The signal Prime Minister Modi emitted to the nation by making a statement to Parliament on the war in West Asia and the economic crisis it has triggered in India is that the situation is grim. His solemn manner was quite a departure for a Prime Minister who normally uses his speeches from such platforms to mock the Leader of the Opposition, ridicule predecessors and indulge in teleprompter grandstanding. When easy optics and clever acronyms are eschewed by a maximum leader, we must assume that things are serious.
Other departures from normal government practice followed in the days after. Seven empowered groups of secretaries and experts have been set up to navigate the fallout of the West Asia conflict. The sheer breadth of them underscores the scale of the crisis: strategic issues; economy, finance and supply chain-related issues; petroleum, natural gas and energy; fertiliser and other agricultural inputs; prices and supply of essential commodities; transport and logistics; information, communication and public engagement.
They bring together a total of 60 senior officials to devise immediate and long-term strategies to manage inflation, secure alternative energy routes away from the blocked Strait of Hormuz, and protect agriculture from the fertiliser supply shock. These are, of course, necessary to manage the ongoing shortages, the effects of which are already being felt on the ground despite underreporting.
But note the inclusion of a group on strategic matters. One would have thought that it was after due consideration to strategic issues that the PM decided to hitch India’s wagon to the Israel-US side of the current conflict by visiting Jerusalem just days before the launch of Netanyahu’s war; saying “we feel your pain” to the Knesset; looking the other way when the US torpedoed an unarmed Iranian ship that had been invited to participate in India’s Fleet Review; not bothering to expressing condolences to Iran after the assassination of its Supreme Leader. Surely all those acts were the result of strategic thinking? Are we now having second thoughts about our departure from the policy of strategic autonomy?
The other shift from the PM’s personality-driven DIY governance to something like a consultative approach was the all-party conference called on March 25, supposedly to develop a consensus on how we should weather this crisis on multiple fronts. With the PM not bothering to chair it himself, the meeting trotted out familiar assurances, that we have with great foresight broadbased our energy purchases from 25 to 41 suppliers; that we produce 60% of our LPG needs; that more than 3.5 lakh Indian nationals have safely returned to India from West Asia; and that India is among just five countries whose ships Iran has allowed through the Strait of Hormuz. Not only do these assurances fail to assure, but they also raise further questions. Why, when our energy security was so unstable, did we trade our options away to an unreliable entity like Trump’s America? Why had we not gamed, as Trump clearly has not, that Iran would exercise its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and upset energy equilibria far and wide within days?
The Modi government is now reaching for the very things that it spurned all these years: basic political consensus, cooperation of the states, broad-based consultations and devolution of decision-making. Just the things that would have kept us better prepared than we are now.