"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves..." Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi can't but blame himself for the BJP's rout in Bihar. In the last one and a half years, he might have succeeded a bit in refurbishing India's political and economic image, but he has been a whopping failure in putting his own house in order and turn the central bureaucracy into a well-oiled machinery to implement his election promise on 'minimum government, maximum governance.'
As soon as he entered South Block in the sweltering summer of 2014, his first act of governance was to make senior government officials like some third rate corporate employees who have to punch in and punch out every day to mark their presence.
His second 'great' thing was to concentrate all decision-making powers into himself. Not even the PMO was authorized to take any decision. This went hand in hand with the direction to all ministers and bureaucrats to shut the door on journalists. This means there is no chain of command: no one is responsible for anything because no one has the authority to execute their responsibility.
No one expects the PM to have read Karl Popper to understand that "the strength of open societies lie in their openness." He was born in free India and experienced first hand the repressive ban on freedom of expression during the 1974 emergency and its consequences.
But he has put his own experience aside.
The net result has been terrible: farmers suffered huge shortage of urea during the peak Rabi sowing season of 2014-14 and pulses prices shot to astronomical heights in the second half of 2015, depriving the ordinary man of even the little protein that he has been consuming. The result was equally terrible for him as well - he suffered a huge blow to his image of invincibility in the Bihar election.
It's anybody's guess whether the Bihar election results would have turned out the way they did, if he had allowed a free hand to his ministerial colleagues and bureaucrats to attend to emerging problems from the beginning of his tenure.
Frankly, going by his repeated failure to smooth out hurdles to better governance, particularly of agricultural economy, even Amit Shah could be spared the blame for failure in Bihar. There was nothing for Shah and his team to show that "we have done this for you."
Ever since he was swept to power in May 2014, among other things, on the promise of topping the farmers' cost of production with a 50 percent margin, NaMo has shown little sensitivity and understanding in dealing with the mounting problems of the agriculture sector that has been driving farmers to suicide over the past 20 years, causing demand-supply problems in oilseeds and pulses production, and pollution of underground water table, rivers, canals and coastal areas through insensible use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
This intellectual insensitivity, heightened by an extraordinary belief in self as the most marketable face of polity, made NaMo lose handsomely in the rural areas of Bihar as well as in a large number of urban centres.
The breach of promise of topping with 50 per cent margin the cost of agricultural production made the job of average BJP worker-campaigner almost impossible in selling the Central government record on good governance, particularly in the context of inordinate increase in retail pulses prices. It was but natural that the Mahagathbandhan adroitly exploited this gap and coined the appealing slogan of "Hame Hamare Purane Din Lauta Do."
This JD(U) slogan was a double edged sword: while it highlighted the attention of the general public to skyrocketing pulses prices, it was also a signal to crooks and
Cost of governance failure to escalate?
By IndianMandarins - 2015-11-10 10:18:22
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves..." Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi can't but blame himself for the BJP's rout in Bihar. In the last one and a half years, he might have succeeded a bit in refurbishing India's political and economic image, but he has been a whopping failure in putting his own house in order and turn the central bureaucracy into a well-oiled machinery to implement his election promise on 'minimum government, maximum governance.'
As soon as he entered South Block in the sweltering summer of 2014, his first act of governance was to make senior government officials like some third rate corporate employees who have to punch in and punch out every day to mark their presence.
His second 'great' thing was to concentrate all decision-making powers into himself. Not even the PMO was authorized to take any decision. This went hand in hand with the direction to all ministers and bureaucrats to shut the door on journalists. This means there is no chain of command: no one is responsible for anything because no one has the authority to execute their responsibility.
No one expects the PM to have read Karl Popper to understand that "the strength of open societies lie in their openness." He was born in free India and experienced first hand the repressive ban on freedom of expression during the 1974 emergency and its consequences.
But he has put his own experience aside.
The net result has been terrible: farmers suffered huge shortage of urea during the peak Rabi sowing season of 2014-14 and pulses prices shot to astronomical heights in the second half of 2015, depriving the ordinary man of even the little protein that he has been consuming. The result was equally terrible for him as well - he suffered a huge blow to his image of invincibility in the Bihar election.
It's anybody's guess whether the Bihar election results would have turned out the way they did, if he had allowed a free hand to his ministerial colleagues and bureaucrats to attend to emerging problems from the beginning of his tenure.
Frankly, going by his repeated failure to smooth out hurdles to better governance, particularly of agricultural economy, even Amit Shah could be spared the blame for failure in Bihar. There was nothing for Shah and his team to show that "we have done this for you."
Ever since he was swept to power in May 2014, among other things, on the promise of topping the farmers' cost of production with a 50 percent margin, NaMo has shown little sensitivity and understanding in dealing with the mounting problems of the agriculture sector that has been driving farmers to suicide over the past 20 years, causing demand-supply problems in oilseeds and pulses production, and pollution of underground water table, rivers, canals and coastal areas through insensible use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
This intellectual insensitivity, heightened by an extraordinary belief in self as the most marketable face of polity, made NaMo lose handsomely in the rural areas of Bihar as well as in a large number of urban centres.
The breach of promise of topping with 50 per cent margin the cost of agricultural production made the job of average BJP worker-campaigner almost impossible in selling the Central government record on good governance, particularly in the context of inordinate increase in retail pulses prices. It was but natural that the Mahagathbandhan adroitly exploited this gap and coined the appealing slogan of "Hame Hamare Purane Din Lauta Do."
This JD(U) slogan was a double edged sword: while it highlighted the attention of the general public to skyrocketing pulses prices, it was also a signal to crooks and
