Narendra Modi, prime minister for 10 years, has given voters a reason to vote for him: their bhains.
“Beware, the Congress will snatch your bhains,” Modi told voters at Banaskantha in Gujarat on May 1. “If you have two buffaloes, the Congress will take away one if it wins the Lok Sabha elections. You will be able to leave your child only one buffalo.”
He has been telling many versions of this story: “The Congress will snatch your land; the Congress will snatch your gold; the Congress will snatch your mangalsutra, it is written in its manifesto.”
This election is being fought on one manifesto: that of the Congress.
The Opposition party is speaking about the promises it has made to the voters in its Nyay Patra – jobs, reservation, equity, democracy – and is seeking votes to fulfil these. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is telling stories about what the Congress manifesto contains.
But if you read the 48-page Nyay Patra, you will find there is no mention of mangalsutra or buffaloes or plans to snatch half of the wealth that people want to bequeath to their children.
Why then is Modi raising false alarms about the Congress Nyay Patra instead of wooing voters with his own Modi ki Guarantee Sankalp Patra?
The answer possibly lies within the two manifestos.
The Congress manifesto promises a year’s apprenticeship with Rs 1 lakh to all graduates and diploma-holders under 25; and commits to filling 30 lakh government vacancies. The BJP manifesto says it will enhance and expand employment opportunities for the youth.
To farmers, the Congress promises a legal guarantee to the minimum support prices (MSP), as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission. This fulfils a key demand for which the farmers have been on the roads protesting, risking their lives. The BJP says it will continue to give farmers an annual assistance of Rs 6,000, which translates to Rs 500 a month or less than Rs 17 a day.
The Congress promises women 50% reservation in central government jobs starting 2025. The oldest woman from each poor family, at the bottom of the pyramid, will receive a cash transfer of Rs 1 lakh annually. Modi is silent on the almost 3,000 videos of alleged sexual abuse of women by BJP ally Prajwal Revanna, for whom he himself sought votes from the people of Karnataka. The BJP has given an election ticket to the son of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who women wrestlers have accused of preying on them. Does it even matter what the BJP promises women in its manifesto?
But the Congress promise that the BJP appears most spooked by is that of a socio-economic and caste census, which Rahul Gandhi has likened to an X-ray that will reveal the current distribution of wealth and power in the country. He has been highlighting the negligible representation of the SC, ST and OBC communities in decision-making roles and promising to address the imbalance.
Modi was initially dismissive. The only two castes that exist are the rich and the poor, he had said. He had asked if the Opposition couldn’t see that he was the ‘sabse bada OBC’. But these seem not to have worked. So, now, he is demonising the X-ray.
“If the Congress comes to power, it will X-ray your lockers, your bank accounts, even your bajra. And then the Congress government will take and distribute it,” he has said.
But the X-ray that Modi is cautioning voters about already exists. We file income tax returns, where we disclose all our earnings and savings and submit our bank account statements. The authorities track high-value transactions, foreign travel and credit card bills to check if we are reporting correctly. If our income is above the threshold set by the government, we give up a part of it as income tax.
Even the poorest households are subject to the X-ray when they apply for any government benefits and have to prove their eligibility.
The government collects tax and spends the money as it will: on education, health, infrastructure, defence, social welfare or even its own publicity. Some of us pay income tax and all of us, including the poorest, pay the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The free rations to 80 crore citizens that Modi is guaranteeing are paid for by all Indian citizens. When the Manmohan Singh government brought the Right to Education Act to get all children into school, the funds for that too came from the taxes that we all pay.
So, X-ray of individual wealth, giving up a share of this wealth to the government, and distribution of the wealth by the government is already happening.
The X-ray that Rahul Gandhi is speaking of is different. It is about finding out the share of the country’s wealth in the hands of the different social groups, as a first step towards ensuring that the distribution is equitable. Reservation, scholarships, public universities, the midday meal scheme, the guaranteed rural jobs scheme, free schooling – all of these are instruments for ensuring equity.
Instruments such as these would benefit most people in Modi’s audience at Banaskantha, not rob them.
Economic inequality in India today is the highest it has ever been, with the top 1 per cent holding 40 per cent of the country’s wealth and the bottom half of the population owning just 3 per cent. The tax structure is not helping. According to Reserve Bank of India data, in 2022-23, indirect taxes amounted to Rs 29 lakh crore and direct taxes totalled over Rs 16 lakh crore.
Indirect taxes, such as GST and excise, hurt the poor more. The tax on a litre of petrol is the same whether it is an Ambani or Adani filling their cars or a food delivery boy filling his motorbike. It takes a much bigger bite out of the food delivery boy’s income than it does of the billionaires’ earnings.
In 2019, the government announced a cut in the base corporate tax. The cost to the public exchequer over just one financial year, 2020-21, was Rs 1 lakh crore. According to figures released last month, the government has collected over Rs 9 lakh crore as corporate tax and over Rs 10 lakh crore as personal income tax in 2023-24.
In other words, the Modi government is taking more from individuals than it is from corporate houses and the burden is heavier on the poor.
Every government chooses who it will take from and who it will give to.
The BJP came into the campaign expecting to sweep aside the Opposition. Its slogans suggested it was taking the voters for granted. At a time when the youth are crying for jobs, the party did not think it necessary to offer a concrete plan to tackle unemployment in its manifesto. Its leaders did not even acknowledge price rise as an issue and had the arrogance to chant “Abki baar 400 paar”.
Modi is now talking about the number of seats the Congress is contesting. “The Congress is not even contesting 272 seats, how can it form the government?” he has told voters in Gujarat. In fact, the Congress is contesting at least 320 seats and is doing so as part of an alliance that has candidates on the remaining seats.
The prime Minister is also talking about defending the Constitution and safeguarding reservation for the SC, ST and OBC groups. He is explaining the “400 paar” slogan.
And Modi and his party have gone back to polarisation, but with one difference. While appeals for votes in the name of Ram and the vilification of a religious community continue, the scare-mongering this time is hinged on the distribution of wealth. This is the closest we will get to an admission that the BJP thinks that people will respond to the hate narrative only if they see a threat to their own bread and butter. “If you have two buffaloes, the Congress will snatch one. And will give it away to its votebank,” the prime minister has said.
Of all the snatching stories, this one has caught people’s imagination, becoming fodder for memes, being ridiculed at Opposition meetings and even getting buffaloes featured on Ravish Kumar’s show and Dhruv Rathee’s video.
The Congress has promised to lift the 50% ceiling on reservation for SC, ST and OBC groups, but the Prime Minister is telling voters the party will steal the OBC quota and give it to Muslims. In a February 2022 interview to ANI, Modi says 70 Muslim caste groups received OBC category benefits in Gujarat when he was chief minister. Yet, his party is villainising the categorisation of Muslims as OBC in Congress-ruled Karnataka.
The Election Commission, which the Supreme Court has said we must trust, either cannot see the hate or is unable to act against it.
There is much to be dismayed about in this election.
After Surat and Indore, several non-BJP candidates have withdrawn from the fray in Gandhinagar. Doubts over the electronic voting machines persist. The Election Commission taking inordinately long to release polling data, and then releasing it only partially, is worrying. Newspapers and television channels are eating out of the government’s hands.
Ahead of us are four weeks of a tough battle for India. The odds remain daunting. Lies and hate can spread like wildfire when pumped with money and muscle, and there is no knowing which way the discourse will turn.
But for now, the buffalo on centre-stage is good news. However devious the motive, it tells us the focus is back on the people, as it should be in a democracy.
