The result has been iniquitous development having created islands of opulence and ghettos of miseries, poverty and slum clusters. The quality of education has gone down drastically. Education is fully commercialized, beyond the reach of common people. In the present scenario, obtaining degree/diploma has become much easier but simultaneously, employability of our graduates has gone down to 5-10 per cent, according to official data.

With the globalization of Indian economy, there has been perceptible neglect of agriculture, farmers left in lurch into the clutches of private money lenders for want of adequate flow of credits from public financial institutions and committing wide scale suicides across the country, putting farm sector in disarray.

Indian media world have lost its sheen, its classical values of free, frank, fearless and objective reporting of news, its analysis and evaluation fully compromised with crass commercialism, media cross holding by journalists-politicians-corporates combine, primacy of management over editorials, and paid news syndrome having overtaken it fully.

As for the social structure, country’s time tested civilisational strength of unity in diversity and tolerance, for that matter oneness of our people and oneness of our nationhood are strained considerably, as never before, with the dalits and minorities reeling under fear, insecurity, alienation and wide scale institutional and otherwise discrimination and denial of socio-economic benefits in full measures, notwithstanding the Constitutional postulates of justice, equality, fraternity and fair-play guaranteed to all citizens, equally and alike, and without discrimination.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power on promises of development and corruption-free good governance and high expectations among the people that situation will change for the better. The economic growth is there but it is jobless growth. The much hyped transparent and corruption free good governance is not visible on the ground. The bureaucracy continues to be self-serving, arrogant, indifferent, callous and at that very corrupt, least concerned with the welfare of the people. People at the cutting edge of interaction with the official machinery, at police stations, courts (nexus between Bench and Bar), village panchyats, civic bodies, revenue & land administration, taxation administration et al continue to pay hefty bribes. Otherwise, nothing moves. There is a collusive culture that has evolved across the system to thwart all anti-corruption, transparency and accountability of public servants.

The public grievance redressal machinery is a façade of morbidity, where public complaints are forwarded to concerned officials in Ministries/Departments, complaints stuck there with no progress, much less redressal communicated to the aggrieved. It seems, the Prime Minister has no control over his Ministers, MPs and others in the ruling class, who through oft-repeated loud mouthing and their conflicting voices create fissures in society, glorify the past and neglect the present.

In view of the foregoing, the one and only way forward, in the circumstances, is to amend Article 311 of Constitution of India to link continuance of public servants subject to desired performance with their existing annual appraisal reports (annual confidential reports) completely delinked from the prevailing system and considered by an independent body in all disciplines to infuse objectivity and fairness in their performance assessment, to make them fully accountable. The second most important measure should be to enact a law of negligence (torts) as provided for in the Constitution, to make people in all walks of life thoroughly responsive in all services, public, private, professionals, and to reduce dependence on whims and fancies of courts and tribunals. The third most important step should be enactment of a law to make judiciary fully accountable for deviant conduct of individual judges, to make India a full-fledged democracy.

As I can see, three measures just enumerated, if taken by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in right earnest, he would go down as the best PM of India, with his resolute stand to bring about wholesome justice, equality and fraternity to the people to let the country progress faster in right direction lest India should be continuing as a mere election-centric democracy. This is a golden opportunity for Modi to bell the cat to make his legacy all time shining for India! Otherwise, all his slogans of development, corruption free governance, and sab ka saath sab ka vikas will remain empty rhetorics!