Prime Minister Narendra Modi can’t do without political artifice. In his speech, ahead of the Lok Sabha session today, he portrayed his victory as “great and glorious” and took a shot at the opposition, saying that the people want “substance, not slogans” in the parliament. He argued that the opposition must not be as “disappointing” as it has been in the last 10 years and should allow his government, which he claims has lifted 25 crore people out of poverty, pursue the goal of a “Viksit Bharat.”
Though the claim of 25 crore people being lifted out of poverty is seriously disputed – no domestic or international agency has independently confirmed it – Modi’s yearning for “substance” showcases a stunning metamorphosis of a leader whose electoral discourse could easily be mistaken for fictional gibberish.
Having created an unprecedented hype of “400 par” (400 plus seats), his description of winning merely 240 seats as “great and glorious” advertises his mastery over post-truth deceptive tricks. He even described the election process as “wonderful and glorious”, while brushing serious questions about the conduct of the Election Commission under the carpet. He went so far as to explain the mandate as people’s endorsement of his “neeyat and niti (intent and policies)”, as if downsizing is a special form of approval.
Politics has space for little ironies, if not for downright deception. But Modi deploys every weapon in his battles. He knows that the mandate registered people’s disenchantment with his politics and governance. But he is determined to distort the message to sustain the myth about his invincibility.
If the mandate is an endorsement of his neeyat – primarily manifested through the brazen use of Ram temple for political mobilisation and other polarising techniques – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not have faced such resistance in Uttar Pradesh. If the people approved his policies, the Agnipath scheme and unemployment would not have dominated the electoral discourse. If his neeyat and niti won people’s acclaim, the threat to the Constitution would not have emerged as the primary concern among the deprived sections of society. Many political observers, as well as BJP leaders and allies, publicly conceded that the opposition’s charge, of threat to the Constitution, reverberated across villages and towns. Modi too is alive to the churning in society and hence he chose to highlight the scourge of Emergency in his customary address to the media at the start of the session. Describing it as a black spot on democracy, he said the younger generation will never forget this dark chapter, and took a public pledge for protection of democracy.
Emergency entailed curtailment of institutional and individual freedoms. That, indeed, was a dark chapter. But that’s a charge that the Modi government has also faced – curtailment of freedoms without legal provisions of Emergency. His two terms were marred by allegations of rampant and arbitrary use of central agencies and police, arrests of critics and activists and fear in the media. People have seen how political vendetta and patronage can selectively be deployed to control the political dynamics without imposition of Emergency. Maharashtra, where parties were broken through coercion and allurements, played a critical role in pulling the BJP below the majority mark. But Modi is obviously not willing to learn lessons from this mandate; it is anyway naïve to expect a public acknowledgement of wrongdoing or failure from him.
But denial of truth is not the burial of truth. The message of the mandate is crystal clear. People have cut Modi down to size, bluntly telling him to mend his ways. It is a message for the government and empowerment of the opposition. It’s a verdict for constitutional democracy and a rejection of personal hubris. Modi’s ‘substance-not-sloganeering’ message is applicable to him, not the opposition. The opposition has been rewarded for standing guard against Modi’s authoritarian tendencies and for speaking against unemployment, price-rise and injustice.
The voter has given strength to the hand that the prime minister maliciously defamed as an instrument that will snatch their mangalsutra and buffaloes. The voter has emboldened the voices that screamed equality and justice and roared against unemployment and inflation. The voter has empowered the forces that were resisting unconstitutional and undemocratic impulses of the rulers. The voters lent credence to the proclamation that the BJP wanted 400 seats to change the Constitution. The voters propped the opposition up and pulled the government down.
Modi frittered away a great opportunity to redeem himself by acknowledging that the 18th Lok Sabha is commencing at a critical juncture, where the nation is grappling with frustration and dismay among its youth. This is the time to talk about the bleak future of our youth, not to celebrate the glory of a third term. While unemployment doubtless acquired dreadful dimensions over the past decade, paper leaks have created a frightening scenario, exposing the government’s inability to perform even basic tasks.
The BJP’s attempt to blame the Congress and the Rashtriya Janta Dal for the NEET paper leak is pathetic because it ignores the larger reality of countless leaks in BJP-ruled states, apart from that gory Vyapam scam. The government could have made a sincere beginning by accepting the gravity of the crisis and debating it in parliament to evolve a fool-proof system. They could have also tried to restore the people’s confidence in the EC by accepting the Supreme Court ruling on the selection process of election commissioners which was overturned using brute majority shortly before the election. Showering praises on the chief election commissioner (CEC) – who didn’t punish the prime minister for his brazen violations of model code of conduct and instead created a false equivalence with the opposition leaders – is meaningless. In fact, the CEC should be impeached for threatening the opposition leaders and critics instead of addressing concerns.
The prime minister, by asking the opposition to show constructive behaviour in the parliament has bestowed certain onerous responsibilities on them. The opposition should start by demanding restoration of the voting process’s sanctity and the model code of conduct’s importance. The opposition must show substance and also demand the following: scrapping of the Agnipath scheme, a law for minimum support price, status quo ante on the India-China border, a thorough investigation into the electoral bonds scams, a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) on Adani affairs, a nationwide caste census and a rollback of prices of petroleum products.
