Gautam Chikermane

The prospect of a resounding victory and second term for Narendra Modi as Prime Minister is quite bright. It wouldn’t matter so much if the Modi-Shah combine at the NDA apex were not quite so assertive and transparent in its intent to decimate the Congress in particular.
 

At a time when the nation prepares for the Lok Sabha election, here is an understanding of how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has contributed in a large way, not just nationally, but also Internationally to the emergence of a new international alliance or axis

From indigenous production under licence after procurement to the coming of age of the private sector in defence equipment manufacturing, from great utility for the Army, Navy and Air Force to importers showing keen interest in our weapon systems, the Make-in-India project for military hardware has arrived all guns blazing.
 

For India, the need to be strategically secure against two often hostile neighbours is urgent. It would be critical if India were not a nuclear power in counter balance to Pakistan and China.

For the first time since both countries went overtly nuclear in the late 90s, India has called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. It has attacked a terrorist training centre in Pakistan killing 350 terrorists in their sleep. Pakistan, unequal to the task in conventional warfare, demonstrated as much in short order

The ‘thousand cuts’ policy of Pakistan, formulated in Staff College, Quetta, had not met with an effective Indian counter so far, thanks to the listlessness of successive governments we had in the past. India seems to have changed its mind in this regard since the Pulwama terror attack. India is now formulating and executing an integrated policy of a thousand squeezes against Pakistan — diplomatic, economic, strategic and military.

Cambridge Analytica uses pseudo-scientific methods such as the alleged mining of personal data without permission to influence voter and election behavior. In India, that means exploiting caste and religious fissures

Ever since 2014 when he became Prime Minister, Modi’s government has implemented a host of stuck or neglected legislation, including the celebrated GST, got infrastructure projects going again as only the BJP can, and picked off many of the low-hanging fruits from the previous government’s leavings, deliberations and yojanas. This has left the Congress complaining that most of what Modi has done was mooted or even operational in the UPA era

Is the forthcoming national election going to be won by the person, party and alliance that fired the aspirations of the youth in 2014, so that he and they can largely complete the transformation promised by Modi’s 'New India'?

How do the dozens of seriously corrupt people from the erstwhile UPA government era manage to cock-a-snook at this government? Why is Narendra Modi so timid about sending them to jail? And how did so many fugitive businessmen manage to run away abroad under this government’s watch? The writing has been on the wall for some time. If a down and out Congress has benefited from all this, it is largely the BJP government and the party’s own fault