Maximum Modi

LIKE SEVERAL RECENT ONES, THIS YEAR, TOO, SAW Prime Minister Narendra Modi re-emphasise himself as the undisputed electoral spearhead of his party which continued its winning streak. In the elections to seven states held in February-March and November-December this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made gains either in terms of seats or in vote share. It obliterated anti-incumbency trends in strongholds and made surprise inroads on new turfs. The states that saw elections this year included Goa, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh.

In Gujarat, Modi’s home state, where BJP has been in power for 24 straight years, the party increased its seat tally to a record high of 156 in the 182-member Assembly, securing 52.50 per cent of the votes polled. The ruling party is expected to gain further support as Congress suffered a resounding setback after it lost close to 15 per cent of its vote share from five years ago. In Himachal Pradesh, a state known for internecine wrangling and where Congress won, the party secured only a narrow margin of 0.9 per cent more than BJP’s vote share.

In Punjab, Congress lost to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in an ugly campaign that saw secessionist tendencies come to the fore while in UP, Goa and Manipur, BJP retained power on the back of the goodwill that the prime minister enjoys as leader of the federal government, a position that has proved to not only strengthen his party’s winnability but also insulate it against regional odds, however insurmountable they appear. Meanwhile, the much-hyped, new contender to a national play, AAP, vastly trailed expectations in the recently held elections in Gujarat. It won eyeballs amidst Congress shrinking to record lows and failing to resurrect itself. Notably, in the polls to elect 250 councillors to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) held in early December, AAP’s triumph was nowhere near emphatic even against allegedly corrupt officials and the margin of victory in vote share was nothing to cheer about. Simply put, AAP has not been able to fill Congress’ shoes as an opposition party to reckon with. Its failure to measure up to the high hopes also dulled its leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s vaulting ambitions to emerge as a challenger to Modi.

When the year began, there were, of course, projections, mostly in the media, of challengers. Among them were names such as MK Stalin of Tamil Nadu, Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, Nitish Kumar of Bihar, and others. As the year draws to a close, the long wait for such a challenger has not found an answer. The names just mentioned have only dwindled in popularity—to the extent that some pundits describe them as duds. The Janata Dal-United’s—or JD(U)’s—Nitish Kumar, who in a realignment of forces tied up with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and returned to the ‘Grand Alliance’ in August to stay on as Bihar chief minister, is increasingly turning out to be a liability for RJD leader and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, son of the ailing patriarch Lalu Prasad, as evident in JD(U)’s defeat in the Kurhani bypoll, a seat RJD had held. The grand alliance candidate for the seat lost to BJP in the December bypoll.

The most remarkable instance of a so-called contender fizzling out this year is certainly the failure of Kejriwal who runs an ideology-neutral and opportunistic entity that has the political flexibility to share the dais with even secessionists—such as Khalistanis—and play the Hindu card when it suits him, with the sole intention of pulling in votes at any cost. The year also witnessed the downsizing of Mamata Banerjee, who has stopped launching any personal attack on Modi, fearing it will boomerang as it often does in elections. Her position is going to get shakier over the citizenship amendment law—any failure to take a hardline stance on this will mean her incurring the wrath of the radicalised elements she has been courting over the issue and thereby losing a chunk of her vote base to rivals in the state, mostly likely the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM).

Modi has not had any doubt about the clarity of his actions, be it in managing the Covid-19 pandemic or in protecting the livelihoods of people and forging ahead with schemes to offer upward social mobility for people, irrespective of caste and creed. Open had noted earlier that at the height of the pandemic, “Modi managed to leverage India’s vaccine-making advantage so that both phased and targeted requirements at home and abroad were met, the latter not just for paid exports but also as aid from New Delhi.” The challenges were tough indeed in the face of a health system that suffered from every conceivable constraint—inadequate medical infrastructure, lack of resources and trained personnel, etc. The government was faced with the challenge of ramping up production of personal protective equipment (PPE) kits and ventilators, arranging transport of food and essential rations to millions of needy, transferring money to welfare accounts, besides, crucially, enthusing top pharma companies to proactively participate in the national effort to combat the rapid spread of Covid instead of focusing on profit-making (‘Modi’s Pandemic Leadership’, April 5, 2021).

The most remarkable instance of a contender fizzling out this year is the failure of Arvind Kejriwal. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar has become a liability for Tejashwi Yadav

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Even as China battles protests over mishandling of the Covid crisis, India’s response to the pandemic, in hindsight, deserves a big applause. As luck would have it, schemes to eradicate poverty too have worked during the unprecedented lockdown and concomitant difficulties. The proof of the Union government’s efforts clicking in a big way lies in the numbers. A United Nations’ (UN) report commended India this October as its poverty numbers fell by 415 million between 2005-06 and 2019-21. “India is an important case study for the Sustainable Development Goals, the first of which is to end poverty in all its forms and to reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030, all while leaving no one behind,” the UN report said.

In no small measure was this thanks to the steps taken by Modi in the dark days of the lockdown. As was obvious, during the pandemic, the initial accent was on saving lives. Subsequently, as Open had pointed out earlier, it pivoted to livelihood. It was in this period that the Modi government rolled out what is the world’s largest food relief programme—supplying free foodgrain to 800 million people. “Along with macroeconomic management, the Modi government took care to ensure that hundreds of millions of Indians did not suffer any hardship in accessing food during the pandemic. The PM Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), and especially its food component, was designed to that end,” Open has highlighted earlier (‘The Limits of the Anti-Modi Plank’, November 14, 2022).

Modi, meanwhile, had no qualms about calling a spade a spade, as he has done in the earlier years, too. This year saw the continuation of Hindu cultural assertion in varied areas, such as more investment in the science of Ayurveda and other traditional Indian healing systems, and renewed emphasis on the study of Sanskrit. The constituency of Hindutva has grown significantly alongside. The rebuilding of the Ram Mandir and the buzz around the renovation of the Kedarnath and Mahakal temples and development of other Hindu pilgrimage sites have turned the halting steps towards a Hindu assertion into a clear declaration of the government’s intent.

Hesitation on Hindutva has long become a thing of the past in Modi’s India, as the year saw India reasserting its priorities in Kashmir in a way it had never done in the past. Besides the zero-tolerance approach to terrorism that has begun yielding dividends, New Delhi does not want to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan because it is led by the principle that since Kashmir is a part of India, anything to do with it is an internal matter to be decided by India alone. On Modi’s watch, security agencies have done relentless search operations for terrorist hideouts across Kashmir and have also been able to drastically reduce the recruitment of Kashmiris by Pakistan-based outfits waging a war against India. Kashmiri terrorists are given a chance to surrender and are neutralised only if they refuse and continue to engage in the fight against federal agencies and the armed forces. To end the mockery of anti-India posturing at the funerals of slain terrorists, families are allowed to perform final rites at a village that is not home to those killed. Huge gatherings in Kashmir at these funerals, like the one held in July 2016 for Burhan Wani in Tral, were typical occasions that radicalised misguided youths and helped anti-national elements to recruit militants.

The government is also making an all-out effort to create jobs, encourage entrepreneurs, sportsmen and women, as well as tourism in the Valley towards the goal of ‘mainstreaming’ Kashmir. Although there are concerns still following strong measures taken after the abrogation of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories in 2019, reports from the state confirm normalcy is back after a long while. A report in The Hindu says, “As the sun sets over Srinagar, islands of late-evening life have started popping up, emerging for the first time in over 30 years. Parts of the volatile old city that would once fall silent and dark at sundown, leaving no place for youngsters to go, have acquired a rare buzz this year as youth hooked to a new passion—play football and cricket tournaments in floodlit stadiums till midnight.”

Yet, counter-terror activities by agencies are in full swing to stop Pakistan-sponsored terrorist outfits and funding for terrorists in Kashmir. They have identified some groups, one of which owes allegiance to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), for crackdown. Meanwhile, activists and groups that advocate the restoration of the pre-2019 status in Kashmir are fast losing their relevance, as well as sting. The People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), an amalgam of parties fighting for the restoration of the pre-August 5, 2019 status of Jammu and Kashmir, is the worst affected among them.

One of the major political events this year was the elevation of Draupadi Murmu as president. She is the first president born in independent India. Murmu, born in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district in 1958, is also India’s first tribal president, belonging to the Santhal community. She is the second woman president after Pratibha Patil.

One of the major political events this year was the elevation of Draupadi Murmu as president. She is the first president born in independent India. She is also India’s first tribal and second woman president

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The year ends with Congress achieving minimal gains from the Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra which, ironically, was organised when he was to plunge deep into the election campaign for two crucial state Assemblies. Rahul Gandhi parading activists like Medha Patkar on his ‘long walk’—which offers no significant political narrative and where he comes across repeatedly as a poor communicator—has failed to strike a chord with the people of India. Congress’ reluctance to cast the net wider and find political leaders from outside the first family, even in times as bad as these, is a constant reminder of the stagnation in the top echelons of the so-called Grand Old Party. Congress, in fact, lost its ‘grand’ status long ago and now, from being an ‘old party’ it is showing signs of a quick decay into senility with Rahul at the helm.

And the whole opposition, which appears shrunken, has an opponent far more formidable than ever.

About The Author

PR Ramesh

PR Ramesh is Managing Editor of Open

Ullekh NP

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