Four Years Of 'Modinomics'

It’s time for an audit. How has the Modi regime fared on the economy? Even beyond DeMo and GST, it’s a patchwork quilt.

- Arindam Mukherjee and Lola Nayar

Effects are not always presented to us in manifest form. sometimes they have to be inferred from what’s not there. A universal sense of well-being—what was called the ‘feelgood’ factor in 2004—is now not as perceptually salient among the middle class or other strata as it was then. What else is missing or present? And why this exercise? Because a new economic epoch for India was the central claim the Narendra Modi campaign had made in 2014—the presumed economic miracle of the ‘Gujarat model’ was to be extended all over. fifty-four months later, it’s a good time to assess the results since the Modi regime’s pure policy phase is mostly done, and any big policy rollouts hereafter will likely be election-flavoured. so how does it stack up?

A performance audit of NaMonomics offers mixed evidence of both sorts. Of the manifest ones, the disasters were, of course, spectacular. Demonetisation was a train wreck. The rupee was like Newton’s apple. And the farm sector’s condition could be read visually too, in front-page photographs of mile-long marches converging on the cities. Things that became conspicuous by their absence? Well, Make in India made nothing. Smart cities did not mushroom. Jobs did not bloom. Bank NPAs did. Jan Dhan accounts ran on empty. GST, the other headline event, was a courageous but difficult reform, with some inevitable mess and pain (and verifiable gain). Then there were things invisible to the urban middle class— because they happened far, far away from its universe. Long networks of rural roads, for instance, qualitatively changing life in India’s vast outback. The gifts of the Awas Yojana. The soft light of Ujjwala, where cooking gas connections touched many lives. And the deep effects of something like GST won’t be as visible as the trucks running on smooth new highways.