BJP vs Congress, and Modi Govt Achivements
Table of Contents
While I do not claim BJP is omnipotent or has a magic wand to fix everything, they have
- taken us from Rank 142 to 63 in EoDB
- crushed Naxal insurgency
- doubled our highway network
- are pushing land/labor/farm laws at state level in the states where it is politically possible
- incubated a very impressive defense startup ecosystem you saw in action during Op Sindoor
- implemented the most successful DOGE initiative in the world with Direct Benefit Transfer and UPI
- are nuking the slums to make way for urban growth
While the best contributions from you geniuses is to demand infinite Bangladeshi immigration, then chimp out calling people xenophobes.
1. scale
India’s longest-standing weakness has been inability to scale. We pioneered many things, only to keep them as white elephants instead of mass-produce and universalize them.
India under Modi has decisively overcome this limitation. 5G, rail electrification, UPI rollout, infrastructure spree, heck even toilets are examples of this.
Absolutely monumental achievement.
(yes I know the color on the map is misleading)
(You still see the old white-elephant mentality among Nehruvians and British Raj apologists, saying things like “what’s new about Vande-Bharat, we already had Rajdhani” or kanging about Nehru establishing IITs or some 4-road locality built by the British. This is a continental-scale country, and you are kanging about establishing 4 universities whose total undergraduate intake is less than one Ivy League.)
Whatever little good Nehru or the British Raj did (dwarfed by their evils), were for a few thousand. Whatever Modi did was for 1.4 billion. By virtue of scale alone, Modi’s achievements dwarf Nehru’s by literally a million.
2. scale 2
The best way to understand Nehruvian and British Raj governance is as a White Elephant Economy.
In a country of continental proportions, Nehru/British built like you would for a little city-state.
4 universities whose total intake is less than a single Ivy League, and marked the job as done. Made one Rajdhani train service and they have the audacity to ask “what’s special about Vande Bhārat, we always had Rajdhani!”
No vision to scale for the masses. Seeing infrastructure as a monument to kang on rather than an economic instrument that benefits as many people as possible.
This is also why Indians have the illusion today that their country is “overpopulated” despite having a lower population density than England. Because in a country of continental proportions, Congress/British built like you would for a tiny city-state.
Perhaps Modi’s greatest achievement is in overcoming this long-standing limitation. 5G, rail electrification, UPI rollout, infrastructure spree, heck even toilets are examples of this. For the first time, India is able to do things at scale.
3. idealism cynicism
Looking at Congress propaganda is a good way to sharpen your cynicism about Indian society, as it caters to our worst, most basal and dehātī characteristics.
In this case, obsession with international image/validation.
By contrast BJP has almost a child-like faith in the inherent goodness of Indians.
In 2024 they placed candidates ignoring caste equations, promised no freebies, and Modi attacked anti-capitalist rhetoric head-on saying “yes I have pride when our companies succeed”.
People think that Congress’s chaiwala jibes in 2014 were an obvious mistake … not really. It failed then, but they are doing it again with crass memes about Modi’s accent and English, and with more success.
It’s a type of rhetoric that works on a certain type of insecure, status-conscious and Western validation-seeking person. And the rest of their rhetoric to zero-sum, crab-mentality thinkers. And this is what Congress bets on Indians being.
While the BJP bets on the best in Indians: to their aspirations, to their united Hindu identity without regard for random parochialisms.
May the idealists win, and may the cynics perish.