Just one year ago Narendra Modi rode to the Office of Prime Minister on the slogan of ‘Minimum government, maximum governance’ and today the policies envisaged by the BJP-led NDA Government stand in a static mode with unidirectional pulls. Creating jobs and jump starting the invest cycle remains a big worry for the government. All these steps taken to ease investment regimes like manufacturing, development of industrial clusters, opening up of insurance sector, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in defence production are meant to create jobs, but somewhere the initial pace has lost its inertia and the economy which rode in early days of buoyancy is seeing a slowdown, which is worrisome. The economic reforms which began in 1990 during Manmohan Singh’s regime as Finance Minister have their footprints in Modi’s reforms. Big reforms in the field of labour, changes in Factories Act, Industrial Dispute Act (IDA), GST and others have a long way to go to become a reality. Surely what is initiated today may fetch expected results in coming days, provided pursued in right political earnest with no eye on vote bank politics. All these can happen if the country does not encounter weather linked roadblock. Last year deficit monsoon was the first big challenge before the present government. The Center may by few measures be able to deal with the situation but the question arises with the farm sector which provides direct and indirect employment to the majority of the work force. Expectations are that the steps taken in the past 12 months will start yielding results but an exponential growth cannot be expected. Broadly speaking it is time for Modi to take some calculated risks and make dramatic changes now especially when he has a positive political environment prevailing ahead of some state Assembly elections.
