From the right-wing rhetoric of the BJP’s 2014 campaign, featuring sound bites decrying “welfarism”, egged on by a commentariat denouncing the Congress’s “povertarianism”, and Modi’s own contempt for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, we have come to the point where the only economic “achievements” the Modi government can point to are building toilets for the poor, providing gas cylinders for rural women and enhancing allocations for the very same MGNREGA scheme.
Why am I not surprised? The reason is simple, and goes well beyond Modi—even if he sometimes sounds as if he believes India’s history of economic development began with him.
This story is from the October 20, 2019 edition of THE WEEK.
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This story is from the October 20, 2019 edition of THE WEEK.
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