Modi should have hit the ground running but he did not. Perhaps that’s why he keeps talking about prime ministers who are long dead and gone. Gadkari is continuing with the older ideas on infrastructure, like our Sagarmala programme in 2003, which was the maritime equivalent of the Golden Quadrilateral highway project. But other than that, like agriculture, other sectors are in distress.

The Economic Survey 2018 stated that the telecom sector, which employed 40 lakh people, was going through a period of stress and debt; its debt was said to be Rs 7.7 lakh crore. About 1.5 lakh jobs were lost, 30,000 in 2018 alone, some from shut telcos, some from the merger between Vodafone and Idea, but the bulk from the distress in the sector.

The textile sector, saddled with outdated machinery and low productivity, saw a 13 per cent year-on-year decline in exports in January 2018. The . . .