The BJP led NDA government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have brought many changes to the country’s administration. The man who was born to a ‘Chaiwala’ and journeyed to the top post of the country is acting tough to fulfil the dream of the people of this country by bridging the gap between the common man and the so called representatives of the people holding the top post. It’s been almost 7 months since Modi was sworn in as the 15th Prime Minister of India, and while a few months is too small a timeframe to judge a government which has won the mandate to rule India for 5 years, it is clear that certain decisions and policies undertaken by them are nothing short of satisfactory.
To mention few, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the government’s first big social welfare programme, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, on August 28, 2014. He gave a call for eradicating what he termed as “financial untouchability” of the poor by opening at least one bank account for every family in the country in less than six months.
Clean India campaign or “Swachh Bharat Mission”, which was officially launched on October 2, 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself wielded a broom and cleaned the road turn out to be one of the country’s biggest ever cleanliness drive and 3 million government employees and students participated in this event.
Modi’s “Make in India” concept gives hope to the unemployed to find a decent job, if not big jobs, as manufacturing leads to creation of lot of service sector activity in the country.
One of the most challenging tasks taken up by Narendra Modi in this short span after assuming the Prime Minister’s Office is the replacement of the Planning Commission by National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Ayog. The name itself suggest that the new body is revamped understanding the needs of the country at the grassroots level.
The planning commission was borrowed from the then Soviet-style of economic planning. Having served as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi understands that the structures of the planning commission allowed some of the authority to always act superior, pretending as if the states were at the mercy for funds. During the UPA regime in particular, it had come to behave most arrogantly. Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia exploiting his proximity to the Prime Minister came across as a giver to the mendicant states. Narendra Modi therefore, has done well when he announced the end of the Planning Commission as the country had known it all these decades.
The new body will function as an enabler for good governance and a performance-monitor of various governmental programmes and schemes. Instead of humiliating the Chief Ministers, the newly form body will work ‘to foster a spirit of cooperative federalism with the sole principle of developing a pro-people, pro-active and participative development agenda stressing on empowerment and equality, as the union cabinet of Thursday sitting had said.
Better late than never, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done one good thing by tarnishing the British hang-over or the borrowed system. The NITI Aayog is surely going to provide a national agenda for the Prime minister and chief ministers to foster cooperative federalism while recognising that strong States make strong nation.
