Narendra Modi aka NaMo has sworn-in as the 15th prime minister of the largest democracy in the world amidst of huge expectations from the citizens of India. In accordance with the expectations, the initial moves of Modi were actually in the right direction, be it SIT for bringing back black money or the tiny cabinet for ‘ minimum government and maximum governance’ promise. Markets responded very positives by touching life time highs, foreign inflows picked up. CAD for Q4 of 2013-14 sharply shrunk down to 0.2% of GDP5, a huge thing, indeed!

The reason behind decisive victory of Modi is being the first time voters, the younger generation. Voter turnout ratio had jumped to 66.4% from 58.2% in 2009. Surprisingly, despite of humiliating defeat, congress could able to retain its 10+ crore voters (you can call super loyalists) from 2009 to 2014. 11.91 crore people had voted for Congress in 2009 (won 206 seats), while 10.69 crore has voted in 2014 (could only manage to get 44 seats). The point is, most of the people in that excess 8%, from 2009, have voted for Modi/BJP. BJP managed to increase their voters to 17.16 crore from 7.84 crore in 2009. Yes, that was over two fold increase.

As Dr. APJ Kalam once said, Small aim is crime. And today’s generation is aspiring big, very big indeed, not from their studies though but from everything else, offense intended ;). Likewise, they are expecting Modi to do magic as if he has a magic wand in his hand. They expect him to curb the inflation, poverty and corruption. They expect him to steer the Indian economy into top gear. Nothing is easy in a country where the population is over 120 crore and democracy can be a hindrance to many things in every possible way. Hello, Medha Patkar and co.

Let me remind you the promises made by BJP, Black money, Bullet trains, smart cities, river linkage, tax reform etc.

UPA-II was so reluctant to form a SIT on black money even after Supreme Court order to do so, the only reason we could infer was ‘there was more black money within the congress than the outside’. Not-so-surprisingly, Sonia Gandhi is being ranked as 4th richest politician1 in the world by Business Insider with the net worth lies anywhere in between $2b and $40b. It is no secret that Gandhi family members are front runners in corruption, from Mrs Indira Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi and interestingly they NEVER sued anybody or done something against the people who made allegations against them. Mrs Indira Gandhi was step ahead all of them, she rationalized corruption! 


Case of Hasan Ali would definitely surprise you; Income Tax department taxed a simple scrap business owner, whose annual profit was around Rs 30 Lacs, with an amount of Rs 71,848 Crore2. IT dept had a solid evidence for 1.5 Lac crore deposits of Hasan Ali in Swiss accounts (only two accounts, and no one knows how many accounts that he has). Surprisingly, Hasan Ali didn’t even pay a single rupee towards that tax amount, he claimed he was innocent. He was so confident of Delhi’s support for him, and he was not wrong. If he gets caught, then most of the politicians’ lives will be at risk. He was the sole source for transferring illicit money across borders.

Bringing back black money is not an easy task for the BJP government either, there will hardly be any politician spared if they deepen the probe on corruption. They have to face resistance will be there at every level.

100 Smart cities:

This adopted concept from China was a failure even in ‘autocratic’ China. The aim behind the smart cities is to provide employment via construction and development in urban areas. It needs huge capital and land to build such ‘smart’ cities. More importantly, no one knows whether people would be interested to live there.  Many of the newly built/ under construction cities in China were abandoned, like Ordos3, due to lack of interest from the people to occupy
.

Bullet Trains:

This is exactly what we need now; a country’s development is measured in terms of infrastructure, particularly transportation facilities. We hadn’t seen much of development in the 150 years of glorious Indian Rail history, apart from the Tatkal tickets thing. Trains are neither faster nor cleaner than what we had 50 years ago. But it requires huge investments, and a complete overhaul of present railway system. Even the dept of railways is enthusiastic about the project, they are planning to raise the speed of Delhi-Agra lane to 160 Kmph by the end of October4, which is not bad by considering the fact that the fastest train in India can only travel at 110 Kmph.

River linkage, nope, I don’t have much of knowledge to comment on that particular issue. Will try to take up the same some other time and sorry for that.

Tax reform is actually a need than a necessity. Tax reform that NDA is talking about is, implementing GST (goods and Services tax) in place of VAT (Value Added Tax) for the purpose of simplification and unification of taxation system. Currently we are having different tax slabs for different services and good in different states, and it will be a herculean task to align all the state and central taxes in a line particularly when most of the states are having no idea and no road map for GST.

With the hope that NDA/Modi will be able to deliver what they have promised...
Vasudeva Reddy


References:

1.       http://www.businessinsider.com/richest-politicians-in-the-world-2012-2?IR=T#4-sonia-gandhi-20

2.      2.  http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-trail-of-illicit-funds/article2320546.ece

3.       3. http://www.thebohemianblog.com/2014/02/welcome-to-ordos-world-largest-ghost-city-china.html

4.       4. http://www.kashmirmonitor.in/news-delhi-to-agra-in-90-minutes-by-train-soon-67796.aspx

5.       5. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-05-27/news/50122774_1_gold-imports-current-account-deficit-gold-curbs