[The economy has expanded by a robust 7.3 percent annually during Mr. Modi’s tenure, better than the 6.7 percent rate in the previous five years, according to official numbers. But many economists accuse the administration of doctoring the data.]
By Peter S. Goodman
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Five
years after Narendra Modi’s campaign promise of a new rail line, the train to
and
from Joginder
Nagar in northern India still “hasn’t changed since the British built it,”
a
local tailor said.CreditCreditRebecca Conway for The New York Times
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LUNSU
VILLAGE, India — Across the
Kangra Valley, in the hills below the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, the
promise of a modern railway reverberated like the beginning of something vital
— access to jobs, hospitals, universities, and shops.
Many villages were connected to the rest of
the country by rutted dirt roads and a rickety railway erected by the British a
century ago. During the monsoon, landslides blocked trains and flooded roads,
rendering them impassable.
Narendra Modi, then running for prime
minister, had come to the region in 2014 promising liberation. A new rail line
would provide fast and reliable train service. But five years later, with Mr.
Modi seeking re-election, villagers look down the bluff at the old tracks with
a mix of disgust and resignation.
“Nothing has happened here,” says Lata Devi,
55. “I want to meet Modi directly. I want him to see how we live here. I will
not be casting a vote, and I will break the legs of anyone who does.”
As India nears the end of the world’s largest
election, which began last month, Mr. Modi is confronting anger over his
failure to deliver on the promise that brought him to office — economic
revitalization.
The prime minister has drawn praise for paring
India’s legendary bureaucracy. He has altered perceptions that his country was
hostile to business. But he has failed to spur significant economic growth, in
part because of his disappointing record in reviving stalled infrastructure
projects. The prime minister has championed rail, road and electrical links as
a means of furthering development across this country of 1.3 billion people.
Although road-building has proceeded
aggressively, infrastructure over all has fallen short. During the last three months
of 2018, investments in new projects slumped to their lowest level during Mr.
Modi’s tenure, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, an
independent research organization in Mumbai.
“The fall after 2016 has been quite severe,”
says Mahesh Vyas, the center’s managing director. “He thought he could solve
all those things with a magical wand.”
Slowing growth has reduced government tax
revenues, forcing Mr. Modi to slash spending on public works. Private toll
roads and power plants have stalled as banks have withheld finance after losses
on previous ventures.
The prime minister inherited a troubling
condition that has plagued India for decades: What economic growth the country
generates does not produce enough jobs. He vowed to create 10 million jobs a
year.
As a former chief minister of his home state
of Gujarat — widely hailed as India’s most entrepreneurial — he was celebrated
as a leader who could harness India’s natural resources, intellectual prowess
and enormous work force toward industrializing.
But a signature program, Make in India, which
aimed to help manufacturing, has produced a bumper crop of public
pronouncements and scant hiring, in part because the nation’s patchy
infrastructure has discouraged investment. The unemployment rate climbed to a
45-year high of 6.1 percent last year, from 2.2 percent in 2011, according to
the government’s National Sample Survey.
Nonetheless, Mr. Modi has won the ardor of
the masses with his appeals to Hindu nationalism and his military
confrontations with India’s nemesis, Pakistan. He is widely expected to claim
re-election after voting ends on Sunday.
Here in the northern state of Himachal
Pradesh, the prime minister enjoys special rapport owing to his days overseeing
the region for his Hindu nationalist political organization, the Bharatiya
Janata Party, or B.J.P.
From the city of Dharamshala — best known as
the headquarters of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama — to
the villages of the Kangra Valley, people lament the state of the economy while
still praising Mr. Modi.
“He is a great man,” says Ajai Singh,
managing director of Glenmoor Cottages, a collection of private residences in a
grove of towering cedar trees in Dharamshala. A B.J.P. flag flies from his
rooftop.
“He hasn’t achieved anything,” Mr. Singh says
later. “He will get another term, and then we will see results.”
The economy has expanded by a robust 7.3
percent annually during Mr. Modi’s tenure, better than the 6.7 percent rate in
the previous five years, according to official numbers. But many economists
accuse the administration of doctoring the data.
“The government was willing to play with
numbers to score a point,” says Amiya Kumar Bagchi, an economist at the
Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. The numbers “are wrong and possibly
fabricated,” he adds.
Some of India’s problems are beyond the scope
of any national leader. Mr. Modi has presided as the American central bank, the
Federal Reserve, has lifted interest rates, making the dollar relatively more rewarding
for investors and prompting an exodus of money from emerging markets. Oil
prices have soared, lifting fuel prices.
But some of India’s troubles flow directly
from Mr. Modi’s actions, not least his disastrous 2016 move to ban most Indian
rupee notes in a bid to disrupt finance for terrorists and black marketeers.
The government failed to have new notes ready, creating a crippling shortage in
an economy dominated by cash.
“I cannot begin to explain the sheer
stupidity of that,” says Jayati Ghosh, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru
University in New Delhi. “What you did was suck the lifeblood from the market
system. It was a huge crime on the Indian population.”
Mr. Modi’s lack of success in completing
stalled infrastructure projects has left many rural people stranded far from
jobs.
Anek Kumar, 42, has worked at the Dharmsala
Tea company for more than a dozen years. He sweeps freshly harvested leaves
into piles and feeds them into machines that roll them into tea, earning 7,100
rupees (about $100) per month.
He travels 90 minutes from his village to get
to work, walking four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) up a dirt road and then riding
a bus. There are no full-time jobs closer to home, he says.
The crisis of joblessness is especially acute
among younger people. Between 2011 and 2018, the unemployment rate for young
men ages 15 to 29 soared from 8.1 percent to 18.7 percent, according to the
employment survey. Among young women, the jobless rate more than doubled,
rising from 13.1 percent to 27.2 percent.
Sudesh Bedi, 21, is completing a master’s
degree in computer applications at Himachal Pradesh University. A few weeks
ago, he ran into a recent graduate who was operating a tea stall. Another
graduate was working as a house painter. Neither of these encounters enhanced
Mr. Bedi’s confidence that education is a portal to a lucrative career.
His father, a rickshaw driver, has urged him
to seek a government job, accepting a modest but steady paycheck. Mr. Bedi has
opted for entrepreneurial pursuits. He and a friend started a business
marketing computer security software to customers in North America. Last year,
they opened a coffee shop, selling fruit juice and espresso to the
international hippie backpacker set.
“Until now, Modi has only said things,” Mr.
Bedi says. “He hasn’t actually done anything about creating jobs.”
That sentiment echoes through the Kangra
Valley, where people had hoped the promised rail upgrade would deliver fresh
economic opportunities.
At campaign rallies in 2014, Mr. Modi vowed
to strengthen the railway links of Himachal Pradesh. Local members of
Parliament promised to revamp the line running east from the city of Pathankot,
in the state of Punjab, to Joginder Nagar, a 100-mile journey that takes 10
hours. They would replace the single-gauge tracks with broad gauge, while
extending the line some 500 miles north to the city of Leh, in the mountainous
state of Ladakh.
The town of Baijnath seemed poised to
benefit, given its 13th-century temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva.
Pilgrims travel there to make offerings, and tourists arrive from around the
world. A faster, more comfortable train would bring more.
In the hills above the temple, a fading
luxury resort, the Taragarh Palace Hotel, looked to the rail project to help
fill its rooms, now only one-fourth occupied, says the manager, Rajiv Mahajan.
In Joginder Nagar, the dusty city where the
train now begins and ends, construction supply companies and electronics stores
envisioned using rail to ship in wares from distributors and factories at half
the cost they pay to trucking companies.
But when the railway ministry began surveying
in 2016, it concluded that the existing rail had “heritage value” and should be
preserved.
“The train hasn’t changed since the British
built it,” says Suridender Pal, 50, a tailor. “Modi promised better days. We
haven’t seen better days. Those who are rich have seen better days. Those who
are poor have not.”
Later that day, in the nearby city of Mandi,
Mr. Modi would address some 30,000 people at a rally, asserting that his
government “is doing unprecedented work on the infrastructure here.”
Down at the train station, an engine rumbles
to life for its noon run.
A 68-year-old army veteran climbs aboard and
settles into a hard-back seat, headed back to his village after his monthly
medical treatment at a military hospital.
Sapna Devi, 32, wrapped in a fuchsia sari,
takes a seat next to her teenage daughter. They are bound for a Hindu
head-shaving ceremony for her cousin’s newborn son.
The whistle sounds, and the train pulls away.
It crosses a boulder-strewn river, passing a group of shirtless men who are
bathing and washing their clothes. It rolls past women taking refuge from the
sun under a leafy tree.
The carriage rocks back and forth, its
cruising speed slightly faster than a cow ambling across a road.
“It’s pretty slow,” Ms. Devi says. “I wish it
was faster.”
