POLITICS
On December 16th Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Rae Bareli and delivered a speech full of rhetoric. And then he came to Prayagraj and amid priests and sadhus offered Puja to Ganga. How does one make sense of the day in the life of the Prime Minister when the nation is torn with innumerable problems ranging from the killing of civilians in Kashmir to the agony of the farmers?
Editorial Staff
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t must really not be an easy proposition to be the Prime Minister of a nation like India which is at the same time one of the largest democracies globally and a nation that has one of the largest rates of economic inequality in the world. India is a nation where the top 1% of the population has access to 73% of the nation’s total wealth. The national paradox brings us face to face with the reality that while democratic national governance may technically imply the grand ideals of justice, equality and distribution of wealth- in the context of India, it has done little if not nothing in ensuring that people across economic barriers have access to a minimum standard of life.
No wonder, any successive government that has come to power post-independence has capitalised on the rhetoric of pro-poor, pro-farmer policies and whether it is in their election manifestos or their public speeches against the Opposition has used this to ignite public sentiment. Prime Minster Narendra Modi delivered a speech on 16th December, 2018 in Congress stronghold and Sonia Gandhi’s own constituency Rae Bareli. Prime Minster Modi alleged that the Congress was ashamed of its corrupt practices in the wake of the transparency introduced under the NDA regime in the recent years and had nowhere to hide its face post the Rafale Deal controversy. He also asserted that some ‘videshi mama or videshi uncle’ is always involved in the scandalous deals of the Congress whether it was the Bofors scam or the Agusta Westland Chopper case. He sarcastically asserted that while the Congress sent a lawyer to defend ‘Christian Michel uncle’, the NDA brought him back to India.
The Congress he asserted was insulting even the Supreme Court by distrusting the judiciary and was creating an ambience of untruth. He also alleged that the Congress had been undermining all national institutions, diluting the armed forces and playing with national security of the nation. Building on the religious sentiments and utilising it to substantiate his arguments, the Prime Minster quoted the Ramcharitmanas to assert the point ‘ Jhuthai lena, jhuthai dena, jhuthai bhojan, jhhoth chabena’(There are some who only accept untruth, deliver untruth, eat untruth and chew on untruth). The Prime Minister said that this saying had been the mantra of the Congress and that no matter how badly it hit the truth, it would come out.
While the Prime Minister did talk about the developmental projects that the NDA had taken up at Rae Bareli, the bulk of the rhetoric was composed of Congress bashing in the light of the recent Rafale Deal. He made his standardised observation about two types of narratives emerging on the political horizon of the nation- while one wanted national growth and strengthening of the armed forces for a stronger nation such as the NDA, the other like the Congress composed of the forces that weakened national integrity and weakened the armed forces.
He instigated the audience and asked them why most Congress men gave speeches that were greeted with claps in Pakistan and said that the NDA would not let the nation forget the way that the Congress had insulted the Indian armed forces. While the Prime Minster launched multi-crore projects in Rae Bareli, he asserted that the list of the sins that Congress Party had committed was too lengthy to be completed even in a span of two weeks! After his speech at Rae Bareli, the Prime Minster finds himself in Prayagraj to review the preparations being carried out before the Kumb Mela next year.
He inaugurated the Humsafar Express. Modi also inaugurated the command and control centre for the Kumbh Mela at Paryagraj and performed the Ganga Pujan at the Sangam Ghat in the holy city. While the Prime Minister went on the twin visits of Rae Bareli and Prayagraj and delivered speeches about the Congress’s neglect of the nation in its ruling period at the Centre it is extremely important to understand that while the NDA is enjoying central power since 2014- the issues that it blamed the Congress for whether it was the agrarian crisis, the collapse in the job market, inflation, corruptive defence programs and lack of development of India’s rural sector- we see similar discontents in the nation even today.
This year alone we have seen more than four nation-wide farmer rallies demanding loan waivers and better infrastructure, we have seen communal strife in the form of cow vigilantism and lynching across Indian states, we have been witnesses of the massive ramifications of economic policies like demonetization, the lack of immediate response in issues like the killing of an SHO in Uttar Pradesh or charges of sexual misconduct against important officials, undermining of the appeals of activists like GD Aggarwal who gave their lives in order to save the Ganga and the absence of concrete action plans to amicably look into the issue of a stigmatised Kashmir.
Today when students and academics of the nation have come out on the streets to protest against the onslaught on higher education, farmers are appealing for saving India’s agrarian sector, the minorities are running for a dignified living amid intolerant climates, women are fighting for dignified workspaces and civilians go on getting killed in Kashmir- the nation surely deserves more than rhetoric. The holy dip in Ganga, the sarcasm at Congress’s inability to make a change and an announcement for projects worth crores will surely not be sufficient to cure India’s injured conscience until our leaders step down the pedestal and see what India actually feels like.
