The Big Story: Modi at three

  1. HowIndiaLives looks at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s four big government schemes – covering housing, electrification, rural jobs and financial inclusion – and compares their stated objective with what has actually been achieved.
  2. Swapan Dasgupta in the Hindustan Times says Modi has completely transformed India’s political landscape, but his governance track record will take time to fully comprehend.
  3. “The devastating flaw in Modi’s project is this,” writes Pankaj Mishra in Bloomberg, “he is trying to build a homogeneous national community in an irrevocably diverse country.”
  4. Rahul Bhatia and Tom Lasseter report for Reuters on a business that has grown up alongside Modi’s government: Ramdev’s $1.6 billion Patanjali enterprise.
  5. One of Modi’s big changes earlier on was to disband the Planning Commission in favour of a more collaborative think tank, called NITI Aayog. Yet over the last two and a half years, the institution has gone nowhere, writes Pradeep S Mehta in Mint.
  6. Those who hoped that India would change Modi have been disappointed, writes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay in Asian Age. It is Modi who has changed the face of India.
  7. Three years in, do we even know what the Modi government’s Kashmir policy is? “Perhaps Modi, like his predecessor Manmohan Singh, believes that the situation in Kashmir would take a turn for the better by itself,” writes Arun Joshi in the Tribune. “That is not going to happen.”
  8. “Let us make no mistake. Three years after the revolution, the Indian State is back with a bang — back with all the Stalinist impulses of the Indira Gandhi era,” writes Harish Khare, also in the Tribune.
  9. While it is possible to give the government a good (if not glorious) grade on what it has achieved,” writes V Anantha Nageswaran in Swarajya, “it is hard to resist being wistful on what might have been.”
  10. Mihir Sharma writes on NDTV.com of the one thing that the Modi government has done that makes him proud: Standing up to China.

The Big Scroll

  1. Shiv Visvanathan writes of the four ways he was wrong about Narendra Modi when he came to power three years ago.
  2. Many of Modi’s right-wing liberal supporters are now disappointed by his tenure, finds Shoaib Daniyal.
  3. Narendra Modi is not just a prime minister, writes Ipsita Chakravarty, but an idea.
  4. Despite promises of job creation, the unemployment rate has slightly risen, points out Shreya Shah.
  5. With no third-party verification, claims of progress under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan remain uncertain, writes Swagata Yadavar.
  6. “Two out of Modis three biggest initiatives have been inconclusive,” writes Rohan Venkataramakrishnan. “How will GST fare?”