Should I or shouldn't I...

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.