Review: Aakar Patel’s 'Price of the Modi Years' is a 488-page report card

The Indian Parliament. Aakar Patel writes that of the 23 schemes Shashi Tharoor flagged, 19 were indeed previously rolled-out schemes with new names.

Journalist, columnist, and the chair of Amnesty International India, Aakar Patel’s book Price of the Modi Years (Westland Non-Fiction, an imprint of Westland) is a 488-page account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure: a report card of sorts.

Patel takes readers through the metrics of his performance evaluation of the government—indices like the United Nations Development Program Human Development Index, Lowy Institute Asia Power Index, Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index, Freedom House’s Freedom in the World, Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, etc. Patel lists 58 such indicators, and barring the World Intellectual Property Organisation Global Innovation Index—in which “India rose by 28 places,” from 76 in 2014 and 48 in 2020—he writes that India has performed poorly in all of them. This makes Patel conclude, “Seen over the years of his two terms, the man in full is revealed, and so is his effect on the nation.”

Dissenters and critics haven't fared well under the present dispensation, according to Patel. He writes that in the first six months of 2020 “the Modi government sent Twitter 2,772 legal demands for removal of content or blocking accounts”. Raids against NewsClick and Newslaundry, and arrests of rights activists in the middle of the pandemic are all cases he cites.

Not only that, Patel adds in a tongue in cheek way that the prime minister loves swift decision-making, to the point that he can render people in a largely cash-centric economy cashless and give four-hour notice to a population of over a billion to prepare for a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus during the first wave of the pandemic. Patel adds that lapses in responding to RTIs and a claim that no one died due to lack of oxygen during the deadly second wave of coronavirus that the country braved last year were damning too.

In his book, Patel writes that the Modi-led government has only changed previously rolled-out schemes’ names and presented them anew, often using the prefix PM. Patel writes that when the Congress MP Shashi Tharoor pointed this out, saying that there were 23 such schemes, he was right about 19 of them.

Patel also comments on the current dispensation’s love for acronyms and alliterations—Patel provides 115 of them, which put a “PR spin to everything”.

Next, Patel puts the spotlight on how the country's relations with its neighbours have deteriorated. Be it S. Jaishankar, who, he writes, mishandled discussions on Kashmir and China at international fora. Or be it giving advantage to Pakistan by being “mercurial,” letting it have “a veto over engagement with India”. In conclusion, Patel writes that “Modi’s popularity does not come from his performance.”