2014 marked the beginning of a new hope for a change away from a promise of a dream to a promise of something concrete via a resounding mandate to a CM who proved that he can deliver the spoken words.
The changed mandate posed it's own challenges of a deranged opposition & media molded in a certain ideology over three quarter of a century. A constructive opposition and media have, barring a few instances, almost always been a bane for India, and opposing for opposition sake is the expected norm, lesser said about the mainstream media the better.
In these circumstances the only way out seems to be the new voice assuming the role that a constructive opposition and the mainstream media voices ought to take in a noteworthy democracy. By new voice I mean that voice which challenged the mainstream media and brought it to it's knees and has set the agenda of mainstream discourse ever since, i.e. till it suddenly found itself on the same side it came into being criticizing about sometime during the second innings of the super bureaucrat PM and the once invincible Idea of India Eco system that he led. Such formidable was the control that this incestuous group, at it's peak exerted, that most of them still believe that the role reversal is just a regular bad dream they'll wake up from the very next day.
Not surprisingly, the issues that everyone found himself debating and vehemently defending his position on were actually non issues that concern only those people who have nothing better to engage in. Sample: mock terrorist in a mock terrorism drill found to be wearing a skull cap; people converting, re-converting and re-re-converting their religion, and so forth. The real issues got buried deep under this cacophony.
Everyone has his laundry list of things that he wants the govt to address here is mine:
1. One third of world's extreme poor live in India.
Jan dhan yojana is nice beginning but ultimately they would need jobs to pull themselves up from poverty.
The 100 smart cities project has to get going, and the focus of these smart cities must be job creation for the extreme poor and improvement in quality of life for all inhabitants.
Manufacturing must get rolling, if China could attract manufacturing due to cheap labor, there is no reason why India could not.
2. Current account must be in surplus.
Oil dependency must end on one hand and we must go green on the other. Solar, Wind, Hydro, Nuclear, clean coal & Bio fuel, not specifically in that order, all of them will be needed to power our economy
The more India travels on Train, the less oil will be needed to be imported. Trains should be the preferred mode of travel, not only between cities but within cities through Metro trains as well. Metro rails should render cars useless.
Subsidizing cycles, e-bikes & pedelecs will pay rich dividends.
Railways needs to upscale many times over and monopoly is not the way to go, competition will bring efficiency & improved service. Railways need to be debottlenecked by laying of multiple lines where needed, make trains weather, especially fog proof. More than high speed trains, we need high capacity trains running on multiple tracks that are not required to stop to let other trains pass.
3. Jobs
China's last decade was fueled by construction, be it high speed railway, cities or projects of gargantuan proportions, global recession could not derail the Chinese economy. India need to take a page out of that book. Energy independence, railways and smart cities themselves are huge enough projects to create enough jobs & fuel the economy.
4. Barring a small section, quality of life in India is one of the worst in the world.
When things as planned finally do fall in place it ought to reflect in the quality of life, and not just that of the affluents & the middle class, but across the board.
Picture from here
