Why the opposition in India is in a delirium of cluelessness

In a recent article published in Indian Express, PB Mehta has outlined a few reasons why the opposition is in total disarray and how most of the opposition leaders have made themselves so small that in comparison, Narendra Modi seems like a giant.

Although this article raises some genuine problems with the current opposition, eventually it turns out to be a usual attempt to downplay all the achievements of the Narendra Modi government and highlight the qualities of opposition leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar and Rahul Gandhi. Mehta attributes all the problems with these “leaders” to errors of judgement rather than plain character flaws.

Narendra Modi is a political giant in himself, he does not need the smallness of his political opponents to make him appear bigger. He has totally changed the way politics is carried out and politicians and journalists of the old, tattered class just don’t seem to be able to make sense of this new state of affairs.

We all have political opinions and we all want a particular political party to rule the country and there is nothing wrong in that. But it’s phenomenal to see what blinkered vision journalists like Mehta possess even while talking about the genuine existential problems. Even when pointing out genuine problems with opposition leaders, he doesn’t miss a chance to tell us what a sorry excuse of a party the BJP is and what a lousy leader Narendra Modi is. For Mehta every BJP state is doing badly and hence, if these, the so-called opposition leaders can get together their acts, they can surely reap political benefits. Despite their outstanding follies, it’s the BJP-ruled states that are in doldrums.

He begins his analysis with Kejriwal, the straw many of our journalists and intellectuals are trying to cling to before drowning in the putrid pond of irrelevance. He says that Kejriwal has great intentions and great schemes up his sleeves. Lots of great schemes are already going on in Delhi — yes, Mehta actually says that. The only problem with Kejriwal is that instead of focusing on the “good work” he and his party are doing he has turned into a troll by going against the media that helped him so much. So the main problem with Kejriwal is not that his performance is zilch, the main problem is that now he doesn’t just blame Narendra Modi for constantly conspiring against him (which was fine according to people like Mehta) he has also started blaming the media for conspiring against him. This, according to Mehta, is a sign of Kejriwal’s smallness. Otherwise, in terms of his political vision for Delhi and elsewhere, he has great things going on.

Then Mehta starts talking about Nitish Kumar. Mehta, as is the wont of journalists like him, attributes Nitish’s downfall to a few errors of judgement — it seems most of the problems plaguing the politicians in the opposition stem from errors of judgement otherwise, their characters are impeccable.

So the problem with Nitish is that he is too principled for his own good. He is a nice person in the company of wrong people. Mehta fails to mention that Nitish, who, maybe at some time, was a politician with at least a modicum of morality, long ago sold his soul to the devil. This is not an error of judgement. It is being who you are.

You begin to doubt Mehta’s intellect when he considers even Rahul Gandhi as Narendra Modi’s political opponent, but anyway, there is no dearth of delusional people in India.

He says that Rahul Gandhi trying to “reconnecting” with farmers is a good thing. When it comes to pandering to the whims of their old political masters, these journalists don’t even pretend to be intelligent. Who in his or her right mind would think that Rahul Gandhi is actually trying to “reconnect” with farmers? The Congress party has been running the scam of “garibi hatao” for so long that even the poor can smell the rotting machinations. To think that the Congress party, seemingly led by Rahul Gandhi, actually has something to offer to the country, shows your total intellectual bankruptcy.

The core problem with Mehta’s article is that he fails to go to the root cause of the problem. First of all, as I have already written above, Narendra Modi doesn’t need these political pygmies to appear bigger.

Second, these political pygmies are becoming irrelevant every passing day not because of one error of judgement here and another error of judgement there. It’s the complete political, moral and intellectual outlook that is making them dig their own graves. They have become so used to getting away with hoodwinking people that they cannot do some real work even to save their own lives, that’s the main problem. Their thinking muscles have atrophied. All these years they have become so used to conning people that they can’t even pretend to actually work for the people. This is why you see pathetic gestures like Rahul and Priyanka having meals in the houses of poor families (the family members were wearing ID cards in their own houses). More pathetic is, people like Mehta actually think (if at all the think) that it means reconnecting with poor farmers.