Governance challenges for a coalition

With the electoral results indicating that the era of coalitions may be back and that Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is unlikely to form a government on its own, the political economy debate in this country should once again be focused on the governance model that should be followed by the new regime at the Centre.

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Even as a majority government, the Modi regime in its last two terms often promised a revamp of civil services to make the administration more efficient, governance restructuring to ensure that both the states and local governments become more effective, and factor-market reforms to increase the ease of doing business with simpler and more friendly laws on land, labour and the farm sector. However, the strength of a single-party majority notwithstanding, the outcome on all these fronts has not been encouraging. Will a coalition government in 2024, even if led by the BJP, deliver better results?

This is not because the Modi government did not have the political capital to carry out these far-reaching changes in the country's overall governance model. No other government since Rajiv Gandhi's in 1985 has enjoyed such a clear single-party majority in the lower house of Parliament. It seemed that the BJP leadership was a little reluctant to risk its political capital for such economic reforms, and evidently focused more on its political agenda of rendering Article 370 inoperative in Jammu & Kashmir, or introducing the citizenship amendment law, or embarking on a highly disruptive plan like demonetisation. When it came to hard economic reforms like rationalising the multiple rates under the goods and services tax (GST) regime, or privatising non-strategic state-owned enterprises, for which even a policy had been approved, there was hardly any progress. Air India figures as the only case of privatisation under Mr Modi's 10 years of rule at the Centre.