Thursday, June 15, 2017

Three Dismal Years of Modi Government in India

Through Parliamentary Elections of 2014 of India, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under leadership of Narendra Modi was elected to power in New Delhi. Main issues raised by BJP leadership for impressing voters were price rise and black money deposited by Indian in foreign banks. During the 3 years of Modi Government in office, prices of all industrial products have doubled while those of agricultural produce have seen marginal rise due to government controls. It is notable here that industrial producers are mostly urban while agri-producers are rural. This in turn means that during the said period, urban population has enriched itself while the rural population has slided back on the prosperity scale. Industrial products are purchased and used mostly by urban population composed of employees of the Government of thse of organized sector whose income levels are exhorbitantly higher than those of the rural people, hence there is no considerable impact on their prosperity level. Rural people using and consuming highly-priced industrial products have been mercilessly chiseled by high prices of industrial products.
Government controls prices of agricultural produce for these falling under essential commodities, so that survival of poor sections of population is not endangered. Under this background and pretext, there is no logic for rise in prices of industrial products. This gap in prices escalation has made rich people richer and poor people poorer.
During election campaign of 2014, BJP leadership have expressly promised bringing back of India’s money in foreign Banks within 50 days in office. Even Ram Deva also organized a camaign to this effect. After coming to power, the issue is conveniently forgotten, and no progress has been made in this matter even in 1000 days of the Government in office. Ram Deva getting multiple benefits of BJP in power has also forgotten the issue. Thus, Modi Government has miserably failed on both the counts of their election campaign promises. 
In 2014, Samajwadi Party (SP) government was ruling U.P. State with heavy hand promoting criminals and interests of Muslim community only. BJP leadership, during 2014 election campaign had promised to dismiss SP government in U.P. immediately on coming to power in New Delhi. Since, Narendra Modi has friendly relationship with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadava, said promise of election campaign was forgotten. It is notable here that, India’s two most corrupt politicians are Mulayam Singh of U.P. and Sharad Pawar of Maharashtra. Narendra Modi has very amicable relationships with both of these. This reflects on honesty of the present Prime Minister Modi.     

Currency Fiasco
Modi Government put all their energy in demonetisation of high value currency notes in circulation, throwing the whole financial system of the country out of gear. This was promised that demonetization would be beneficial to the nation and her poor people, and that the problems faced by common people for cash scarcity in Banks due to demonetization would be taken care of withing 50 days ie by December 31, 2016. While there is no cash shortage in urban Bank branches, account holders of rural branches have been suffering for cash scarcity even today, after 6 months of the promised date.
Due to no-cash in rural Bank branches, account holders have lost faith in the whole banking system, hence avoiding depositing their savings in the Banks and getting their money transferred through such Bank branches. So far, the government has not shown a single benefit of the demonetization. Of course, favorite Bank Branch Managers have been greatly benefitted by demonetization through using their power of converting black currency notes for heavy prices.        

Jan-Dhan Yojana
Modi Government launched Jan-Dhan Yojana prompting every citizen to have a Bank Account and deposit their savings in the account. This way, it is claimed by the PM himself that the government collected Rs 110,000 millions due to this scheme. Money so collected was loaned out to big business persons like Malya, Ambani, Adani, etc. After the said deposits by the poor people, Bank branches were declared cashless through demonetization, so that the depositors failed to get back their own money to meet their needs. Again, rich were made richer, and poor poorer.
With Jan Dhan Yojana, number of accounts in every Bank branch was doubled, but the Banks refused to increase their staff to serve the increased number of account holders, hence quality of service by Bank branches has considerably degraded.  

Digital India Dream
PM Modi is bent upon linking every citizen with Internet for various purposes of life, and he is pursuing this goal at war scale, without knowing that the country not yet have the infrastructure required for serving this purpose. In my village only 150 km from Delhi, like 40 percent of India’s village, still doesn’t have network signal strength suitable for an Internet connection. I am constrained to go to my rooftop after midnight hours whenever I wish the connectivity. Even then, I fail many times. Only possbility of connectivity is through BSNL Broadband with a landline phone. I had been their customer for 3 years but never got satisfactory service from them. Secondly, my ID used to be grossly misused by local exchange staff for connecting others with the Internet with bills to me. Actually, BSNL staff in rural exchanges have been at their places for decades with a cot in the exchange for sleeping during daytime. They don’t want any customer for BSNL.

River Sand
Due to misrepresentation by the Government of India, Supreme Court considers even taking river sand under Mining Act, and have imposed strict punitive measures on people for taking some sand for building their houses. As a result, local police finds it a good source of their illicit income because people essentially need the sand for which they must to the police personnel, or get arrested. A by-product of this is that price of river sand has quadrupled durig the last 3 years.
Sand is regularly produced by rivers in huge quantities as these descend from mountains to plains, and it is spread throughout the length of the rivers. People have been getting the sand from nearby rivers since known past without causing any damage to the ecology. If the sand is not removed from river beds, it would block flow of the river forcing it to change path. Hence, there is no need for any regulatory measures on getting sand from a river.
Now Governments are issuing licenses to traders for digging out river sand at far-away places and selling to the consumers. With this arrangement, the consumers are forced to pay a heavy price to contractor and for long distance transport, or steal the sand from a nearby river bed and pay a bribe to local police. Whole exercise of the Government is quite foolish, anti-people, and causing ecological damages.

What a Government is supposed to provide to people are adequate public health services, unifor education, speedy justice, work at their usual residence, and public services like roads, electricity gridlines, etc. But Modi government has not paid any attention to these in their 3 years in office, but have involved in creating controversies through intruding into private lives of people.