2 Years of Modi : What We Need More Of

It's been two years since Narendra Damodardas Modi took oath as India's 14th Prime Minister with his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, winning a majority on its own- a first in three decades (Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress had won the highest-ever tally of 404 seats in 1984 thanks to a sympathy wave in his favour after Indira Gandhi's assassination.) 

Only diehard fans of the PM/BJP can say they've liked everything the government has done in the past two years & perhaps only the perennial critics can claim that the government has done nothing right. So, let's take the middle path and try and analyse the two years of the NDA government in this two-part essay in terms of 'what we would like to see more of' & 'what we would prefer less of'.

What We Want More Of:

More ministers who mean business. The government desperately needs ministers who focus on their ministry/portfolio and not daily politicking. The job of propagation of party ideology & party affairs should rest solely with official party spokespersons and office-bearers. The ministers should concern themselves only with matters of policy, legislation & government business. Ministers commenting on flimsy issues only end up embarrassing themselves & giving the perception that they are disinterested in their portfolio/s and donot take government business seriously. Top performing ministers such as Piyush Goyal & Suresh Prabhu have not only let their work speak for themselves but have not made one comment out of place. Whereas on the other hand, ministers such as Mahesh Sharma, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti among others, it seems have spent more time in front of TV cameras/mics than behind their office desks. We need yearly appraisals of ministers just like any other organisation and the PM should not shy away from more frequent cabinet reshuffles based on performance.

More interactions with the state governments. The PM has frequently used the term 'Team India' in the context of cooperative federalism. What we would like to see in the remainder of the term is more meaningful and frequent conversations with the state governments to tackle their specific problems and demands. We saw a glimpse of this when recently the PM held one-on-one interactions with the CMs of Karnataka, UP & Maharashtra on the issue of drought. We want see more of such interactions & partrnerships on issues such as Naxalism, river-water sharing, insurgency in the North-East, caste-based reservation stirs, et al. If the PM wants to be the 'captain' of 'Team India', he has to look at all departments of the 'game'.

More speaking out by the PM on issues that matter. Tweets on the most minuscule of issues and conspicuous silence on issues that are grabbing national headlines- this strategy requires some major amendments. Narendra Modi had often referred to then PM Manmohan Singh as "Maun-mohan Singh" ('maun' meaning silent or mute). But, since coming to power at the Centre, Narendra Modi is yet to hold a press conference where he actually takes questions from the media/journalists & answers them. Notwithstanding his myriad speeches at conferences, inaugurations & rallies over these two years, Narendra Modi is yet to hold a press conference similar to those held by Manmohan Singh & A B Vajpayee where they actually answered questions posed by mediapersons.

(Part 1 of 2)

(To be continued...)

(Tomorrow - 'Things we would like to see less of'.)

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