The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in its broad 2014 election manifesto, laid emphasis on women security, smarter urbanisation, attention to the country¡¯s middle class, eradicating black money and addressing farmers¡¯ distress among other promises.
The manifesto encompassed wide range of issues from economic growth and problems in the social sector.
Stress was given on creation of smart cities across the country, implementing and improving amenities such as transport, sanitation and waste management. Demonetisation announced in November 2016 was an alleged masterstroke by the Modi government to curb black money. Similarly, schemes like ¡®Beti Bacho, Beti Padhao¡¯ were launched for women empowerment and education.
Reports released in the past have revealed how the government has fared so far to deliver on these promises. Let¡¯s take a look at how much the country has achieved under the Modi government:
The nationwide campaign for the period 2014-19 aimed to clean up roads and streets and shut open defecation by building toilets even in the remotest places of the country.
Reports suggest that government has achieved success in eradicating open defecation in over 5.5 lakh villages. The National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey 2018-19 has reported, as on March 5, that the number of Indians defecating in the open has come down to under 50 million, from 550 million in 2014.
The highly ambitious project of building tens of millions of toilets across the country nit not achieved enough. In truth, there has been an increase in the number of household toilets built under the current government. But it¡¯s also true that many people are not using these toilets due to a variety of reasons including lack of water and half/shabbily built toilets.
The government's Clean India Mission says that 27 states and union territories out of 36 are now free from the practice of open defecation.
In 2019-20 Interim budget, Modi government allotted a meagre Rs 39.87 crore for five national commissions, including the National Commission for Safai Karamchari, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the National Commission for Backward Classes.?
BCCL
In December 2018, minister of state in the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ramesh Chandappa Jigajinagi, said in a Lok Sabha session, that 2011 census identified 1,80,657 households as dependent on manual scavengers across India.
According to numbers collated by the National Commission for Safai Karamchari (NCSK), since January 2017, one person has died every five days while cleaning sewers and septic tanks across the country.?
A report published by Newsclick in July 2018 stated that there have been 1,340 deaths related to manual scavenging in the past 10 years across the country.?
All this, despite the ambitious promise to eradicate manual scavenging by the year 2019.
Prime minister Narendra Modi launched the ¡®Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao¡¯ on January 22, 2015 in Haryana as one of the flagship programmes of the government to address the declining sex ratio and women empowerment-related issues.
The Centre has spent a total of Rs 364 crore since 2014 in advertising the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign. The scheme and funds meant to address the issue of declining sex ratio, has been reduced to mere PR machinery. More than 56 per cent for the ¡°Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao¡± scheme have been utilised in media and advertisement related activities.?
Only 25 per cent funds from the corpus have been states and districts, shows information released by the government. More than 19 per cent of the funds were not released by the government.
So far, the government has allocated Rs 648 crore for the programme in the last five years and spent 56.27 per cent of it, or Rs 364.66 crore, on advertising.?
Modi¡¯s promises and efforts to curb corruption and weed out black money from the economy in the form of demonetisation did not give desired results.?
According to the Reserve Bank of India¡¯s annual report for 2017-18, 99.3 per cent of the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes have been returned to the central bank.?
Of the Rs 15.41 lakh crore worth 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in circulation before November 8, 2016, notes worth Rs 15.31 lakh crore have been returned. The exercise aimed to extinguish black money received in the form of cash failed miserably.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) warned of the impact of demonetisation on Indian economy and its little effect on black money. Despite these cautions, Modi went ahead with the alleged act of genius.
BCCL
The board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which included the present governor Shaktikanta Das as a director, had warned of short-term negative impact of demonetisation on Indian economy and observed that the unprecedented move will not have any material impact on tackling black money.
The board, according to minutes of a meeting disclosed by RBI in an RTI reply, had met just two-and-a-half hours before Modi announced the demonetisation decision on 8 November 2016.
The move saw 86 per cent of cash by value going out of circulation.
The human impact of the move was grave. Close to 100 people lost their lives, elderly struggled to have access to cash, pensioners struggled and workers remained unpaid.
According to a 2016 study, nearly 800,000 Indians lost their lives prematurely because of hazardous fuels such as wood and coal used in cooking. In the same year, Modi government added a new initiative the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), which provides a free LPG connection to poor households.
PMUY seeks to deliver 80 million new connections and bring clean cooking fuels to India¡¯s homes, especially in rural areas.
The oil ministry¡¯s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) estimates that LPG coverage in India (the proportion of households with an LPG connection) has increased from 56% in 2015 to 90% in 2019.
There¡¯s a significant growth in number of LPG connections in the country but there are several deterrents too, especially the cost of recurring refills.
¡®Make in India¡¯ is Modi¡¯s ambitious industrial policy aiming to substitute imported goods with domestically manufactured ones, inspired by what the Chinese have achieved over the past three to four decades to become to manufacturing powerhouse of the world.
AP
From 2014 to 2018, India's annual GDP growth hit 7.3 percent on average, making it a forceful economic entity. The country also surpassed France in 2017 to become the world's sixth largest economy. India¡¯s manufacturing industry has has accelerated over the last five years. Industry output grew rapidly over the last four years, with a 6.9 per cent growth in 2018.??
However, job shortage, rural development, wealth gap and huge fiscal deficit still remain the issues that must be dealt with priority.