Should I or shouldn’t I has been gnawing at my heart as emotions and
feelings seem to overwhelm the reality bytes whirling through my mind. To be honest,
I have been strongly advised not to incur the wrath of Modi and his Bhakts by
putting down my honest fears and anxieties of Modi retuning to power. Yet I have
taken courage to put down my genuine feelings of fear and anxiety if Modi (and
Amit Shah) get a second innings. If we use cricket analogy, Modi’s party had aggregated
a massive first innings score in 2014 and in the initial years after coming to
power it drubbed the opposition inflicting innings defeats in the state and bye-
elections. The scorching pace and the deceptive spin of Modi were too much for
the opposition to counter. But in the last year and a half, the underdogs have
performed better, at times even registering a victory, though by no means an
innings victory. Will this election of 2019 be another whitewash like that of
2014 or will the opposition have enough arsenal to bowl out Modiparty and register a win at
least on a thin margin?
This is election time - time to showcase the true functioning of our
democracy. A large number of people credit
our voters with perspicacity and judgement in casting their votes. If anyone
has the temerity to make a squeaky remark that they are not that intelligent
but are easily swayed by promises and freebies, s/he will be trolled by the
social media for uttering blasphemy against our hallowed voters. Finally when
the results are announced, the winner chuckles with his/her tongue-in-cheek
remark that people have wisely given their verdict while the loser puts on a
brave face and says “we accept people’s verdict with humility” even when they
know the verdict is not based on genuine assessment, but that it is a
manufactured one. The party which is good at manufacturing wins the battle of
the ballot. It is truly a dance of democracy where voters dance to the Pied
Piper’s fantasied promises even when such promises are pre poll concoction and
not for post poll implementation.
There is a perceptible difference between the elections of the last two
decades and this election of 2019. In the last few elections, with Tamilnadu
taking the lead, elections were decided on freebies and sops after the election
dates were announced. The present is a post freebies election as all the sops have
already been doled out in a frenzy during the last couple of months prior to
the announcement of the election dates.
Let us be fair and objective. This government has achieved a few commendable
things, the best among them has been the swachch Bharat campaign that has
brought awareness about clean environment. Electrification of villages,
construction of roads, decisive military strikes etc are high on the government’s
report card. But it is not a unique or a surprise achievement because every
government carries forward what it has inherited from the earlier governments
and adds its own punch. Politicians are known for their art of spinning so that
they take credit for what had been achieved without crediting the earlier government whose legacy they had taken farther.
The NDA II government under Modi has been a one man show( and at times
a two men show). The last five years have been dutifully referred to as Modi governance- and many terms
were coined such as Modinomics, Modicare, Moditva, Modi doctrine to buttress
the argument that Modi is an omniscient avatar who has the highest knowledge of
economics, healthcare, religious punditry, political and foreign diplomacy and what not….
The opposition has fallen into the trap set cleverly by Modi to assault him on
all fronts and the more punches it gave, the more martyred Modi emerged. It has
given him the whip hand as he thunders “Attack me, but don’t attack the
nation”, “Modi hai to…,sab mumkin hai”, and in no time he has changed his
chaiwala status to chowkidar status. If Modi is to be reelected, it must be for
his cleverness to turn the tables on his accusers. He appealed to the voters during
the last election that he was a humble chaiwala and today he appeals to them as
a humble chowkidar and how the Lutyens have not accepted him because of his
humble origin! He will never answer the opposition’s list of charges, keep maun vrath till such time he can come
out with a martyr’s halo around him. I know I will be bullied by his Bhakts for
writing the truth and that was where my hesitation… ‘should I’ or ‘shouldn’t I’ dilemma… started..
I do not want to go into the oft repeated criticisms against his policies
of the last five years – demonetization and divisive politics, swinging with the Chinese
President who has stabbed India or inviting himself to the birthday
celebrations of the ex PM of Pakistan, fudging the GDP and unemployment data
and the Rafael deal. Every party that is
elected to govern comes out with its policies-right or wrong is for time to
tell, but formulating a policy that is not necessarily right cannot be held
against the ruling party. If people experience hardship they may vote the party
out, if they experience benefits, they will vote back the party. I am not here
to be critical as it is the right of the ruling party to execute its policies in keeping with its ideology and
its poll promises.
No, the one thing that causes me distress( and to many
others like me) is how PM Modi has systematically demeaned the office of the
Prime Minister by his abusive and vituperative attacks on earlier Congress
Prime ministers-starting from visionary Pt.Nehru through feisty Indira and techno-
savvy Rajeev Gandhi to the genial, highly educated scholar Dr. Manmohan Singh.
In his single agenda to establish a “Congress Mukht Bharat”, Modi showed that he would brook no
opposition and this single phrase went counter to the idea of democracy and by
extension to the idea of India. How can democracy stay alive without an
opposition- a question he never asked himself as he reiterated his sole agenda
of destroying the Gandhis whom he referred to as Congress. His innumerable
attacks personally on Sonia Gandhi with a hollow claim in 2014, that the
government had incurred1880 crores on her treatment abroad- and his encouragement of his bhakts to give
Rahul Gandhi the humiliating soubriquet ‘pappu’ have lowered the dignity of the Prime
Minister’s chair. Today his aficianodo
Smriti Iran, comparing herself with
Priyanka mocks at the Gandhis saying”I do not have a land thief as my husband.
…I do not have a bewakoof as my brother” especially when the case against
Robert Vadra is still in the courts with no conclusive proof against him and
Priyanka’s brother Rahul is the president of the National Congress. This is the
level of political discourse that PM.Modi has set in motion.
His systematic demolition of all institutions has wreaked an
incalculable damage to the polity of the nation and this started with
questioning the Nehru memorial at Teen Murti Bhavan. Honouring Sardar Patel (who has been
appropriated by him and his party because he hailed from Gujarat) with a 30 billion
rupees statue is in order, but not the existing Teen Murti Memorial for the First Prime Minister
of India! The autonomy of all the
pillars of democracy starting with CBI, RBI ,CVC, EC,NSSO, Media, Universities
has been compromised and many of them have been involved in one or other
crisis.
Though he had mocked at the earlier PM, Dr.Manmohan Singh as Maunmohan Singh, he himself has largely
remained silent over many disturbing issues such as lynching in the name of
cow, willful repudiation of Supreme Court order and inciting violence in Sabarimala , the travails and tragedy that common people suffered
during demonetization, murder of a senior journalist Gouri Lankesh who questioned
his policies etc as though he is above
all such trivialities and petty things and
left the answers to his arrogant minions. The single great damage done by PM
has been not to restrain- on the contrary to encourage arrogance, haughtiness,
contemptuous disdain and mocking sneer of the opposition in the vast army of
his minions. There is no room left any more for civilized discourse, courtesy,
politeness and cultured language and demeanour in our political debate. Any
view that opposes him has been dubbed as
the voice of the anti national and even the patriotism of Dr.Manmohan Singh, his predecessor in the PM’s
chair, a man of great and unimpeachable integrity was questioned. The dumbing down of media is
on similar lines. The media’s spine has been broken to utter subordination.
Last but not the least is the chest thumping to say what has not been
done in70 years, I have done it. The truth is all the projects he claims to
have been expedited were pilot projects of the earlier governments. It is only
they were given new nomenclature with a prefix PMJ(Prime minister Yojana) added
to them. PM’s face beams through all the pages of all the dailies. His persona
has been carefully built right from 2014 to the extent of citing the clairvoyant
Nostrodamus’ prophecy that he was the
prophesied star to be born in Asia to lift the nation up like an avatar purush.
The Social media is full of Namo chants and abrasive, distasteful comments on
the opposition leaders. Money speaks and BJP has a lion’s share (95%)of the hideous Finance Bill (that approved anonymous donations to political parties) and with that money it hires trollers and uses
the social media to blunt the opposition
with mockery, abuse and lies. Violence in words is more lethal and long lasting
than physical violence.
2019 results are a foregone conclusion. With aam janata not having
either the exposure or the ability to sift the chaff from the grain, it is
winning time for one who shouts loud, indulges in demagoguery and resorts to
cheap drama on the political stage. People are fed on bombast, political
chicanery and false data through various means. The
opposition cannot match the money or the media power at the command of the
ruling party and indulges in pale imitation of BJP with an abysmal descent
into uncivilized speeches and behaviour.
All one can hope for is that the educated class understands the damage done to
the character and culture of the nation. All the talk about making India great
(MIGA) and citing specially calibrated data on economic development cannot last
when human development has taken a nosedive. Will the 2019 elections give us
our national character of acceptance, accommodation, adjustment and adaptation-
the key to our traditional concept of religious and cultural pluralism and
integrative identity? We have to wait with anxiety till the last week of May to
find the answer.
