Acche Din One Year Later: Foreign Media Critical of PM Modi's Prowess

NEW DELHI: The big corporate owned Indian media is running with polls and articles spelling ‘success’ for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first year in office, but the influential foreign media has been far more cynical and sceptical of his prowess. To the point where his flagship “Make in India’ has been criticised as “mostly hype” and The Economist has instead underlined his authoritarian persona with the cover title India’s One-Man Band.

The coverage by the Economist, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is certainly not flattering, and cuts into the purpose of the Prime Minister’s strong global campaign in a bid to attract investment. PM Modi has visited 18 countries in one year with the Make in India theme that all the three publications have dismissed rather unflatteringly.

Interestingly, the Economist makes an interesting confession in its leader writing, “this newspaper chose not to back Mr Modi in last years elections because of his record on handling religious strife. Though he fails to control the Hindu-extremist bullies who back him. we are happy that our fears of grave communal violence have so far not been realised.”

The Economist has featured the PM on the cover, and followed it with a special report that is fairly comprehensive in its assessment of the one year of the Modi government. It concludes its leader with the rather telling observation, “Mr Modi acts as if a lot of small improvements add up to transformative gains. They don’t. He is still thinking like the chief minister of Gujarat, not a national leader on a mission to make India rich and strong. If he is to transform his country, India’s one-man band needs a new tune.”

The Wall Street Journal has headlined its article “Euphoria Phase is Over, Challenges Loom” maintaining that the Make in India campaign is “ so far mostly hype.” In its assessment the newspaper maintained that the “economy is merely limping along” maintaining that foreign institutional investors have pulled out about $two billion out of Indian stocks and bonds till date. According to WSJ the corporate earnings are dismal and exports have been down for five straight months.

The New York Times was equally castigating: “From abroad, India is now seen as a bright spot, expected to pass China this year to become the world’s fastest-growing large economy. But at home, job growth remains sluggish. Businesses are in wait-and-see mode. And Modi has political vulnerabilities, as parliamentary opposition leaders block two of his central reform initiatives and brand him ‘anti-poor’ and ‘anti-farmer’.”

NYT said that the PM had created the most formidable problem for himself raising “outsize expectations that he would sweep away constraints to growth in India, like stringent laws governing labour and land acquisition.”

The foreign media has recognised some of the accomplishments such as more foreign investment in railways and defence, cutting back of subsidies, bank accounts for the poor, and deregulation of fuel prices as some of those listed.

The Economist has been particularly critical of the one man show maintaining “others are put off by his narcissism, embarrassed that he met American President Barack Obama wearing a dark suit with all 22 letters of his name stitched over and over into its golden pinstripe. As he cracks down on groups like Greenpeace, some complain of his authoritarian streak.”