COLUMN: Taking Populism and Aspirationalism Together hallmarks Modi Government @ 3

Fifty days from now, Modi led NDA government will complete three years in office. PMO and ministries will come out with their achievements and the future road map. Jury will be out and media channels will be claustrophobed with commentators rating government on a scale of 1-10. Performance of any government in a democracy is best judged when it goes back to the people for a new mandate. For this, we will have to wait for a couple of years more.

However, what clearly stands out during the first 60 percent tenure of the Modi government is its boldness in being a government that caters to the traditional populist class but at the same time is willing to take the big political gamble of selling its aspirational ideas.

Mudra Yojana for instance, under which banks has already sanctioned more than 7 crore loans stands as the flagship employment programme of this government, by which the idea is to create large scale employment channelized through small scale entrepreneurship. Since Mudra is a performance based scheme where the output depends largely on how the sanctioned loan is utilized, it is a big gamble on part of the government to politically play out employment generation narrative on this scheme.

Remember, job creation was Modi's biggest electoral promise to the youth of the country during 2014 campaign. And to its credit, it has successfully managed to communicate it through Mudra till now.

Other flagship programmes of the Modi government such as Make in India, Digital India, Start up India, Skill India etc are all set with an objective of "long term gains" and it takes a lions heart on the part of the Prime Minister and his campaign managers to continuously sell them to the electorate through election rallies, public meetings and social media.

On one hand, we have some of the above mentioned aspirational ideas, the government at the same time also comes up with populist ideas such as Ujjwala. However, what's striking is how such a populist measure is communicated. A scheme, through which government has been distributing LPG gas connections to poor households, is often communicated as something that adds value to your good health and standard of living.

Also, the subtle messaging crediting the success of Ujjwala to LPG Give It Up campaign participants hints towards a genuine attempt of the BJP government to communicate a larger message of "nothing comes free of cost", which many would again call an attempt of gradually moving towards more realistic and aspirational politics.

In the nut shell, this art of communicating populist and aspirational ideas, both at the same time has worked well for the Modi government, if the recently concluded assembly election results are to go by.

However, in a country like India where a large segment of population continues to struggle with poverty, populist ideas and schemes will always have scope for discussion and implementation. Much to the credit of the Modi Government, it has managed to walk the tight rope of carrying and communicating populist and aspirational ideas at the same time. More importantly, it has managed to club it with electoral successes, which is a unique phenomena and which is only possible if the electorate strongly believes in the larger idea of what a government is trying to achieve. A lot of the credit to this goes to the Prime Minister who many believe is a master communicator and who seemed to have developed a very good 'understanding' with its electorate.

But, the government must realize that it will take a mammoth attempt on its part to effectively keep on implementing these aspirational ideas and at the same time show gradual results for its electorate to keep believing in them, since aspirational ideas are always difficult to sell in the long run. At the same time the government has to ensure that it must come up with populist ideas on the lines of Ujjwala, through which it can always appeal to its last mile voter. Perhaps, the government realises this and hence the discussion on Universal Basic Income in the recent economic survey is an indicative.

(The author is a Managing Partner, Ranniti Consulting and Research. He tweets @mehtanitin1807)