A new India' by 2022: Where's the roadmap?
Mr Modi spoke of the need for his party to make special efforts to capture the 120 Lok Sabha seats that were still out of the party's reach.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s exhortation on Sunday, as the BJP’s two-day national executive meeting in Bhubaneswar drew to a close, to take a “long jump” in order to build a new India by 2022, appears to have been a rhetorical device that would underpin the BJP’s campaign to extend its run of electoral victories as several states go to the polls before the next Lok Sabha election in 2019. Mr Modi spoke of the need for his party to make special efforts to capture the 120 Lok Sabha seats that were still out of the party’s reach. He also praised party president Amit Shah as “Chanakya”, leaving no doubt that all others — no matter how tall in their own regions — will have to play second fiddle to Mr Shah, who has been the PM’s Man Friday in the running of party affairs.
Seeking to reaffirm his commitment to development, the PM coined yet another alliterative slogan — “P2 G2” (pro-people pro-active good governance) — while the verdict is still out on whether his government is anywhere near delivering on his promise of “minimum government, maximum governance” made at the time of the last Lok Sabha election campaign in 2014. With such a background, Mr Modi desired that we direct our energies toward moving the national discourse in the direction of making a socioeconomic transformation in the next five years to make India a happy and prosperous nation and a leading country. It’s a pity, therefore, that the PM didn’t offer any fresh ideas about how such a goal may be reached in such a short period, and what the budgetary allocation patterns need to be in this period to raise the standards of health, education, housing, and physical infrastructure spending so that the lofty goal may become achievable.
The PM’s real goals were clear enough, though, as he proclaimed: “Our aim should not be change of government, but transformation of society.” This is as clear an appeal as possible to voters in 2019 not to think of unseating his party from power. And in this matter, Mr Modi had some real ideas to offer. The PM spoke not just of abolishing “triple talaq” so that there may be social justice for Muslim women but also (on this issue his party has been campaigning hard in recent months) for extending benefits to the Muslim community as a whole by extending benefits to sections of them under the new OBC Commission which the BJP has successfully pushed through in the Lok Sabha. If the BJP, under Mr Modi’s leadership, is able to make a dent into a section of the Muslim vote, his party is likely to become immeasurably stronger than it has been so far.