A One Year Report Card: What Has Arun Shourie Really Said About PM Modi?

NEW DELHI: Former Minister and senior journalist Arun Shourie, in his interview to Karan Thapar, has painted a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government in no uncertain terms. In his usual pithy style, Shourie who does not mince words when he decides to speak out has in his brief responses to the rather long questions spoken with the knowledge of an insider that has confirmed some of what everyone knew, and disclosed some that was outside the public domain.

So if one were to draw the lines and connect Shourie’s responses this is in fact what he has revealed:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi runs an authoritarian government. He does not rely on Ministers but on the bureaucracy with his Prime Ministers Office having become a centralised authority, to a point where Ministries are no longer taking decisions, and files are all being forwarded to the PMO. The PMO itself is packed with officials no brighter than their counterparts elsewhere, and the absence of experts at all levels thus does not allow intelligent, and informed decisions more often than not.

PM Modi tends to bypass Ministers, and while Shourie said in response to a specific question whether the same had happened to Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, he said that it would be highly unfortunate if it had. (It is common knowledge incidentally, and has been reported earlier by The Citizen, that Swaraj is at best a cosmetic presence in the MEA with her authority having been further eroded by the induction of Jaishankar as the new Foreign Secretary who is running foreign policy directly with the PM and his office). The Ministers and the Bharatiya Janata party is ‘frightened” of speaking the truth to the PM, and he rarely gets an honest feedback.

The Prime Minister works in a troika, the other two being Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and BJP President Amit Shah. All major decisions of the party and the government are taken by the three, with others rarely being consulted. They work as a team, and rarely get a feedback, living in their own isolated ivory towers.

The result is that mistakes are repeated, and corrective action is missing on the ground. Experts are not consulted or involved by the government. Foreign policy has remained a Modi forte, and he has made it clear through the travels, and the choice of countries he has visited, that China remains the focus and an area of concern. On the United States, the policy is as before, no change, except that there is no real follow up. And the Americans are getting impatient. The Madison Square kind of blitz notwithstanding, there has been no concrete progress in relations with the Americans who might just start looking elsewhere.

On Pakistan, Modi is like his predecessors, sharing every Prime Minister’s optimism that somehow he will be able to achieve a breakthrough in relations that others have not. This is sending out contradictory signals again with no one really sure of what the government’s policy towards Pakistan really is. Pakistan requires a steadier gaze.This fascination for the ‘out of the box’ makes governments follow the normally excellent institutional memory of the MEA, and the need is to supplement democracy with experts and retired diplomats to work out a sustainable policy for China and Pakistan. However, Modi has brought some of his energy to foreign policy which is a plus.

On the economic and development front the trajectory of this government is sad, as it has not been able to bolster investor confidence at all. The task of a leadership is to appropriate failure and distribute success, as Shourie says, but here again there has been a great deal of mishandling. Instead India comes out as a bully, instead of standing firm it retreats when the other side makes a noise, driving foreign investors away. Foreign investment needs stability and predictability, the two factors that remain non-existent. In other words PM Modi is not in the driving seat here although he thinks he is, and has been unable to fulfil promises of growth and development. Industrialists like Deepak Parikh have started speaking out, and the government should take these voices seriously.

The PM has not fully grown out of Gujarat. Instead of realising that Delhi is about policy, he has brought in the ‘big project’ outlook of a state chief minister into his economic policy. Also he is not used to the scrutiny a PM and his government face in Delhi, very different from being a state CM out of the national public eye as it were.

The PM uses the propaganda machinery to grab headlines, and create a larger than life impression. The result is that the distance between reality and expectations created through the media and the headlines is growing, and this is turning against the government. Also his constant and over active presence on the social media, for instance tweets even on a Sania Mirza victory, makes his silence all the more conspicuous. So when he does not tweet, or say a word about love jihad or ghar wapsi this becomes very noticeable, and the perception that the Prime Minister is deliberately silent on these important issues spreads. Shouries stresses on the loud, high key note being struck by Modi and his advisors recalling , “jo hyper-bole so nihaal.”

PM Modi is guilty of lapses of judgement that can become very critical mistakes. For instance the multi-lakh suit. Shourie says he just cannot understand who gifted it, and why the PM accepted it and wore it. “You cannot take Gandhi’s name and wear such a thing,” he says.

Shourie ends with a couplet from Faiz about promises made and unfulfilled which when translated reads roughly like this: now for the morrow what promises will you make for these tired eyes, with the false magic of what dream will you console this broken heart?