Only good governance can, and so far there are very few signs of it. Nowhere do I see this more than on my travels. Only good governance can, and so far there are very few signs of it. Nowhere do I see this more than on my travels.

As I watched the worrying spectacle of senior ministers submitting their report cards to the RSS last week, I wondered whether the Prime Minister has not forgotten who elected him and why. Does he remember that he became the first prime minister in 30 years to win a full mandate because people were sick of bad governance? Whatever his loyalties to the RSS, he should realise that hyper-nationalism and Hindutva cannot help him bring ‘parivartan’ or ‘vikas.’ Only good governance can, and so far there are very few signs of it. Nowhere do I see this more than on my travels.

On a morning of luminous sunlight last week, I arrived in Srinagar. It was the kind of day that brought back memories from before the violence, but I quickly realised this was no time for nostalgia. Everyone I spoke to laughed cynically when I asked about flood relief and almost everyone added that they had ‘expected more from the Modi sarkar’. The floods happened on his watch and when he came to personally see the devastation he promised a grand ‘package’ and everyone believed him. A year later, they no longer do. Instead they make comparisons with the Bihar ‘package’ and point out that half that amount would have provided real relief to Kashmir’s flood victims instead of the sham relief they have received. Why has this not been a priority for the Modi government? When I started asking this question, I found that the problem was not so much money as governance.

The real failure of decades of Congress rule was that the grandest development and welfare programmes turned to dross because of bad governance. And, because of Modi’s reputation as a fine administrator in Gujarat, there was hope among millions of Indians that he would be able to change this most vital component of the machinery of ‘vikas’. This has not happened and there is no sign in the higher echelons of the Modi government that anyone has noticed. Ministers wander about with happy smiles on their faces as if all were well with the world. It is not, and if the Prime Minister had ordered that they submit report cards to him and not the RSS, he may have discovered that they have done nothing at all to improve their systems of governance.

For ministers to submit report cards to the RSS is both disturbing and futile. Not one of the leaders of this ‘social’ organisation has a clue about economics, governance or political realities. Instead of wasting time seeking guidance from the RSS, the Prime Minister should concentrate on building his own team of economists, administrators and political advisors in the PMO or the NITI Aayog. In Delhi his enemies are already predicting that he will be a one-term prime minister because he has failed to understand that governing India is more complicated than governing Gujarat. Many of these gloaters said this within weeks of Modi taking office, but this does not take away from the truth that governance has not improved.

If the economy is slowing down, if there are still no signs of new investment, new jobs or new hope, it is because in Modi’s model of governance there has been continuity and not change. This is inexplicable despite the crucial mistake of not telling people last year the degree to which the economy was damaged by the policies of the last government. In any case, the time has long gone for talking of ‘legacy issues’.

Before coming to Srinagar I spent a few days in Ladakh and there again, wherever I went, people complained about how ‘nothing has changed’. Ladakh in another country could have become rich and prosperous just from tourism. Modi is the first Indian prime minister to have emphasised the importance of tourism as an economic tool, so why does Leh look so bad? Broken roads, filthy bazaars, open drains and garbage dumps frighten the hardiest of foreign travellers, as does the absence of modern communications. In a state whose borders Chinese soldiers regularly cross illegally, surely efficient Internet and cell phone services would bolster national security rather than hurt it?

Let me return though to the main point of this piece. This is that the Prime Minister needs urgently to remember why the people of India gave him a full mandate. May I humbly remind him that they hoped that he would be able to bring real change into their hopeless lives. Real change cannot come without real changes in governance. This will not happen until the Prime Minister takes personal charge. His detractors in Lutyens’ Delhi accuse him of being a ‘one-man band’. Let him use this to his advantage and take direct responsibility for finding out why his government has begun to function no differently to the one India’s voters rejected.

@ tavleen_singh

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