendar is more crowded than in most countries, both constraining Union governments (since the window to make contentious moves may be smaller) and liberating them (since there are additional occasions to claim a popular mandate beyond the general election schedule). Instead, governments in New Delhi have historically preferred ‘reforms by stealth’, with some even believing that a crisis is a prerequisite for major reforms in India.
Still, the massive mandates delivered to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 and 2019 did come with attempts to capitalise on those electoral victories, and the administration has spoken of using the start of a new tenure to make bold moves:
In 2014, after a string of anodyne slogans and measures to mark the new government (‘Make in India’, ‘100 smart cities’, ‘Act East’) and some more impactful ones (‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, ‘Swachh Bharat’), the government finally bit the bullet in December, announcing major changes to India’s land acquisiton laws that removed consent requirements in cases of land that was being aquired for large-scale industrial, infrastructural and defence projects.
In 2019, perhaps reflecting the sharper national-security pitch that contributed to the BJP’s bigger mandate that year, the moves were more pointedly political rather than economic: An abrupt decision to strike down laws providing autonomy to Jammu & Kashmir, while also bifurcating the state and turning it into a union territory, followed by the passage of controversial citizenship laws that introduced for the first time a religious test to India’s naturalisation rules for refugees.
The trajectories of each of those efforts may be instructive1.
The 2014 Land Acquisition amendments were brought in as executive ordinances, rather than through Parliament, and the BJP expended heavy political capital in defending them as pro-farmer as well as pro-industry. Yet they prompted massive pushback and protests from around the country, with the government ultimately choosing to let them lapse ahead of state elections in Bihar in 2015. Evidently affected by the ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’ (‘government for the rich’) tag that was used in the protests, the BJP chose to change tack and focus on a more welfarist approach in the aftermath of its first major political failure.
By 2019, the BJP had bigger numbers in Parliament and more experience wielding the arms of the state, and so its approach to that year’s big efforts were also different:
Its Jammu & Kashmir move was accompanied by a complete crackdown of civil rights in the state, even as it gave Parliament almost no time to consider the proposals on offer. Five years later, assembly elections have still not been held, and general election results in the diminished union territory cannot be described by the BJP as a political success, except for the fact that they happened. Yet, while outcomes in Jammu & Kashmir may not be favourable, the effort certainly helped BJP consolidate its core voters, given that this had been a long-standing promise.
The Citizenship Act amendments, coupled with Home Minister Amit Shah’s promise of a National Register of Citizens, sparked a huge protest movement and forced the government into suspending the new rules for the entirety of its tenure, only to operationalise them in the final days before the 2024 elections were announced. The NRC promise was quietly dropped from the BJP’s manifesto.
President Droupadi Murmu in her opening address to Parliament (delivering a speech that is always written by the government), promised “major economic and social decisions” as well as “many historic steps” in the days to come. But what “historic” policy moves can we expect in year one of Modi’s third term in power, this time with a much-reduced mandate and the need to rely on his coalition allies to stay in power?
Going into the 2024 elections, the expectations were that the BJP would be delivering further on core Hindutva promises – like the Uniform Civil Code – while also reshaping the electoral field in ways that would provide it with long-term advantages, i.e. simultaneous elections and delimitation.
The results, however, have muddied the waters.
After the election, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal insisted that the BJP’s dependence on allies would not imperil its plans to institute a UCC. Yet, one of those allies, the JD(U), said pointedly that it would want a UCC to “come through consensus”, suggesting at the very least that the BJP’s preferred shock-and-awe mode of operation may have less purchase. Nara Lokesh, of the TDP – the other major ally – made the same point: “The TDP will work to ensure that all such contentious issues are not decided unilaterally [by the BJP]. We are committed to discussing and deliberating on them while being committed to protecting the interest of all the states.”
Of course, these statements don’t preclude the BJP prevailing on issues like the UCC, simultaneous elections and delimitation – which neither of the principal allies has openly opposed. What they suggest is that political initiatives may involve more backroom bargaining than in the past, and that a chastened Modi may prefer to focus first on economic policy instead of lighting any fresh socio-cultural fires that might test the support of his coalition allies.
So what’s on tap on the economic front? Ahead of the elections, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman promised reforms that would “touch on all the factors of production; be it your land, be it your labour, be it your capital."
Indeed, land and even farm sector reforms were expected to be back on the table in the event of a major BJP victory. But with its middling numbers and upcoming elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana, Bihar (and, less significantly, Delhi) the likelihood of either of those seems to have substantially fallen.
Prior to the elections, Modi spoke of having already put together an agenda for the first 100 days2 of his third term, prepared by 10 ‘Sectoral Group of Secretaries’ from across ministries.3 So far, we only have a few reports of what is actually on this agenda – changes to the Bankruptcy Code, more subsidies for first-time home buyers, more electric buses in Indian cities – without any formal announcements.
Despite having held a review meeting on these priorities even before the results were out, few details have yet to be revealed (even though we are already almost 25% through those ‘first 100 days’). According to the Economic Times, this is because the prime minister wishes for consensus to be built:
“Multiple officials said the Viksit Bharat 2047 agenda for all ministries will be taken up for wider public consultation, as per the wishes of Prime Minister Modi. "This Viksit Bharat 2047 agenda will be presented to stakeholders. Some of these ideas will become part of the budget," a second official said. "The government wants to incorporate views of college-going students and a wider section of society before firming up the Viksit Bharat goals."
…
While the 100-day agenda had largely been finalised midway through the Lok Sabha polls, some parts are being reworked to allow broader consultations.
"We want to bring wider consensus on the goals to ensure that no one feels left behind in agenda setting," a third official aware of the developments noted.”4
Whether that is code for making coalitional adjustments or just taking the time to react to the altered mandate, this delay alone unsettles the ‘continuity’ image that Modi has sought to convey in keeping his cabinet broadly unchanged.
Given the focus on unemployment and jobs as one of the explanations for the BJP’s poor numbers – emerging through concerns over things like exam leaks and the Agnipath programme – one expected outcome is the use of Production-Linked Incentive schemes to also generate employment by expanding them into more labour-intensive sectors, with potentially an added focus on providing employment to women. How this PLI ‘mission creep’ (something that
has written about here) will play out may be predictable.The other focus will be on the the new government’s plan for the agricultural sector, given the widespread rural distress and the appointment of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, known for turning the state into an “agricultural powerhouse”, to the Union agriculture ministry. Widespread expectations are that the Budget will be more ‘populist’, although the government has sought to put word out that it will stick to its deficit targets.
We don’t yet have a formal date for the tabling of the Budget, though some reports have suggested that Nirmala Sitharaman will place it before the Lok Sabha on July 23 (Rather confusingly, another report now expects the 100-day agenda to be finalised by the prime minister only after the Budget is tabled at the end of July). And in case you needed reminding, Maharashtra elections are expected in October.
What ‘historic steps’ are you expecting to see in this upcoming Budget?
Inside/Outside
Exam leaks ended up rocking the newly formed BJP-led government soon after elections, and indeed has been cited as one of the reasons for the party’s struggles. This is one of those issues that those not closely watching India may be unfamiliar with. Simply put, exam leaks are a political issue because they are reflective of the underlying unemployment problem. We’re not talking about high-school exams here – these are mostly cases of organised cheating in tests that decide recruitment for government positions, or entrance to government colleges on tracks that eventually lead to teaching or medical posts. And to get a sense of just why they’re political explosive, one of the exams with allegations of cheating –NEET-UG – had 2.4 million applicants for 110,00 seats in medical colleges. For more on this, read Soutik Biswas’s report for the BBC and Yamini Aiyar on why the centralised policy approach towards exams like these is to blame.
Similarly, the Agnipath programme – wherein the Armed Forces recruits personnel below officer ranks for 4-year periods – has also been highlighted as one of the policies that hurt the BJP. Only a quarter of those recruited through the programme will go on into the Armed Forces proper, with the rest getting a lump-sum severance, but no pension. It was seen as a way to add more folks to India’s armed forces, without adding to the already hefty wage and pension bills. But in states where the Army has traditionally recruited in a major way (Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP) it was attacked for having created two different classes of armed troops with different benefits, despite carrying out the same tasks. The Opposition has asked for it to be struck down – Congress’ Rahul Gandhi brought it up in Parliament this week – and, with even BJP allies JD(U) and LJP raising questions, it seems likely that some tweaks will be made regardless. For background, read this Indian Express explainer.
Indian prime ministers traditionally made their first visit after an election to a country in the neighbourhood, a literal way of operationalising the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy (Bhutan and Nepal in Modi’s first term, Maldives and Sri Lanka in his second). This time around might be different. Modi’s already been abroad once since his re-election, though that was to Italy for the G7 summit – including a chance to add more ballast to the #Melodi memes.
Modi’s first bilateral is now expected to be a State visit to Russia, sending a very clear signal about India’s multi-alignment strategy and addressing the impressionthat the New Delhi-Moscow relationship needed to be further nurtured. Will Modi find another ‘this is not an era of war’ formulation to address Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? The visit also presumably allows Modi to skip the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kazakhstan, and presumably the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia later this year, to avoid having to share space with Chinese President Xi Jinping. For more on this read, Suhasini Haidar in the Hindu and Ved Shinde for the Interpreter.Other bits of note on the foreign policy front: Modi will also visit Vienna, the first visit of an Indian PM to Austria in four decades. Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s first visits internationally have been to the UAE, Sri Lanka and Qatar.
Some key appointments: Vikram Misri, former ambassador to China during the Galwan crisis, is now India’s foreign secretary. He replaced Vinay Kwatra, who reports suggest may be named India’s ambassador to the US. The National Security Council Secretariat has been reconstituted with some new names, albeit still under National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
Can’t Make This Up
This interview is incredible. Among other things, Gopi – the first-ever BJP MP from Kerala, who at first seemed unhappy at being made minister, since it put his acting career in jeopardy – says, “I can maybe think now about possibilities of states including TN, Karnataka, Andhra and Kerala, but there are other states who are still in a 9-month uterine condition, I will have to mend ways or make pathfinding interventions to have a good deliverance.”
That’s it for this week’s India Inside Out. Send feedback and ‘Can’t Make This Up’ suggestions to rohan.venkat AT gmail.com. And if you enjoy reading the newsletter, please do spread the word:
Important to note that the first year after the election is certainly not the only time to push through contentious policy, as evidenced by things like the Goods & Services Tax, demonetisation, the women’s reservation law, among others over the last decade. The contentious farm laws, meanwhile, cohere more to the ‘never waste a good crisis’ tactic, seeing as they were initially introduced as ordinances during the Pandemic.
Modi later said that, ‘after seeing the enthusiasm amongst first-time voters and the younger generation during his election campaigns, he decided to “add 25 more days" to his plan, with those days being dedicated to the youth.
The Hindustan Times report, by Shishir Gupta, features this incredible error: “Before embarking on his mega election campaign, PM Modi had told the top bureaucracy that their homework for the interregnum vacation was to prepare for decisions to be taken in the first 100 days of Modi 3.0. He made it clear to them that all the tough decisions will be made in the first 100 years of his government and he will not wait for the last 100 days before the 2029 elections.”
At a more recent meeting between the Prime Minister and his top officials, “the 100-day plan was also briefly discussed, but it was a minor part of the meeting.”