AGARTALA, Sep 24 (TIWN): RTI query revealed that Modi Govt spent Rs 4,343.26 crore for advertisements and publicity through different media in 4 years just to keep BJP image high among masses. Modi’s succession of promises is just a way to conjure up publicity events so that people can believe in his "dreams" of a developing nation. In similar way, Biplab Deb has undertaken various publicity drives like establishment of AIIMS in Tripura without any substance or funding approval from Central Govt. RTI query also revealed that Modi Govt’s promise of establishing 13 AIIMS within 48 months after 2014 was a farce as not even a single AIIMS was established. TIWN exposing BJP’s successive FAKE promises only to fool people to grab votes rather than achieving actual targets of development. ‘ Acche Din’ only remained a JUMLA promise to fool voters.

As Modi approaches his final year in the office, he is now seeking another term as the nation’s prime minister — trying to seize the moral high ground during his speeches. But as his prime ministership is in the books, he leaves a poor track record as his legacy — indicating that the possibility of “achhe din” continues to hang in the balance.However, as the same scenario is being going on across the nation, at least 5 states have rejected Modi’s Jumla Ayushman Bharat, again another scheme without paisa. 

Modi Govt's 4 years promises vs actions highlighted in brief:

Price rise

Modi supporters from 2014 might recall how he came to power promising to end the climbing inflation. The spiralling petrol and diesel prices were amongst some of the key reasons that pulled down the UPA government. Even though price rise was one of Modi’s favourite topics to talk about while he was in Opposition, during his tenure, he failed to break the vicious cycle of high petrol and diesel prices.

On June 25, 2014, the price of petrol in Delhi was Rs 71.56, which touched a record high of Rs 76.87 per litre on May 22 , 2018 this year. Diesel price too climbed to its highest ever of Rs 68.08 on May 22, from Rs 57.28 on June 25, 2014.

Unemployment

At a rally in Agra in 2013, Narendra Modi promised one crore jobs to the country. However, Modi’s optimism about job-creation in India is out of synch with the reality. We are here today with over 31 million Indians unemployed, as per a report published on February 27 by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

With only 4.16 lakh jobs being created in the in the country’s organised sector during 2016-17, Indians have no choice but to face the ruthless truth that Modi's job creation promise was nothing but a mirage.

Corruption

The series of scams during UPA’s 10-year rule gave BJP and Narendra Modi the much-touted anti-corruption plank which became the key ground for Modi’s 2014 election campaign. However, almost four years as the PM of India, Modi still hasn’t been able to appoint a Lokpal.

And the acquittal of all the accused in the 2G scam case by the CBI court, including former telecom minister A Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi, hints at BJP’s failure to prove its accusations, rendering them questionable.

In the run-up to the 2014 election, Modi even went hog wild at Robert Vadra for allegedly dealing illegally in Haryana and Rajasthan. But for a man who came into power as an anti-corruption crusader, his failure to even perform any investigation against Robert Vadra, let alone putting him in jail, indicates inefficient governance.

Then the Modi government’s inability to clear the air about Rafale scam mystery also raises a question mark on the government’s so-called transparency and anti-corruption narrative. With charges of corruption against the BJP flying thick and fast, be it at the Centre or the state level, Modi’s true stand on corruption is yet to be understood by the citizens of India.

And when economic offenders like Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, and Lalit Modi fled the country, it is hard to ignore the possibility of willful negligence or active connivance on the part of the ruling government.

Narendra Modi’s silence on alleged corruption charges against Piyush Goyal and the infamous Jay Shah case along with his decision to reinstate the scandal-tainted BS Yeddyurappa and mining baron GaliJanardhana Reddy and his brother into the BJP during the 2018 Karnataka Assembly Elections, is a failure of Modi’s another poll promise “Na khaunga, Na khanedoonga”.

Economy

Indian economy is in a mess today, and the credit goes to the Modi government. Not only has the consumer price index (CPI) inflation increased from 3.9 per cent in March 2017 to 4.3 per cent in March 2018, but the foreign trade deficit has also increased from $10.7 billion in March 2017 to $13.7 billion in March 2018.

Adding to the woes are the swelling crude oil prices and increasing bond yields. To top it all, we are also witnessing rupee depreciation. In 2018, the rupee has lost more than 6 per cent against the dollar.

First, the demonetisation drive led the country to a cash crunch that took several months to recover, drawing 86 per cent of the currency in circulation by value, affecting millions of medium and small businesses, and the already struggling rural economy. Then came another blow in the form of goods and services tax (GST), which was implemented hastily, causing troubles in the supply and production chains, and forcing distributors and retailers to liquidate their inventories, leading to huge losses.

Further, the gross NPAs of private banks touched Rs 109,076 crore in March 2018 from Rs 19,800 crore in FY 2013-2014. And four public sector banks (Canara Bank, Allahabad Bank, UCO Bank and Dena Bank) reported a combined loss of Rs 117.29 billion in March quarter lately.       

The weak corporate and bank balance sheets have not only wreaked havoc in the Indian economy, but have also contributed to a steep slowdown in investment.

Agriculture

Increasing farm stress and a rise in farmer agitations and suicides across India over the past few years show the Modi government’s fiasco in handling the ongoing agrarian crisis. In 2014, the BJP promised to implement the minimum support price (MSP) with 50 per cent additional incentive for farmers. But, almost four years later, when finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that farmers would receive 1.5 times the cost of production as part of the MSP for all Kharif season crops, it revealed how the 2014 promise made by the BJP was nothing but another jumla.

Defence

With the ever-increasing tensions between India, China, and Pakistan, what comes as a major danger is India’s unpreparedness to defend the nation for a two-front war.

In the 2018-19 Union Budget, an amount of Rs 2.95 lakh crore has been allocated for the defence sector, out of which Rs 1,95,947 crore are for revenue expenditure, including payment of salaries and maintenance of establishments. This means that a majority of funds allocated to the defence sector are reserved for the usual functioning of the armed forces.

And with the failure of government’s Make in India initiative in the defence sector, the objective to create India’s own Boeings and Lockheed Martins that can strive in the global market is lost before it could even begin.

Ganga

Cleaning up of the Ganga river was one of the key electoral promises made by Modi in 2014. But, even with a whopping budget of Rs 20,000 crore for a five-year period ending 2020, the NamamiGangeProgramme launched by the ruling government has shown slow-moving progress so far.

A performance audit report by CAG, tabled in December 2017 revealed that the sampled 87 projects faced several deficiencies like delay in project approvals, huge unspent balances under the schemes and shortage of human resources, etc — delaying the achievement of the planned targets.

Kashmir

PM Modi inaugurated the Kishanganga hydroelectric project in Srinagar on May 19, and provided a great solution to the Kashmir problem: development. Smartly side-lining the core issue of Kashmir’s political grievances, Modi continually stressed on infrastructure development.

Smart Cities mission

Narendra Modi’s promise to build 100 smart cities has also fallen short, like all the others. Launched about three years back, this ambitious mission completed only 5.2 per cent of the total identified projects with just 1.4 per cent of the total envisaged investment of Rs 1,35,958 crore as of January 2018.

Digital India

Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative was launched with the objective to create a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Four years down the line, the execution of the scheme still lags behind the schedule — reasons being the digital divide between rural and urban areas, digital illiteracy dampening the project, poor network connectivity, poor internet penetration, crashing government websites, and the failure to electrify every part of the country. With several problems in proper implementation, this pet project of the PM has so far just imposed huge costs on the economy, without driving the promised results.

Skill India

Modi’s flagship Skill India campaign stumbled hard, earlier than expected. With the objective to train over 40 crore Indians in different skills by 2022, the project involved various initiatives like "National Skill Development Mission", "National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, 2015", and the much popular "Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY)".

As per the data disclosed for the PMKVY scheme up until the first week of July 2017, only 30.67 lakh candidates were trained or were undergoing training across the country. And out of them only 2.9 lakh candidates had got placement offers by that time. The low placements reveal that Modi’s promise to train the people of India was another pipe dream.

Make in India

Launched with a lot of pomp and show, Make in India was introduced to encourage companies to manufacture their products in India and to increase their investment. But, the reports state that the scheme failed miserably, affecting several sectors that were majorly hit by the dual force of demonetisation and GST. Other factors that led to the downfall of this initiative are the tough land legislation laws that make it difficult for companies to set up their manufacturing units coupled with the lack of industrial-scale innovation introduced, unavailability or the high price of raw materials, increasing competition from foreign markets like China.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

A high-voltage sanitation campaign that was launched with the vision of clean India by October 2, 2019 just had an advertorial shine to it. Even after more than three years of its launch, the municipal bodies have not installed proper dustbins at public places across the country, nor have they found any tangible solution to the problem of open defecation near slum areas which continues to expose the failure of the government’s much-hyped cleanliness campaign.

All of the above speaks volumes about our PM Modi’s national policies and development schemes which, without any tangible achievements, remain more of gimmicks and events, with the PM being the event manager.

In a country where minorities are lynched, farmers commit suicide, women get raped, youth remain unemployed, and small businesses suffer losses, the promise of “development for all” remains hollow and far from the ground reality.

It is important here to recall that so far Modi government has splurged Rs 4,343.26 crore for advertisements and publicity through different media, as revealed through an RTI reply.

Modi’s succession of promises is just a way to conjure up publicity events so that people can believe in his "dreams" of a developing nation.

BJP’s 10 promises in Pre-Election Vision Document released 1 week before Feb 18,2018 Tripura Assembly Poll:

1. Employment opportunity for every household

2. Free Education for women till graduation

3. 7th Pay Commission to the all Govt employees of the State Govt

4. Free Smart Phones to Youths

5. Minimum allowance of Rs. 2000 and a minimum wage of Rs. 340

6. Investigate Rose Valley Chit Fund scams and punish all the guilty

7. Provide house to all without brick housing

8. Free Health Insurance to all BJP households

9. Provide drinking water to all households

10. Regularize contractual Govt employees

From free smartphones to job for each household, Tripura voters need to ask BJP Govt of their promises and actions before 2019 Lok Sabha Polls.