Modi govt’s report card: An evolving document that can be improvised

On the eve of completing four years in office, the Narendra Modi government has presented its performance report card entitled “48 months of Transforming India”. The report card can be accessed by connecting to, for instance, the Prime Minister of India website http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en or to the Niti Aayog website http://niti.gov.in. It has a simple yet powerful overarching slogan of “Saaf niyat, sahi vikas” meaning “Clean intent, right development!” The report card communicates the government’s performance in pictures, in voices and videos, in infographics, in blogs and in dashboard indicators.

Since it is a self-prepared report card by the government one expects some bias in showcasing of its performance. And since the Opposition parties have a political axe to grind, they too are biased in commenting on the government’s performance. Indeed, Congress president Rahul Gandhi deriding on the government’s performance gave A+ grade only for slogan creation and self-promotion. His party has accused the government of betraying the people of India by not fulfilling the promises made to them. Reactions of leaders from other political parties have not been very different either. So what could be a fair review?

Before commenting on the report card, a few remarks are in order. One, it’s a first of its kind in India’s political history that a government has compiled its achievements in such a comprehensive manner and placed it in public domain (could the state governments take a cue from this?). Two, these achievements are being tracked and measured by indicators defined objectively. Third, a lot of serious thinking and effort has indeed gone into dealing with development challenges on multiple fronts in the last four years and so the government is justifiably taking pride in voluntarily showcasing its achievements.

The government has chosen to pack all its achievements in 11 focused areas: accelerating growth, commitment to social justice, development for all, eliminating corruption, healthy India, putting farmers first, women-led development and so on. A concise overview of reforms, initiatives and achievements in each of the focused areas can be glimpsed in the 78-page downloadable document. One striking message that emerges in this document is that the government is dealing with development challenges holistically and not in a piecemeal fashion. For example, in the agriculture sector the government is dealing with wide variety of issues: irrigation, fertilisers, seeds, technical know-how, farm loans, crop insurance, market access and integration and so forth. Similar is the case in dealing with challenges in other sectors. Even though some development initiatives have progressed more than others, there is no denying of the fact that the government is dealing comprehensively with sectoral challenges.

The report card also includes performance dashboard consisting of 20 indicators to track progress on selected initiatives on a real time basis. The dashboard indicators relate to those initiatives where the government has indeed made significant progress. For example, 10 million houses completed under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, 1.72 lakh km of road constructed under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, 41 million LPG connections released under Ujjwala Yojana, 78 million household toilets constructed under Swachchh Bharat Abhiyan, around 1.16 lakh gram panchayats connected by optical fibre, over 300 million LED bulbs distributed under Ujala scheme, over `3.8 lakh crore direct benefit transfer done under various schemes since 2014-15 and so forth.

Even though these figures are mostly based on government’s own reporting system, the sheer magnitude of these numbers is indicative of the scale and speed of progress achieved during the last four years. However, the progress on many other key development indicators such as sectoral growth, job creation, credit uptake, capital formation, etc, have not been included. This omission is understandable given that the country is in the midst of some major structural reforms whose positive effects at scale will be visible only in due course. For this reason, it is appropriate to consider the reforms and development initiatives of the government to be work-in-progress.

However, where the government could have done better is in sharpening the indicators that are already included in the dashboard. For example, what matters is not how many LPG connections are released or how many soil health cards are despatched but how many people are really benefiting from those LPG connections and soil health cards. In other words, the indicators must capture the demand side of the story by reflecting the ultimate users or the beneficiaries of schemes. Further these indicators need to convey “vision of success”. Instead of reporting the absolute numbers, the indicators need to reflect how far are we from achieving the final targets. Finally, these indicators are erroneously labelled as “impact of various schemes and initiatives”. These indicators can hardly be called impact indicators; these are not even outcome indicators. At best, these are output indicators and the government should not hesitate from calling it so.

Ideally, a self-prepared report card should also include information on areas where the performance fell short of expectations and propose a strategy to accelerate progress with a revised timeline. Such candid admittance and course correction would have made the report card look a little more credible. Surely, the report card is an evolving document which can be improvised. After all, the overarching slogan of “Saaf niyat, sahi vikas” also calls for “thik soochana” meaning “correct information”.

The writer is a development economist, and was formerly with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank