Upala Sen - April Fool Banaya !
Jumla wasn’t the only
joke Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled on the nation. On the appointed annual
day for tomfoolery, Upala Sen takes sombre stock of the many rides the
nation has been taken for
It was always apparent
for anyone who chose to see it for what it was. By the time the Bharatiya
Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, was done campaigning
for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he had participated not only in 400-plus
rallies but also 1,350 3D hologram-based interactions that were broadcast to
5,390 locations. Now, a hologram is a
three-dimensional image, created with photographic projection. A sleight of
light on eye and reason. It was reported that in several remote parts of the
country, when projectors beamed the image onto the darkened stage, villagers
took the hologram for the man. And when the lights came on at show-end and he
was nowhere to be found, it puzzled them a little. But it was nothing compared
to the thrill of having such a big leader interact with their humble selves.
The BJP's 2014
campaign was not only high on visuals but also on rhetoric, and when it came to
power, it became its manner of functioning. With a year to go before the next
general elections, here's a look at some of the promises that captured the
imagination of the electorate and then, in large measure, remained imagination.
Promise 1: Jobs: 'If
BJP comes to power, it will provide one crore jobs.'
Narendra Modi - November 2013, at a
rally in Agra
Modi had promised to
create 10 million jobs every year if voted to power. There is no one way to
measure this, nor any one consolidated figure, but according to a report
published by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd - a business and
economic database and research company - in February 2018, post demonetisation,
the unemployment rate continued to rise steadily. And by February end, it was
at 7.1 per cent. In 2013-2014, India's unemployment rate had been 4.9 per cent.
In the report titled
"Sharp increase in unemployment rate", Mahesh Vyas states that the
estimated number of persons unemployed and actively seeking employment almost
touched 31 million by February end. He writes, "The labour force shrunk by
30 million - from about 450 million before demonetisation to close to 420
million within six months of demonetisation... The labour force has still not
recovered entirely."
The government instead
of owning up to the employment gap has been busy looking for new narratives to
explain away the shortfall. The PM said in a television interview not long ago,
"In one year, EPF [employees' provident fund] accounts of 70 lakh youth...
have been opened. Seven million new EPF accounts, doesn't this show new employment?"
In that very interview, he also made the comment about pakoda selling
being a viable employment but one that would not reflect in any consolidated
data.
The EPF-employment
generation connect was borrowed from a paper titled "Towards a Payroll
Reporting in India" that was actually making a case for creating a more
foolproof measure of employment in India. Its optimistic note was recognisable
in this year's Economic Survey too, when it stated: "Notwithstanding the
caveats regarding the specific numbers, the broad conclusion is likely to be
robust: formal payrolls may be considerably greater than currently
believed." And while everyone
here was looking for hopeful signs, definitions, maybes and playing down the
reality, China continued to keep its nose to the grindstone. Against its 2016
target of 10 million annual jobs, it created more than 13 million new jobs a
year.
Promise 2: Farmers:
'You will be surprised to learn that the number of farmers who have been forced
to commit suicide is more than the number of jawans who died fighting the
wars.' -
Narendra Modi - April 2014, in Pathankot, Punjab
In its 2014 manifesto,
the BJP promised to ensure for farmers a minimum of 50 per cent profits over
the cost of production. Other than that, the party spoke of adopting a National
Land Use Policy, implementing farm insurance and so on and so forth. In January 2018, NGOs
ASHA-Kisan Swaraj Alliance, Jai Kisan Andolan, NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, People's
Action on Employment Guarantee, Rythu Swarajya Vedika and Swaraj India came out
with the Kisan Green Paper. The report exposed how the government had reneged
on its minimum support price (MSP) promise "by solemnly affirming in the
Supreme Court that this formula suggested by the National Farmers'
Commission... as unworkable".
Some of the other
points the Green Paper makes are: MSP was not only not increased to the promised
level, it was brought down to a level lower than what it was during the UPA
regime; how the government had tried to stop state-specific bonus on select
crops offered by the state governments and tried to dilute the Right to Fair
Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and
Resettlement Act, 2013.
The Centre, it says,
even made a "determined bid" to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and when it could not - owing to public
opinion and the Supreme Court - it "choked the programme of adequate and
timely funds". It makes the point
that when farmers were just about recovering from a spell of droughts, the
demonetisation blow left them gasping for air. And it also takes note of the
fact that the debt relief burden was shifted to the states, which in turn were
doing a poor job of the loan waivers announced. It reads: "This, despite
the fact that much of the agrarian crisis can be attributed to Union
Government's policies."
Last month, thousands
of farmers in Maharashtra embarked on a long march demanding loan waivers and,
among other things, the implementation of the Swaminathan Committee report,
which says farmers should be paid one-and-a-half times the cost of production. In full poll mode,
party president Amit Shah said while campaigning in Karnataka this week,
"We are often told by the opposition parties that there are rampant farmer
suicides in the country but I would like to inform you that there have been BJP
governments in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for the last 15 years
and the number of farmers committing suicides in these states has been very
low." Suicides by farmers,
according to Shah, have happened mainly due to depression and personal issues.
Promise 3: Fighting
Corruption: 'Mera mantra hai, na khata hoon, na khane dunga... My mantra, I
won't indulge in corruption, nor will I allow anybody else.' -
Narendra Modi - May 2014, in Amethi
The main thrust of the
2014 polls was ending corruption. The UPA's contribution to the rhetoric cannot
be ignored - 2G spectrum scam (2008), Commonwealth Games scam (2010), chopper
scam (2012), cash-for-vote scam (2011), Antrix-Devas scam (2011), coal scam
(2012)... All through the pre-poll campaign Modi harped on his seminal identity
- that of a chaiwalaas opposed to the Congress's shehzada.
In the manifesto, the
party had also promised transparency in governance. Because of all this, when
the PM urged countrymen to go through with the demonetisation exercise, a lot
of people decided that even if they couldn't keep the grin, they'd bear it. A year
on, even when it started to get clearer that no obvious gain had come off it -
experts also pointed out that the fake currency in circulation was a tiny
fraction of what had been killed - there was no chorus of complaint.
In the meantime, there
surfaced allegations that a company co-owned by Jay Shah, son of Amit Shah, had
grown "16,000 times" in one year. More recently, it came to light
that diamantaire Nirav Modi had run out on the Punjab National Bank and the
Indian taxpayer with Rs 11,000 crores. NiMo fled the country in the first week
of January. Weeks later, before the scam became public, he was spotted in a
group photo with the Indian PM. Before NiMo, Vijay Mallya had been allowed to
slip away. Even the judiciary has not been exempt from suggestions of
compromised honesty, as indicated by four Supreme Court judges.
But the biggest breach
of transparency and one that makes a fool of the Indian electorate is the
introduction of electoral bonds. In the 2017 budget speech, finance minister
Arun Jaitley introduced this mechanism, which will legitimise anonymous
donations to political parties and also open up Indian elections to foreign
lobbying for the first time. And it did so by tweaking four different statutes
- the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, the Representation of People Act 1951,
the Income Tax Act 1961 and the Companies Act 2013 - which, because they were
part of the finance bill, didn't have to be tabled before Rajya Sabha. On one
hand, Jaitley maintained: "These bonds will be bearer in character to keep
the donor anonymous." And on the other, he insisted this was going to be,
"a substantial improvement in transparency".
Promise 4: Ek
Bharat : 'Acche din aane wale hain... Good times are a coming.'
Narendra Modi - May
16, 2014, after poll victory
The BJP manifesto
read: "The biggest reason for a sorry state of affairs is bad intentions
on the part of those who have ruled... And this where we would show the first
difference... the goal of the policies and practices would be: Ek Bharat,
Shreshtha Bharat." Indeed. In the past
four years, BJP has done everything to lay over the plurality of India with a
monolithic construct of Indianness. And all square pegs have got the message
that they have to recast their old ideas and beliefs, somehow, anyhow, to fit
into the round hole.
The measures have been
varied. Genial suggestions: read the Vedas, practise yoga, say Bharat Mata ki
Jai or else... Blanket diktats: stand up in movie theatres when the national
anthem plays or else... Rituals: convert to Hinduism or else... Brute force:
venerate who we venerate or else... Rampant vigilantism in the name of cow
protection has claimed many lives and left millions of cattle-farmers
fear-struck. According to data journalism initiative IndiaSpend, since 2012,
the country has witnessed 78 cow-related hate crimes and 97 per cent of these
occurred since BJP assumed power. News reports suggest there were 8,000
instances of ghar wapsi or ritual conversion in Telangana and
Andhra Pradesh in 2014; 53 in Jharkhand in 2017.
Post the BJP's Tripura
triumph over the Left last month, party supporters vandalised Lenin's statue in
the state triggering similar lumpen behaviour across the country. As statues of
Syama Prasad Mukherjee, Vivekananda, Ambedkar and others fell, the PM, who is known
for his characteristic silence off campaign trail, stirred. The PMO issued a
statement that read: "Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has strongly
condemned the reported incidents of vandalism in certain parts of the country
and said stern action will be taken against those found guilty."
When it comes to this
party, imagery - light or stone - is serious business. You might express
surprise or discomfort now, but it was always apparent for anyone who chose to
see it for what it was.
