I was the youngest and Lucknow was where we lived. Alambagh, then viewed as the periphery of the city, smelt of violence at every corner. Young men, spilling with testosterone, went beyond ogle and vulgarity when your sister went to the rickshaw corner for college. My elder brother would often confront them and after being beaten a few times, formed his own set of tacklers for this menace. We feared he would end up in police stations and courts, and before bail would happen and his bruises and fractures healed, we were looking at a career destroyed and the family’s next breadwinner now being a criminal himself. My mother would weep endlessly; my frail father would choose we the younger for what he couldn’t do to the elder.
That was ‘80s. Nobody had a voice but for the strong. You sucked up to them; he in turn viewed you as a possible recruit; mafias and extortinists mushroomed, unhindered, unchecked and aided in most cases by the law enforcing agencies itself. Empowerment existed as far as the queue in which you stood for ration, train or movie tickets and bank officials unfailingly would reserve a scorn for you whenever they scribbled an update on your passbook.
All this clogged my mind as I, along with journalists from across the country, waited for the BJP’s top brass to share their last 11 years at helm on Tuesday. Pragati Maidan of yore is Bharat Mandapam of today, impressive and overwhelming in scale much like the Soviet architecture without its cold air of repression. It has warmth and embraces you with its Indianness.
Then the top ruling brass – Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, JP Nadda and Hardeep Singh Puri, Amit Malviya — arrived and at the other end affable union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw took over in explaining the slides which highlighted the 11 years-and-counting of BJP’s three straight terms at the Centre.
Vaishnaw had much to share be it on poor, youth, women and farmers; infrastructure and connectivity; tech and digital prowess; economy and Ease of Doing Business; healthcare and environment; foreign policy, defense manufacturing and NorthEast Policy; cultural renaissance etc highlights of which you could see at the end of this piece.
Three Things Which Stand Out
What stayed in mind were three things: One, how middle class has grown in leaps and bound in last decade. If India has to become a developed country by 2047, an expanding middle class is the key. Without a middle class, youth lose way and are easy pickings for extremists and far-right movements. That’s where they get identity, voice, mobility and money. A society of rich and poor is a non-functioning society. That’s how Hitler took power; that’s how you have Donald Trump in White House; that’s how radical ideology took roots in early days of Soviet Union. Those who accuse BJP of far-right ideology have this wet-fish on their face: Extreme povery it just 2.3% of population; tax-regime exempts income up to Rs 12.75 lakhs; various government schemes accessible through Apps, affordable transport and digital connectivity and bank inclusiveness which is close to 100%. Far-right extremists, as a rule, finish off middle class. Not BJP.
The second thing of course is banking. It’s a mistaken believe that governments or Reserve Bank of India create money. Their share is no more than 3%. The rest of money creation is by banks, the more and deeper in the hinterland the better. The more they lend, and that too to MSME and productive enterprises, the more country grows and develops. 70% of private banks’ loans is to MSME. The bank inclusiveness and accounts created is close to 100% of population. You would find a branch of a bank within 5km radius in any part of the country. The countries where banking is restricted to a few and other smaller banks are vanishing, the poor fiscal policy is evident. Not in India.
Third, was how at no stage during the press conference any political mileage of last 11 years was sought: Not a word on dilution of Article 370; Operation Sindoor or how Covid was tamed, to name a few. So those who term it as a PR exercise ahead of critical elections in Bihar and West Bengal, please save your breath. There have been countless elections in India in last 11 years and BJP has largely done what it needed to do. Why, if Bihar and West Bengal were on the mind, Operation Sindoor would’ve never happened. For it was an unchartered territory and could’ve gone terribly wrong.
Meanwhile have a look at a few highlights across sectors which has made India the fourth largest economy of the world, on the way to being the third.
Poor (Free food-grains to 81cr; 15 cr tap water connections; over 4 cr houses; 12 crore toilets, nearly 15 crore SC and ST get loan for start-ups; 60% current ministers are SC, ST or OBC;
Youth (From 500 to 16.1 lakhs helped on start-ups which created over 17 lakhs direct jobs, 780 medical colleges from 387 in 2014; Universities from 723 to 1213; AIIMS, IITs and IIMS nearly tripled;
Women (Increased paid maternity leave, financial aid to girls, mudra loans to women, healthcare, female labour force increased from 23% to 41%.
Farmers (Agriculture budget 5 times to 2014; 7,350% increase in MSP on pulses; 1,473 online Mandis; various yojanas running into 100s of crores for high-yielding seeds, irrigation, financial aids and crop insurance)
Infrastructure (from 91, 287 kms to 146, 204 kms, nearly 70% increase in road transport; capex from 12 lakh crore to 66 lakh crore; from 25 crore to 95 crore internet users; from 74 to 159 airports; 1400 to 2762 increase in cargo;
Healthcare (medical colleges from 387 to 780; ayushman cards issued to 40 crores; affordable medicines from 80 to 16,000 kendras;
National Security to Foreign Policy (defence exports from 1941 crore to 23,662 crore; defence indigenization from 0 to 5,012; chief responder to international crisis);
Economy (per capital GDP increased from 86,647 to Rs 2 lakhs; increased procurement from Rs 1300 crores to Rs 390,000 crores; six-fold increase in electronics production, net profit to public sector banks from 37,000 crores to 2 lakh crores; valuation of Indian start-ups from 5 $5 billion to $450 billion);
NorthEast (Rail commissioning increased from 66.6 km a year to 179km a year; from 9 to 17 operational airport; inland water connectivity from 1 to 20; electrification from 0 to 142 km);
Ease of Doing Business ( From 143 to 63 in rankings, GST taxpayers based increased from 60 lakhs in 2017 to 1.2 crore in 2024; telecom sector from $12.83 billion to $25.16 billion; mobile phone manufacturing from 2 to 300 plus);
Tech Prowess (digital connectivity from 25 cr to 97 cr; mobile manufacturing from 18,900 cr to 4,22,000 cr; UPI 214 cr; space start-ups from 1 to 325;
Environment and Sustainability (Climate index from 30th to 7th; renewable energy from 76GW to 223GW);
