Modi, Mahatma, and Mimicry
Self Reliance in the New India
If one would search the word ‘Self Reliant India’ on Google, the results will not be surprising, I promise. You will get to see the images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with the references to a much celebrated and well-received economic package released by the Union Government. I am referring to the call for ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ as we are unlocking the country and preparing to fight COVID-19. Is the idea of Self-Reliant India or Atmanirbhar Bharat new to our country? Many would believe so with fervour, due to an unfortunate selective memory of our historical past. But ideas do have memory even when the history behind them is attempted to be erased.
The memory I am referring to is the idea of Self Reliance deeply rooted in the Gandhian Philosophy. Mahatma Gandhi strongly believed in the idea of a self-sufficient village to attain true freedom — an idea which he elaborated in his book Hind Swaraj. Although it’s difficult to imagine contemporary India without the effects of globalization — a legacy of neoliberal policies adopted after the ’90s — the importance of local was recognised long back in India, much before she became sovereign. The focus on the cottage industries along with the handicrafts of which the Khadi Gramudyog is a thriving example, were all a part of the Mahatma’s imagination of self-sufficient India. The village was the principal axis along which he thought of a self-sufficient and self-reliant India; local was the sphere where India lived and breathed. Therefore, Mahatma Gandhi’s vision is central to the conception of a self-sufficient and self-reliant India. Such a call resonated in PM Modi’s speech when he pronounced the words ‘vocal for local’. But did you find any reference to Mahatma upon searching Atmanirbhar Bharat on Google? Probably not.
I suppose, even the algorithm of the artificially intelligent Google knows or understands that the PM’s call for Atmanirbhar Bharat is contradictory to that of Gandhi. In the ‘New India’, as it was proclaimed in the 2019 manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), self-reliance or atmanirbharta can be understood as leaving citizens to fend for themselves with a systematic withdrawal of the state from any and every kind of responsibility.
We would be mistaken to presume that such a dismissive approach was only seen during the COVID-19 crisis when the defining images of distressed migrants stuck in different parts of the country emerged on the national media. Rather, this absolving of all responsibilities towards its own citizens (especially, the most vulnerable ones) by the state has been a characteristic feature of several flagship programmes and missions launched by the Modi government since 2014.
The ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or Clean India Mission’ envisaged an Open Defecation Free India by 2019, one of the key features of which was to inspire the citizens to keep their own surroundings clean. While sanitation is a state subject under the constitution, Government only focused on the construction of toilets, many of which are lying unused, and the objective of solid waste management was completely ignored and was left to the ‘responsible citizens’ to resolve without aid or support from any administrative body. Apart from the occasional photo shoots in which ministers, celebrities, and citizens participated enthusiastically, the call to clean the ‘filthiness all around us’ made from Red Fort by the Prime Minister at the launch of the mission remained unfulfilled and voluntary. Sanitation workers, who largely come from the lowest and the poorest Dalit castes, work in the most dangerous conditions, often dying from disease or accidents due lack of safety equipment to clean sewer lines. If only sanitation workers, could have been benefited from the mission, instead of making it a mass exercise, we would have achieved not only a clean India but an inclusive one too.
Another example is the recently launched ‘Fit India Movement’ which aims to take ‘nation on a path of fitness and wellness’. The movement encourages individuals and organisations to undertake efforts for the health and well-being of themselves and fellow Indians while the healthcare for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have been diminishing in India. A country where NCDs account for nearly 60% of all deaths, the responsibility to be fit and adopt a healthy lifestyle only lies with the citizen of this New India.
While participation, community mobilisation, and convergence are buzz words which fill up the hundreds of pages of the policies of the Modi government, the rhetoric of participation is often played around the withdrawal of the state. Citizens are to be responsible where the state is liable to deliver the services on one hand. On the other hand, surveillance is the domain where the state is sufficiently present and active. More pronounced are the ways in which such a ‘responsible citizenship’ is accorded to a privileged few. People unable to fit this box of ‘responsible citizenship’ by not having access to running water for their toilets or medical aid for their failing heart, or those who point these follies out, are flawed half-citizens undeserving of the greatest government in the WhatsApp taught history of India. Maybe this is the new meaning of atmanirbharta (self-reliance) in the Naya Bharat (New India) we live in, where Mahatma is only to be mimicked in words and not in actions.
