[What they had expected was not happening. Mr. Modi’s
government introduced its first budget on July 10, to the kind of breathless
television coverage typically reserved for royal weddings or moon landings. But
it was absent any move that could be described as bold, like lifting caps on
foreign direct investment; rolling back the previous government’s subsidy
programs; or repealing taxes levied on transactions after the fact, which have
long driven away potential investors.]
 |
Supporters of Narendra Modi after his Bharatiya Janata
Party won a landslide
election in May. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York
Times
|
Right-wing Hindus saw a cultural warrior. Working-class
voters saw an incorruptible outsider who would impose discipline, from the “Delhi New Delhi
Someone was bound to be disappointed.
By the summer, around 70 days after Mr. Modi’s
swearing-in, the first chorus of disappointment emerged from advocates of
radical change, including some who served as economic advisers during his
campaign.
What they had expected was not happening. Mr. Modi’s government
introduced its first budget on July 10, to the kind of breathless television
coverage typically reserved for royal weddings or moon landings. But it was
absent any move that could be described as bold, like lifting caps on foreign
direct investment; rolling back the previous government’s subsidy programs; or
repealing taxes levied on transactions after the fact, which have long driven
away potential investors.
Much of the budget suggested that Mr. Modi had decided to
adjust, rather than dispose of, the economic policies of the previous
government led by the Indian National Congress party — a surprise to those who
had listened to his bellowing attacks on the campaign trail. He has made few
changes to the top echelon of the bureaucracy appointed by Congress, most
notably extending the tenure of the highest-ranking civil servant, the cabinet
secretary, Ajit Seth, who had been scheduled to retire in June.
“Here is a government that came in with a lot of hope,
riding a tide of high expectations, promising change,” Bibek Debroy, an
economist who advised Mr. Modi during the campaign, wrote in
a column in India Today. “Ennui has already set in.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the president of the Center for Policy Research, wrotein The Indian Express that Mr. Modi’s
government had frittered away its honeymoon period on “an odd combination of
trifles, bureaucratic cross hairs, alibis, risk averseness and a shadowy
politics of stealth.”
The government risks losing its credibility, Mr. Mehta
said, “if the prime minister does not come out swinging soon, in a way that can
become an exemplar.”
Mr. Modi is proving to be a quiet leader. He does not
attend the late-night, whiskey-fueled gatherings that drive social life among
the New Delhi Gujarat . His most
confident steps have come in the realm of foreign policy, where he has used his
rhetorical gifts as hypnotically as he did in his campaign. At home, his
trademark oratory — ubiquitous for months before the election — is rarely
heard.
Instead, the prime minister is said to be spending many
hours in conference with senior bureaucrats, trying to identify bottlenecks and
regulatory obstacles that have kept infrastructure projects in limbo for years.
This is consistent with what he did when he took control of Gujarat .
For the first two or three years, as he worked intensively within the
bureaucracy, he “disappeared off the front pages,” said Ashok Malik, a
prominent columnist who supported Mr. Modi’s campaign.
Mr. Modi “has a bit of the student in him,” Mr. Malik
added, and this, together with the relative inexperience of his ministers, has
led to a “degree of overdependence on the bureaucracy.” He said the leader was
“finding his feet.”
“When you’re faced with a bureaucrat who has been around
for 40 years, throwing jargon at you, it can be very overwhelming,” Mr. Malik
said. He added: “It’s only been two months. If he’s still doing the same thing
after eight months, that will be something to worry about.”
The markets have continued an upward trend, but the
buoyant expectations of the spring have been tempered. Analysts say it will
take at least a year and a half to two years for the new government to turn
around India
One argument for patience is that, despite winning a
majority in the lower house of Parliament, Mr. Modi has not yet consolidated
enough power to impose coherent economic policies. His Bharatiya Janata Party
still hopes to take control of a series of important states in the coming
months, which is necessary to make gains in Parliament’s upper house. So it
might be safer to introduce significant changes in 2015, during a stretch of
time between major elections.
Mr. Modi, with his knack for showmanship, may also be
waiting for the right moment to make his presence felt. This week, crews have
been preparing the grounds of the Red Fort in Old Delhi, once the residence of
Mughal emperors, for Mr. Modi’s first Independence Day speech, on Friday. On
the same occasion, 67 years ago, Jawaharlal Nehru informed a new nation of its
“tryst with destiny.”
But this early wave of disenchantment is a reminder that
the man India
He captured Indians’ imagination by promising economic
growth, but he never gave a blueprint of how he would achieve it. His record in
Gujarat establishes him as pro-business, but it says little
about how Mr. Modi will use economic policy, or even how he will handle the
markets.
When he takes the stage at the Red Fort on Friday, he
will do so as a leader who has yet to fully reveal himself — a screen onto
which hundreds of millions have projected their hopes.
Neha Thirani Bagri contributed reporting from Mumbai ,
India
