Before The Elections
Elections are coming up and our office tea break conversations are usually about getting our Voter ID made, or about “how funny it is to imagine RaGa (Rahul Gandhi) as the Prime Minister of India“. And then someone shares some video of RaGa where he has messed up some interview and we are in splits after looking at that. We then see some so-called ‘anti-BJP’ channel in a cafeteria broadcasting how bad Modi 1.0’s demonetisation move hit our economy.
Then, our NaMo supporting-self emerges and says what if it didn’t go well, NaMo has done a lot of other great things for India. India is garnering more respect in the world, is maintaining a good and effective relationship with nations of our interest to ensure a further boost to our global status as a nation. Then someone chips in asking why people have a bad habit of criticising others for no reason whatsoever, like NaMo for his costly tours. He asks what do they know of the huge investments his visits are bringing to India, thanks to FDI and trade agreements, even the World Bank has projected our growth rate to be 7.5% in the coming year. We have set an aggressive target of becoming a 5 trillion economy by 2024. What else do people expect out of a developing nation which is still dealing with the consequences of late independence compared to other nations? NaMo is doing such good work that the entire opposition is feeling the need to come together to save themselves from being wiped out. And, finally, the tea break comes to an end with the assumption that, deep down, we all know who’s going to win and why won’t he, he hardly has any competition in the first place.
On The Day Of The Result
Elections results are out and BJP won by a clear majority as I feel most of us were praying for a stable government. I have also won a bet with one of my colleagues about BJP crossing the 300 marks, and so its a doubly happy day for me.
Now what remains of our list of expectations is some monumental announcement in the budget session by our first-ever woman Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, an announcement which would be focused on economic growth, something that we eagerly wait for after elections, right?
Here comes the budget day and there are no explosive announcements (there is a little disappointment there), but wait, there’s an increase in the surcharge for the super-rich. My optimistic self kicks in and proudly announces that only the NaMo government could have dared to increase taxes for the rich and that it points to the fact that this is a people’s budget. But then, my rational self pitches in and says, wait, what if foreign investors find investments in India less profitable because of this surcharge and take their business elsewhere? But then optimism always wins, so we conclude on the fact that certainly, our finance ministry would have thought about it and must have gotten it covered.
It has been over 60 days since the budget and our market has already lost 12 lakh crores, which is expected to continue further because of FIIs pulling out their investments. Many midcap and large-cap stocks are at a 52 week low, but isn’t it normal to expect the first budget to fill the market with optimism and push markets higher? Isn’t that what’s happening exactly what we wanted to avoid in the short run by having a stable government to boost investor sentiments? I am a little disappointed, but I continue to keep my hopes high, my belief in the government intact, and eagerly await a good, big good decision to come up. And, I don’t have to wait longer as a new bill is introduced in Parliament- the ‘RTI Amendment bill‘. It is gathering a lot of traction, hence its certainly big, but is it really good, I ask myself? I stop myself there and decide that I won’t speculate anything. I tell myself that I will come to a conclusion only after studying it in detail. So, I decided to bookmark reading this on the weekend.
I do so. I study the bill in detail and know that it has been passed in either house in a haste. I ask: What will this bill do?
This bill will take away the autonomy of Information Commissioners and pass on their control to the Central Government. For those who don’t know what ICs do, Information Commissioner takes care of that fact that information requested in an RTI application is revealed, no matter how big of an institution it is. It even has the power to summon the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), in case it fails to furnish information.
What will happen after the bill becomes a law?
Effectively, if an Information Commissioner pushes the government to reveal some information under an RTI request and the government doesn’t want to reveal it, then it can simply transfer or remove the Information Commissioner from his/her post and place someone who would probably deem the RTI request as irrelevant and squash it to protect the government’s secret like a puppet.
And then my phone lights up showing the news: “The RTI Amendment Bill successfully passed by both the houses has been signed by the President in South Africa and becomes law now“.
I keep my phone down and, while sipping my evening cup of tea, I ponder, “How much and what bad could have happened in three months if RaGa had become the Prime Minister Of India?”