Listening to PM Narendra Modi thunder from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day, it seemed that the game is on for the electoral battle due next year. In a past column, I had said that campaigning for the next election starts the day the current one ends. It’s become an all-year affair and both the governing and Opposition parties spare no time to dive into the campaign mode.
Just after the I-Day speech, the India Today-Karvy Insights Mood of the Nation poll showed that the BJP’s popularity has dipped. Though external polls don’t mean much, they do send trepidation to those parties which are lagging behind popular support. It will definitely make the BJP party-wigs nervous and the party will be on tenterhooks. However, the poll predicts that if elections were held today, the BJP will fall short of the majority it gained in 2014. Between now and the elections in April-May 2019, the party will do all it can to regain confidence of the electorate. The poll, however, shows that Brand Modi still retains its glow.
The BJP has been wounded by its twin unpopular programmes — Demonetisation and the Good and Services Tax (GST). People have been hurt by it, and the only way for the people to show its displeasure is at the ballot box. Demonetisation has not brought in joy to large segment of the people, but rather brought a windfall for some businesses and some party bosses such as Amit Shah. The dilly-dallying for long time in imposing the GST showed the BJP wasn’t so sure it will have the desired impact. Calling it a “victory of integrity” and “celebration of honesty” was the official delight, but the people didn’t buy into it.
Modi rode to power on the magic slogans of “Make in India”, “Sabka saath, sabka vikas” and floating the aspiration of making a New India.
One heard the similar words ringing from Red Fort, but Modi added promised more sops to the people while praising the efforts of his Swachh Bharat and other such initiatives. The initiative to clean the Ganga, considered to be the holy river of the Hindus, has not been completed. Open defecation is still being seen in rural India and that building toilets to meet the needs of every India is still a long way out. Many villages have been electrified, but the promise to do is still in the air. At the same time, Modi hopes to join the space race by sending a man and tri-colour into space by 2022. I feel that the priorities here are mixed up.
Most important is to bring in social harmony and do away with all the negativeness that’s happening in India today. The Supreme Court has shown its disdain for the lynchings that occur now and then in many parts of the country. The government needs to control the RSS and the Sanathan Sanstha in their weird doings.
The RSS chief saying that the floods in Kerala is because of the people eating beef there and also that the admission of women to the Sabrimala Temple, which the Supreme Court said was not a private property, was not appropriate to Lord Ayyappa’s “celibate character”, are ridiculous. Only those who are not geared to the 21st century can think it such a way. In modern India, institutions such as the RSS, Muslim Brotherhood, Sanathan Sanstha and any radical body must be obliterated. No point in shouting from the rooftops that India has advanced economically while the fact remains that its people are adherents to centuries-old religious norms and traditions. India has been called a paradox in the past by western intellectuals. I, however, think it still remains the same in the 71 years gone past its awakening up to being a free nation.
In a distinct way, India is showing democratic regression. It doesn’t seem like a true parliamentary government, rather a prime-ministerial government. No doubt the BJP majority has given it utmost power while the other partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are bit players. Team players such as the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Shiv Sena have had their rift with the BJP. More so, Modi doesn’t see beyond his nose. In a coalition government, the points of view of other parties need to be considered. Modi couldn’t see eye-to-eye with Chandrababu Naidu. The Shiv Sena too withdrew from its support of the BJP after the BJP candidate defeated the Shiv Sena candidate in the Palghar by-election. The BJP’s withdrawal from the alliance with People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Kashmir to the government’s fall, though it was strange arrangement with two parties having different agendas. Modi and the BJP must be made aware of what John Kennedy said, “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.” Modi will never forget Mehboba Mufti.
Surprising the BJP-PDP pact fell apart over a journalist’s murder. Obviously, Shujaaat Bukhari was looked kindly by the BJP, just as some other journalists in the mainstream media are close to the powers-that-be. To me, Modi is behaving like the former PM of Canada, Stephen Harper, who concentrated all power in the MP’s office and who also showed the same disdain for the media as Modi does now. Harper’s egomaniacal ways cost him the prime ministerialship, with Justine Trudeau and his Liberals gaining power after Harper’s Conservatives ruled for ten years. This should serve as a lesson for Modi. Rahul is busy sniping at Modi, and his wink-and-nudge politics, as demonstrated in the Lok Sabha recently, is suggestively provocative.
(Eugene is a senior journalist who worked for The Free Press Journal, and The Hindu)
