The single biggest problem facing the country today is the reluctance of the private sector to invest in factories. This is what the government has to tackle between now and 2029 | Photo Credit: H.VIBHU

Back in 2012 a colleague and I went to see a central minister. He had been one for a decade. We asked him what was happening. He said nothing is happening, we are in ‘relax’ mode.

He told us that life now was like the last 90 minutes on a long flight. You are tired and can’t engage even with a movie. All you want is to go home and relax. He said his plan was to sit on his verandah and watch the river flow by. It was a perfectly reasonable feeling after two general elections and ten years in office.

The question now is: have three general elections and eleven plus years in office put the Modi government in ‘relax’ mode? And although members of the government deny it, it’s certainly beginning to look like it.

The ‘been there, done that’ sort of boredom appears to have set in. Ministers now are better informed than their officials. That shows how long they have been at it.

The result is policy inaction — what the BJP used to call policy paralysis during 2011-14 — of increasingly noticeable proportions. The third Modi government has been in office for 18 months and people are starting to ask what it has to show for it.

The rationalisation of the GST rates a couple of months ago could be seen as a big deal. And it was. But other than that it’s hard to point to something with any great conviction or confidence.

The government seems content to be treading water. One wonders why.

Why the pause?

People, as is their wont, come up with many explanations, none of them mutually exclusive. The most common one is exhaustion. It’s hard to keep up the tempo, it’s said. They say even Indira Gandhi in her 1980-84 innings did almost nothing.

Another popular explanation is that Modi has lost interest because he knows he may have to step down as prime minister. The timing of this momentous event is not known but anyone who’s about to retire seldom exerts him or herself too much. Better to just remain in maintenance mode than to try new things, the credit for which will anyway go to the successor.

A third explanation is the prevailing uncertainty caused by Donald Trump’s trade policies. This theory says Modi is as shell-shocked now as he was for a few months after the results of the last general election were announced. The BJP had lost its absolute majority then.

A fourth explanation is related to this that the allies of the BJP in the NDA prefer a “don’t-rock-the-boat” approach because they don’t have much skin in the national game.

A fifth explanation has to do with the Bihar assembly elections, after which the government will unleash a wave of reforms. But then, within a few months, we have the Assam, Kerala Tamil Nadu and West Bengal elections. So if assembly elections are the reason we can forget about reform forever.

A sixth explanation has to do with the RSS which is opposed to major economic reforms, especially to labour laws.

There are probably many more reasons that I have not heard. Regardless, everyone seems to agree that the government is in a ‘relax’ mode.

The risks of ‘relax’ mode

A famous cricketer once said a captain has to keep doing things on the field even when the game is fully under control because if he leaves it be, the game can very quickly slip away. Countless captains have discovered this too late.

The UPA also discovered it in 2012. It had won nicely in 2009. It had conducted the Commonwealth Games admirably in 2010. And it brought in a lot of growth.

But in late 2011, the Congress leaders went into ‘relax’ mode. By the middle of 2013 they were on the skids and in 2014 they managed to win just 44 seats, down from 207.

Everyone knows that the single biggest problem facing the country today is the reluctance of the private sector to invest in factories. This is what the government has to tackle between now and 2029 and there are three things it must do.

First, it must free up the labour market by completely overhauling the laws that currently govern it. They are out of date.

Second, it must make land acquisition easier and cheaper by amending the relevant acts. These are huge impediments to investment.

Third, it must reform the bureaucracy by overhauling the constitutional protections it enjoys. These are out of date and counterproductive.

It’s up to the prime minister now to take the initiative. The alternative is unthinkable now. But it’s there waiting in the wings with the hundreds of millions of unemployed youngsters.

Published on November 10, 2025