Arvind Gupta
Change is pretty common in our everyday lives. We change the channel on our TVs to find out our favourite shows. We change our clothes to suit the weather and occasion. We may even change our minds about what we want to eat for dinner tonight. These type of changes are small and somewhat common, however, there are other types of changes, that are much bigger and do not happen frequently. We vote to change if not satisfied. We also vote to continue to give another chance to perform better. Come 2024, and India gears to vote and perhaps 2024 General Elections are going to be more important for India. Infact they are going to be the most crucial elections since independence. They will decide whether India wants to continue with reforms on national level with an eye on the continuation of the most powerful diplomatic relations on world platform.
Why India needs Modi in 2024, is not a million dollar question, it’s not even the rocket science. India on the path of once again becoming the Vishwa Guru can’t afford to lose its leader who has first all made every Indian citizen to believe in the idea and secondly the leadership showed its commitment for the cause especially during COVID. India needs its commitment to vote for Modi in 2024 to ensure the delivery of much bolder reforms in his third term in order to allow India to reach its potential turning its rising working age population into a demographic dividend.
In the last eight years as Prime Minister Modi showed a mix record in fulfilling his promises on economic reforms. He has made substantial progress in attracting capital and reforming the banking sector, but, much of the work is left unfinished as India still does not attract enough FDI in manufacturing to absorb its labour force. Moreover, India needs to also increase its savings rate to boost infrastructure investment. Both require Modi to deliver much bolder reforms in his third term that is certainly a strong leap from where it is today. That said, India is the only country comparable to that of China and any significant progress in India will be globally consequential.
Narendra Modi led incumbent coalition government are all set to retain power as suggested by a few exit polls. The projections indicate that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will secure simple majority in 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Meanwhile, some exit polls are also divided as to whether the BJP can win a parliamentary majority on its own, with several predicting that it can loose some seats compared with its 2019 landslide victory.
While exit polls have a record of being inaccurate in past elections, the huge difference between the NDA’s projected seats versus the divided opposition with a number of self-ambitious regional leaders, means that each of the exit polls should be extremely unreliable for the case of an NDA loss. As the election will be widely seen as a referendum on Modi’s leadership over the past ten years, his victory would indicate that the public is generally willing to give him a another term to complete unfinished tasks, such as reducing the high unemployment rate.
That said, even with the recent economic slowdown, India still boasts Asia’s fastest-growing economy. But beneath the veneer of impressive GDP expansion, unease about India’s economic model clearly tempers enthusiasm. There is no doubt that the COVID effects low downed the Indian economy, which cast a shadow over Modi’s second term but still the efforts introduced since 2014 made the things different and comfortable to achieve the most ambitious India as 5-Trillion Dollar economy.
In 2024 India needs Modi to continue to finally push through key economic promises to provide India with much-needed investment and jobs.Growth is particularly important to India not only because of its need to converge on account of its low GDP per capita but also to pressure on employment creation on the back of its rapidly growing population. In fact, India struggles to generate enough formal jobs and lacks capital to invest in infrastructure to absorb its existing excess labour supply.
To assess what is at stake for Modi’s third term, one has to analyse India from two perspectives, first, the progress the Modi Government has so far made on key pillars of his pledges since coming to power in 2014; and second the scale of reforms that are needed for India to reach its potential. For the latter, we use China as a comparison based on similar population size and, possibly, even in many ways global ambition.
Only a leader of the stature of Modi can address the much needed reforms required in all the aspects of the growth model to escape from its current low middle-income trap.India does not have a challenge as regards the supply of labour, in contrast to countries in East Asia, since its working-age population is expected to expand rapidly, so much so that it needs to create millions of jobs per year in the next decade to absorb all its incoming labour.
These challenges are well understood within India’s academic and political circles and have been sources of how to address the ills of India’s under-performance despite its great demographic potential. Modi and his team have made pledges on the country’s key economic challenges. Since 2014, the positive progress Modi has made, mainly pertains to capital, where as the expectations on his labour and productivity promises, require a little more of his leadership and vision. Capital is obviously important as the infrastructure deficit is a clear bottleneck to create more jobs. Regarding capital, there are two obvious ways to increase it, foreign capital and public investment. As for the former, Modi has tried to liberalise both FDI and portfolio with mixed results. Within his ‘Make in India’ campaign, measures to open up some sectors to foreign competition have been taken, which have helped increase FDI into India.
That said, it is still significantly less than what is really needed to increase demand for workers, particularly in the manufacturing sector, which only comprises a small percentage of GDP even compared to China’s in the early 2000s. The only country comparable to India is China due to its massive sub-continental population and geographical size. For India, the road forward is clear, it needs to raise its capital stock per worker, but the debate is how to do so. China’s experience in the early 2000s may prove to be an important lesson for India. It’s not an overnight transformation, and to ensure the addressable, Modi’s continuation in the highest office is a must.
On the political front we the people of India have to see that with whom Modi & his BJP is going to contest in elections of 2024, Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati, Assuiadn Owaisi, Mamata Banerjee, Aravind Kejriwal, Kanhaiya Kumar. On the contrary there is a section of people who see the agendas like, CAA, NRC and NPR, Ram Mandir, Hindutva, Triple Talaq, Pakistan and Imran Khan but Modi will not have to do anything to win 2024 election, because people already know what he had done for country.
CAA and NRC, RERA ACT, 3 Cr Homes, 9 Cr Toilets, Scrapping Article 370, Terrorism drop, 15 new AIIMS, 35 new Airports, Transgender Act, 1.8 Lakh KM roads, Motor Vehicle Act, Weaponry for forces, 33 percent drop in India’s arm import, New Education Policy, 7 new IITs, IIMs, Reduced Corporate Tax, PM Kisan for all Farmers, 2nd Largest Solar Power, 2nd Largest steel Producer, 2nd Largest mobile manufacturer, 4th Largest Automotive market, World’s Largest healthcare – Ayushman Bharat, Privatization of PSU and PSB, Modernization of Railways, Improved ties with all countries, 4th rank in Foreign exchange reserves and beside these, proposed 100s of Development projects near borders in North East India and Ladakh.
Having witnessed the 2014 and 2019 election campaigns and the mood and sentiments of the people, it was clear that people were tolerating Congress only because they never had a serious political figure opposing them. Since the emergence of Modi in 2014, the hopes of people changed. It is not known as BJP ki sarkar, it is known as Modi ki sarkar. He is the face of the party and the key decision maker too.
(The author is State Secretary &Incharge President Office, BJP Jammu & Kashmir UT)
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