2024 and its lessons for India | P. S. Jayaramu

29th December 2024

I like to indulge in some broad reflections on the lessons of the year that is ending. My focus is largely on the political arena with some thoughts expressed on the direction of the economy, specially in view of the legacy of Dr. Manmohan Singh who passed away a few days ago and finally in the field of education, which is dear to my heart.

On the Political/electoral front:

My views on Politics in this write-up are influenced by the results of the Lok Sabha and assembly elections that were held in 2024. First, let me reflect on the lessons of the Lok Sabha elections. The electoral contest was, expectedly, fierce between the BJP and the Opposition led by the INDIA bloc. The BJP’s campaign was led by Prime Minister Narendra Damodar Modi who gave the slogan “aab ki baar char sou paar”, conveying the message that the Party would cross 400 seats and render the Opposition irrelevant. So confident was the BJP that it described its election manifesto as ‘Modi ki Guarantee’. Modi,on his part, felt convinced that the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya would clear the decks, as it were, for the Party to reach the magic figure. That made him ride roughshod over the Opposition by all the time attacking the Congress Party, more so, the Gandhi family, all through his campaign speeches. His deputies, including the Home Minister Amit Shah and the Party President J P Nadda, parroted whatever Modi said while asking for votes.

The INDIA bloc, led, largely by Rahul Gandhi, made the saving of the Constitution its central campaign pitch, interspersed by the demand, rightly, for maintaining and nurturing Secularism and the pluralistic character of our society and polity, along with its emphasis on issues like caste census and saving the poor and the middle class from the vagaries of inflation and unemployment.

The electoral verdict proved beyond any shadow of doubt the maturity of India’s ordinary, mostly ignorant, voters that what matters to them are issues of bread and job (naukri)and their felt need for not giving too much of a majority to any Party or the coalition. The sagacious and intelligent voters, even in the temple town of Ayodhya, were not swayed by the magnificent coming up of the Ram temple. The electoral lesson and advice to Modi and the BJP therefore was to work with its coalition partners for the common good. It is a different matter that the key coalition partners—the TDP and the JD(U)—have decided to abjectly surrender themselves to Modi to serve their own interests.

The voters message to the INDIA bloc, specially the Congress, was, that they are impressed with the issues they flagged as seen by the 99 seats they gave to the INC and the support to the SP and the TMC in Uttar Pradesh and Bengal respectively. It is indeed a sad spectacle that the Congress Party got arrogant and failed to read the mind of the voters in Haryana that they were not going to accept the Jat domination. Thus, they decided not to unseat the BJP, which had a clear anti-incumbency wave against it. The story in Maharastra was that of voters’ rejection of the Congress-UBT combine and their decision to vote for a stable government. The unmistakable point that has emerged in the key electoral battles of 2024 is that the voters have shown that they are mature and know whom to vote for power. For Democracy’s sake, the Opposition INDIA bloc will have to settle fast the leadership issue sacrificing their ego, decide on the centrality of issues along, keeping in mind the aspirations of the youth and women who constitute a decisive chunk of our voter force, with a convincing narrative to earn the trust of the nation’s electorate to be in the reckoning for power whenever and wherever the opportunity comes.

On the economic policy front:

As far as the economic policy/es are concerned, the year 2024 has shown the remarkable resilience of the LPG policies which were ushered in by Dr. Manmohan Singh both as Finance Minister in P V Narasimha Rao’s regime and as Prime Minister of the UPA government from 2004 to 2014. While this is not the place to go into an analysis of his detailed economic, monetary and trade policies, it needs to be emphasised that Dr. Singh saw the inevitability of bringing about a paradigm shift in India’s broader economic policies to ensure not only the survival of the country’s economy but more significantly to ensure slowly, but steadily, that India was going to be a major player in the global arena. At the same time, Dr. Singh firmly believed that the fruits of his policies should reach the poor and the unemployed. Examples of it were his NAREGA policy of ensuring 100 days of employment to the rural poor. No wonder, the essence of Dr Singh’s policies have been carried forward by the Narendra Modi-led government since 2014. Policies of inviting foreign investment etc too have seen a continuity. If India is a 3 trillion dollar economy , the seeds of it were sown by Dr Singh. Notwithstanding the left-of-the centre policy articulations of Rahul Gandhi, Congress governments in States, wherever they are in power, have been pursuing the policies articulated by Dr Singh.

On the educational front:

It is indeed disheartening to note that the BJP government which enacted the New Education Policy (NEP) in 2020 seems to have lost the steam in its implementation. While the reluctance of non-BJP governments at the state-level to implement the NEP 2020 is well known for various reasons, the Modi-led NDA government which has assumed office after the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, has hardly demonstrated its determination to implement the NEP in its totality. The much-promised 6 percent of the GDP which was to be spent on education is yet to be implemented. The key organisational and governance structures, like the abolition of the UGC and its replacement by the three vertcles, are yet to be made operational. As for the appointment of Vice Chancellors, even in Central Universities, the recommendation of the NEP 2020 for the Board of Governors (BOGs) being empowered to appoint Vice Chancellors has not been implemented. The Unin Education ministry still retains its control over the appointments. The story is the same with state governments, with many of them passing legislation’s to take away the role of Governor/Chancellor in the appointment of VCs and vesting such powers in the hands of the chief minister. In essence, governmental control ( Central and State) over the appointment of VCs remains intact, with a strong intent to place loyalists in such positions.

In conclusion, it is safe to assert that at the political/electoral level, the voter has demonstrated his/her sovereignty. Continuity of economic policies are likely to be noticed in 2025. The epoch-making changes contemplated in the NEP have majorly remained on paper and may remain so in 2025.

(Author: Dr. P. S. Jayaramu, is former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Bangalore University and former Senior Fellow, ICSSR, New Delhi)