How far PM Modi & India is from Leadership of Vikas?
Won’t Vote for Vikas ( People are not voting in the name of Vikas)
When social media ramped with vitriol like ‘people with Modi are with India and people against Modi are against India’, by some imbecile-buffoon trainee, invited by NDTV on #bigfight published on 10th May 2019 at YouTube, it’s imperative to conclude that social fragility is at risk. In five years, I never criticized PM Modi’s like a person, except during demonetization, but it’s high time to talk with the principal about the character of his students. As I am sure such trainees are outcomes of shallow exercise started by PM Modi himself. PM Modi, in his quest of Congress-free India, has led to his downfall in 2019 general elections. And, by which he has become the man to weaken not just BJP, RSS but also the dignified mandate of voters he earned in 2014 with loquacious promises of VIKAS who is arcanely gestating for five years.
If one runs through the five-year tenure of PM Modi, all he did was: a foreign trip more than any PM did in the history of independent India in a single term. Criticizing his favourite prince and his Congress party, women-centric facile policies and then re-launching the same social policies with Bollywood films, love-hate relationship with Pakistan and projecting himself as a nation and sometimes defence system of sort. Things he could have done but either inadvertently or deliberately evaded in due time was reprimand people who caused havoc for minorities, doing nothing to promote leadership in BJP, and holding his calm against the opposition party leaders. However, PM Modi unabashedly enjoyed hyperbolic lexica while syncretizing 20th-century science with ancient mythology. He remembered spellings at international conferences while avoiding typo errors throughout his tenure.
One of the reasons why Rajiv Gandhi supersedes others as an exceptional PM of India is because of his open-heartedness of promoting leadership. After the demise of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi formed his team to lead Congress with a mix of old and more new politicians, including voluble Mani Shankar Ayer. Today, there is no other PM or politician in the history of India committed to forming a new leadership at a regular interval of generational change like Rajiv Gandhi.
Political leadership in India is caught with dynastic dynamics or pretend to be oblivious of progressive leaders at the ground level like Kanhaiya Kumar. It is these moments when PM Modi seems logical while attacking dynastic politics, but outwardly these are not the issue of governance. However, any attack on the past tends to resonate with most voters in rural India. The best example for illustration is a relationship between demonetization and state election result of Uttar Pradesh in March 2017. Time will suggest the pattern of such loose speeches. It’s worth noting whether this time PM Modi’s remark of Late Rajiv Gandhi will resonate with the masses the way he expected.
In the reflection you find that last five year’s campaign by the party in power, opposition, media (including social) drove around alphabet ‘C’: Chai-Wala, Change, Cow, Congress, Crores, Corruption, Corporate, Crises, Climate, Chowkidar. At the juncture of 2014, the country expected a boom in the private sector but a sequential failure of big companies added to the employment distress pervading after disruptive demonetization and disorderly GST. News of Jet Airways during election might appear undercurrent among the broad mass base of a middle class who always find themselves unsecured. The volatility of IL&FS, Essar, JP Infrastructure, Bhushan Steel, Geetanjali Jewellery, DHFL, Ranbaxy, Sun Pharmaceutical, Unitech, GMR, PNB, SBI, Air India, MNTL, BSNL, Satyam and DLF has provided bottleneck for Start-Up India and Skill India initiatives of the government. It’s just a coincidence that such a frequency of errors in the market occurred during the past five years.
When PM Modi came to power, some good coincidence took place as well. The petrol prices were an all-time low for India while importing, but these benefits never translated to the masses in the name of managing fiscal deficit story. If the league of world economists had not argued against the data presented by the government early this year, then fiscal deficit story would have upfront favoured the current political dispensation, i.e. 4.47% in 2014 to 3.46% in 2018 (% of GDP).[i] Like it or not, GST has been one of the prominent factors reducing fiscal deficit since introduced under PM Modi, whatever the data says. However, the government was caught fabricating data when employment data did not correspond to other indicators calculating growth.
PM Modi had an excellent time to deliver VIKAS but somehow the process vitiated by his vanity. His four-hour sleep habit is not catching up with a new millennial glued to smartphones and free internet by JIO after an aggressive Aadhar campaign in urban India. However, from political economy viewpoint Aadhar has been very successful monitoring school and college enrollment. Still, it was naïve on the part of PM Modi to make it compulsory in every walk of life breaching the private spaces of citizens like a mobile phone number.
The only error that liberal media critiquing PM Modi didn’t rectify was one of targeting him alone. The liberal media, including NDTV, The Wire, The Quint, Caravan, The Hindu, and The Indian Express could have defused the giant of PM Modi through BJP led coverage vis-à-vis Modi led the country. However, the media compulsion and strategy cannot be single so straightforwardly. History will remember these few media outlets, as they stuck their neck out when the attempt by an avalanche of nationalism to engulf the narrative was high in the past five years. In this process, the team of YouTubers like Dhruv Rathee, Akash Banerjee & others were quite capable is busting myths about the leadership myth of the said person.
Experts, suggesting that this election is highly problematic to predict because they have never witnessed such a polarisation during India elections. This election is deeply rooted in caste politics than ever before. As Indians, we know who to blame for such policies and politics?
A great leader is not one followed by many with ‘chowkidar’ twitterpation but one who creates leadership. PM Modi your governance faltered because you spent most of your time on Twitter, photo-ops and talking to irrelevant Bollywood celebrities. In 2014 you single-handedly emerged as a political star who now in 2019 depends on film personalities. In nervousness, the level of political discourse and drop of formal language in election speeches has further moved PM Modi away from any leadership of Vikas. However, during these elections for the first time, Rahul Gandhi had no slip of tongue compare to PM Modi.
Political leaders around the globe are usually opposed to mockery or satire. Still, this Indian election, PM Modi and Rahul Gandhi have successfully used each other’s technique to keep the masses engaged on social media. Incidences of a digital camera, email, colour print or cloud during one of the air defence operations are some of the examples of PM Modi. On the other side, Rahul Gandhi is using a lullaby ‘chowkidar chor hai’ in harmony with the masses in contrast to ‘ache din’ song of 2014.
The results of the ongoing elections are awaiting to throw some seismic outcomes for the current political dispensation, which will favour the liberal narrative to save democracy. All said and done, this five-year period ends, and de facto coalition seems more plausible crown to the Lok Sabha in 2019. An accurate picture of Vikas can only paint Hindustan as long as people vote on performances and not on caste. Anecdotes like television documentary, by Dr. Prannoy Roy touring elections, about the aspiration of a young girl to become a medical doctor in a rural set up is abutting real Vikas.[ii]
[i] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/india/consolidated-fiscal-balance--of-nominal-gdp
[ii] https://www.vogue.in/content/dr-prannoy-roy-on-the-14-year-old-girl-who-caused-a-nation-wide-campaign/
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