Omair Ahmad 
A few days ago, I picked up the newspaper and found that the picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his name was not in any of the headlines. In a normal country this would be no big deal. Many important things happen, and the head of the government cannot be, should not be, involved in everything.
But over the two terms of the Modi government, the prime minister’s picture or news about him was always front page news. In the unusual circumstance that this was not the case, there was usually a large advertisement with his face to remind one and all that his presence was all-pervasive.
As Modi heads an NDA government in fact and not merely in name we seem to returning to an earlier paradigm, where the prime minister is featured only if anything he has done or said is potentially newsworthy. Unfortunately, for Modi, much of that news is going to be bad news, with the exception of a chummy picture with foreign leaders either at India or abroad.
India remains a large and important country and economy, and foreign leaders will continue to try to placate, align with, or co-opt the country into their strategies. Domestically, though, it is a very different matter.
From internal security, to the economy and jobs, there is little hope that a breakthrough is imminent. This is also revealed in the apprehensions of the BJP before state assembly elections as the promise of “Vikas” and “Achche Din” have transformed from aspirations of progress to terms of bitter irony, so much so that the BJP has largely stopped using them.
The PM has seceded from his responsibilities on security
The most prominent failure is the continuing violence and its escalation in Manipur. Eighteen long months of conflict, during which numerous atrocities have been documented, only seem to show a worsening situation. The idea that people can be killed for crossing ‘ethnic borders’ between Kuki zones and Meitei zones is a horrendous failure of everything that a democratic Republic promises. For all the brouhaha about Modi saying that is not the era of war to Russian president Vladimir Putin, India is seeing drones, rocket propelled grenades, and even medium machine guns being deployed for Indians to kill Indians.
With nothing good to offer in way of a solution, not even a platitude, Modi has simply disappeared from the state, as the state has disappeared from his speeches. In a remarkable display, the prime minister of India has seceded from an Indian state.
This is true of other conflicts as well. Remember when demonetisation was supposed to end terrorism in Kashmir and undercut the Naxal militancy? Then there were the cross-LoC bombings and the publicising of cross-LoC raids, followed by the reading down of Article 370, the dismemberment of J&K and its demotion into a Union Territory.
All of these ‘masterstrokes’ that the PM’s publicists pretending to be ‘journalists’ told us was going to fix everything, and yet things remain strikingly un-fixed, with the added anti-Sikh bigotry even reviving talk of the dead Khalistan insurgency. Do notice, though, that they have largely disappeared from Modi’s speeches. Modi may talk big about ‘normalcy’ in J&K, but studiously avoids mentioning the deteriorating situation on the LoC. Like the smile of the Cheshire cat, the problems remain, but the prime minister slowly disappears from view.
The empty talk of a $5 trillion economy
This is true of the economy and jobs as well. Coming into power in 2014, the BJP and Modi had promised much about creating millions of jobs but much of this has faded into the slogan of creating a $5 trillion economy. This may sound very big, but it actually means very little when divided among the 1.4 billion Indians – only about $3,570 per annum, or less than $10 a day.
In comparison, the US poverty line is $15,000 for an individual living on their own – four times above what our average income would be. Of course, a dollar goes a lot farther in South Asia, but even here it does not go that far. Bhutan’s per capita income is already above $3,500 and while it is a lovely country, it just graduated out of “Least Developed Country” status last year.
As for jobs, we seem to have embraced a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude. Just as the promise has disappeared from the PM’s speeches, data about it has been hidden, withdrawn, tweaked or exaggerated until nobody knows what is going on. Nonetheless, when the Indian Railways reveals that more than 150,000 vacancies remain unfilled in the “safety” category – forget the rest – we see the strain that the national budget is under.
By all accounts the desperation behind the Agnipath scheme was to somehow cut down on manpower and pensions costs, and this is also the thinking behind reforming the state employees’ pension scheme. Some of these changes were likely necessary, but making decisions of immense strategic significance because the state is unable to pay salaries or pensions is not wise policymaking.
And maybe the fact that – for the last ten years – the Modi government has been giving a free ride to large corporations, so much so that corporate tax collection is less than income tax collected. Oh, and since less than 2% of the population is liable for income tax, let us not buy the spin that the increase in income tax collection shows that the larger society is better off, it is just that the 2% are significantly richer. In the meanwhile, our much-celebrated IT sector cut more than 70,000 jobs last year.
How does a failed government generate headlines?
Elections in J&K are ongoing, and within the next six months we are supposed to see elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and maybe Delhi. There is little prospect of the BJP doing well in any of them, but Modi has been the party’s relentless campaigner in all elections and it is impossible for him to be missing from the elections and the headlines.
With little to show for his term in office, and even less to promise, he is likely to stick to hate speeches against Muslims that he did in the general elections, accompanied by occasional rambles about being not human-born, but – as witnessed in the general elections – these speeches did not really deliver the votes.
Nonetheless, Modi must be in the news. Thus, we see the ridiculous spectacle of the PM celebrating Ganesh Utsav at the residence of the Chief Justice of India. The criticism that this elicited allowed Modi to paint himself as a victim and his opponents as “anti-Hindu”. It allowed him to return to his place in the headlines that he so craves.
As the NDA stumbles from one mistake to another, and Modi finds himself dizzy after making u-turn after u-turn, this craving will continue to increase, and for the rest of his term in public office all we can expect is a desperate old man shouting “Look at me! Look at ME! I am still relevant.”