According to reports received from Gujarat, the BJP is facing tough time. Apart from rising spiral of prices and recent hike of petrol and diesel prices, the Patel community has turned against the BJP and tilting towards the Congress. Patels are unhappy because they have been denied reservation and openly saying they will support the Congress not because of love for the party but they want to teach the BJP a lesson.

There is lot of dissatisfaction in the state unit of the BJP. The old timers and original BJP members are unhappy that big numbers of what they call “outsiders” have been admitted in the party and they will get preference in allocation of tickets for the coming elections and “real party men” ignored.

Reports from Gujarat also say that Rahul Gandhi’s visit is having good impact. This is the first round of the Congress Vice President’s visit to the election-bound state. Slogans of ‘Jai Sardar, jai Patidar’ rang out in several Patel-dominated villages in Jamnagar and Morbi districts as Rahul Gandhi hit the campaign trail.

The Rahul-Patel bonhomie came on a day Patidar quota activist Hardik Patel warned of a renewed agitation for reservation for the community under OBC quota.

Prime Minister Modi launched several new schemes to woo the voters. Asserting that he would not relent in his “battle against corruption”, he sharpened his government’s development and welfare image by announcing a mega scheme to provide electricity connection to four crore families deprived of regular power.

Modi launched a Rs. 16,000-crore scheme — Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijili Har Ghar Yojna—that, he said, will deliver free electricity connections by December 2018. However, they will have to pay the monthly power bill. “Rupees 16,000 crore will be spent to bring a monumental change in the lives of the poor”, the PM said while pointing out that a large number of people lacked electricity connections more than a century after the invention of the incandescent bulb. Even 70 years after Independence, four crore out of 25 crore families did not have power connection.

The scheme reflects the Modi government’s focus on delivering schemes like housing, power, loans and farm insurance to key sections of the electorate. Alongside electrification, the PM Awas Yojna has sanctioned more than 26 lakhs houses for urban poor and more than 1.76 lakh units have been constructed.

To give a boost to development and ensure implementation of schemes well before general election, the Prime Minister revived economic advisory council. Known as Prime Minister’s advisory council, it will be headed by the well-known economist Dr. Bibek Debroy. The term of panel would be to analyse any issue—economic or otherwise—referred to it by the Prime Minister and advising him on such issues. The EAC is an independent body and provides advise on economic and related issues to the government, specifically the Prime Minister.

The panel is also expected to address issues of macroeconomic importance and presenting them to the Prime Minister. The setting up of the panel comes against the backdrop of the slowdown of the economy and criticism of government’s handling of issues linked to the economy.

The state of present economy is said to be in worst shape. It was better described by the senior BJP leader and a former Finance Minister, Yaswant Sinha. Nobody can attribute political motive to what he has stated in a recent article. He writes “private investment has shrunk as never before in two decades, industrial production has all but collapsed, agriculture is in distress, construction industry, a big employer of the work force, is in doldrums, the rest of the service sector is also in slow lane, exports have dwindled, sector after sector of the economy is in distress, demonetization has proved to be an unmitigated economic disaster, a badly conceived and poorly implemented GST has played havoc with business and sunk many of them and countless millions have lost their jobs with hardly any new opportunity coming the way of new entrants to the labour market”.

Sinha rightly says that the Prime Minister is a worried man. The only new thing, he says, is the reconstituted Economic Advisor Council of the Prime Minister. “Like five Pandavas they are expected to win the Mahabharat for us”.

One does not know if the economy will be revived in the run up to general election in 2019. If not, one can guess its impact on the elections. (IPA Service)