This is an excellent analysis of current
political scenario of our country by Ajay Shukla, IAS . The author retired
from the Indian Administrative Service in December 2010. He is a keen
environmentalist and loves the mountains- he has made them his home.
Why
I shall support Modi in 2014..?
By
: Avay Shukla July 1, 2013 20:30
I
have been getting more and more worried over the last year or so at the direction( or lack
of it) in which our country is headed. It is
like
a runaway plane falling from the skies and we are plummeting past one alarming indicator
after another– inflation, economic slowdown, falling rupee, complete
break-down of law and order, ever emboldened Naxalites, total
internalization of corruption, an administration that answers to no one, complete
lack of governance, cronyism on a scale never seen before, a
brazen lack of accountability, public intimidation of
constitutional authorities, a judicial system that has all but collapsed, environmental
disasters that no one knows how to cope with, complete
paraplegia of decision-making at all levels in government, appeasement
of ” minorities” and Other sections that are reaching ridiculous and
dangerous levels, dynastic politics at the Centre and the states
reminiscent of the Mughal era…….
I
could go on and on but after some time the mind becomes numb and registers only one
emotion——-IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE. Another five years of
this and we would be well on our way to becoming a failed state and
joining the ranks of Pakistan, Haiti and Somalia.
The
general elections of 2014 offer us one last chance to redeem ourselves. I have been
on this mortal coil for 62 years and have never voted for the BJP but
have, after much thought, decided to support MODI in 2014. This is
considered a heresy in most neo-liberal circles in India today but we
have to go beyond mere labelling and stereotyping to understand my
decision.
But
before I go on to Mr. Modi himself, let us review the context in which this decision
has been taken. The state of the country is self evident in Para one
above.
The next question then is: What are the alternatives or choices that we as voters have?
The
Congress will only perpetuate the present mess-even more worrying and dangerous is the
fact that, where the Congress to return to power, it would consider it
to have a renewed mandate to carry on as before.
In
any case, who in the country would lead the Congress- a reluctant dynastic or an ageing
economist who has discovered his true skills lie in politics, or a
backroom puppeteer? Or, God forbid, all three? ( Seriously, this is a
possibility- after all not one of these three want to shoulder sole
accountability, and they may reason that if a dual power center can
ensure two terms, a triple may be good for even more!) No, to my mind
the Congress is not an option.
Who
else, then?
Well,
if we scrape the bottom of the barrel assiduously we will come up with Mamta Banerjee
[TMC], Mulayam Yadav [ SP], Nitish Kumar [JDU], Naveen Patnaik[ BJD],
Jayalalitha[ AIADMK], Sharad Pawar[ NCP] and Mayawati ( BSP). There
is no need to discuss their achievements or ideologies at a
national level (incidentally, not even one of them has a remotely
national outlook or ideology since they cannot see beyond pandering
shamelessly to the vote banks in their respective states) because they
are state( not even regional) leaders and none of them can hope to be
Prime Minister on the strength of their own
Parties.
They
all realize this, of course, hence the idea which periodically emerges like a skin
rash, of a Third or Federal Front. This didn't work even when a Third
Front could agree on a leader (as in the case of I.K. Gujral or Deve
Gowda). How on earth will it work when every one of the state
leaders mentioned above feels that he or she has been reincarnated precisely
to become the Prime Minister of India?
The
negotiations for choosing a PM( if the Front comes up with the numbers, that is) will
resemble one of those WWF fights where about six hunks are put into
the ring to beat the daylights out of each other till one of them
is left standing to claim the crown. I cannot see all
of them agreeing on even one policy issue, whether it is reservations,
industrial stimulus, foreign policy, disinvestment, environmental
protection, centre-state relations etc. If they come to power at the Centre,
the paraplegia of today will become quadriplegia tomorrow.
Fortunately, in any case, they can never muster the
274 seats required-it will be
difficult for them to reach even hundred even if they do very well in
their states.
So a Third Front is a non-starter, and voting for any of these parties will only help the
Congress by dividing the anti-congress vote. [ You will have
noticed that I have not mentioned Mr. Karat of the CPM. That's because
he's become like a flat bottle of Coca-Cola- earlier he was all fizz and
no substance: now even the fizz has gone].
That
leaves only the BJP, with its historical baggage of the RSS, Hindutva,
Ramjanmbhoomi (by the way, this baggage also includes five years of exemplary
governance under Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004)-perhaps enough
baggage to dissuade me from voting for the party. Except that this time
the BJP has an add-on: Narendra Modi. And that, to my mind,
adds value to the party and makes the crucial difference.
Modi
has been reviled ad-nausea m by the “secular” parties and sections of the elite
media for many years for the 2002 riots in Gujarat, by the former
not because of any love for the Muslims( as I hope to show later)
but simply in order to appropriate the Muslim vote, and by the
latter because they have to keep whipping somebody in order to get their
TRPs- in India only extremes succeed. Modi has been tried and condemned by
them not on the basis of facts but by an opportunistic mixture
of innuendo, presumption, speculation, half-truths, hear say.
Look at the facts. There was a horrendous orgy of killing
of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 where about 2000 of
them were massacred. Some of Modi’s ministers and many BJP/ VHP workers
were involved: quite a few of them have also been convicted, the
trials of many still go on.
The
Supreme Court set up at least three SITs and is itself monitoring the
investigations. Many PILs have been filed in the SC and the High Court
accusing Modi of master-minding these massacres. In not a single case has
either the Supreme Court, the High Court or the SITs found any evidence of
Modi’s personal complicity.
Yes,
they have held that he could have controlled the situation better- but nothing
beyond that in-spite of ten years of frenetic drum beating and sustained
vilification.
Now look at the other set of facts. Under Modi’s current watch, perhaps for the first time in India,
people have been actually convicted for communal rioting and murder- more
than 200 convictions, with about 130 of them sentenced to life
imprisonment. All the communal massacres in India since Independence have
not resulted in even one tenth of these convictions.
Modi’s
government has to be given some credit for this: yes, the investigations were
carried out by the SIT and not by Modi’s police; yet Modi could, if he
was so inclined, have interfered covertly in the whole process by
asking his officials not to cooperate, by intimidating
witnesses, influencing judges, conveying hints to prosecutors- something
which, as we all know too well, governments of all political hues in
India have mastered.
Modi
could have done what the Congress has done so successfully in Delhi in
three other high-profile cases being monitored by the Supreme Court- the
Commonwealth Games Scam, the 2G case, and Coalgate ( not to mention also
the Sikh massacres of 1984): have these cases made any headway? has
wrong-doing been proved in a single instance? has anyone been convicted?
No,sir,
these investigations will drag on and on till they are lost in the mists of time. Supreme Court
monitoring cannot ensure justice unless the govt. of the day allows its
agencies to function- it is to Modi’s credit that he did so allow them.
Compare
this with the manner in which the police in Delhi have been emasculated to protect
some senior Congress leaders in the 1984 Sikh carnage- everyone in
Delhi knows, even after 27 long years, that their hands are dipped in
blood, but the evidence will never reach the courts; the recent
acquittal of Sajjan Kumar only confirms this.
The
biggest stigmata on Modi is the charge that he is ” communal” and not ” secular”.
All
(non-NDA) political parties never tire of tom-tomming this from the
roof-tops and consider this their trump card to ensure that he will never
achieve his Grand-slam at the centre. But after eleven years this is
beginning to wear thin and people are beginning to question the
assumptions behind this charge and even the definition of what constitutes
” communal” and “secular.”
Nirad
Choudhry had long ago given his opinion that India is the Continent of Circe
where humans are turned into beasts-it is also the graveyard of the
Oxford Dictionary where the meanings of words are turned on their heads
to suit political exigencies! So ”communal” today
means a Hindu who is not ashamed of saying he is a Hindu, and ”secular” means a Hindu who panders to
other religions in order to get their votes at the next elections!
By
this inverse definition Modi is considered communal- notwithstanding that
not a single Hindu- Muslim riot has taken place in Gujarat under his
watch since 2002, notwithstanding that the BJP got 17% of the Muslim
vote in the Assembly elections in the state earlier this year,
notwithstanding that the party won five of the eight seats which had
a dominant Muslim voter base, notwithstanding that the average
Muslim in Gujarat is much better off economically than his counterpart
in Assam, UP or Bihar( headed by ” secular” parties).
Compare
this with the record of the Samajwadi party in UP where more than a
hundred communal riots have taken place in less than two years, with the
Congress in Assam where hundreds of Muslims were butchered last year and
at least three hundred thousand of them are still languishing in relief
camps with no hope of ever returning to their villages, with the Congress
ruled Maharashtra where hundreds of Muslims were killed with the active
help of the police after the Bombay blasts. ( Needless to say there do not
appear to have been any convictions in any of these pogromes). And MODI is
communal?
I
am a Hindu but I stopped going into any temple twenty years ago because I
was sickened by the rapacious behavior of their pundits. I am no longer a
practicing Hindu in a public, ritualistic sense and frankly I don’t know
how many of the religious beliefs I retain, but I still consider myself a
Hindu because Hinduism is more than just a religion- it is a culture, a
civilisation, a way of life.
But
in the Kafkaesque India of today if you were to proclaim that you are a Hindu ( even
though you have equal respect and regard for all other religions) you
would be branded ” communal”- this is what political discourse
has been reduced to by our politicians. And being ” secular”
no longer means treating all religions equally: it means splintering
society into a myriad ” minorities” ( another perversion of the
Oxford Dictionary) and then pandering to such of them as suit you in
your naked pursuit of power.
In
the process India has been converted into a complex jigsaw of minorities, castes,
tribes, classes, sections and what have you. The British could have
learnt plenty from us about Divide and Rule! But more and more
right thinking people are beginning to question this recipe for disaster,
and I am one of them.
India
is 80% Hindu- why should one then have to be apologetic about proclaiming that one
is a Hindu ? We have been ruled and exploited and vandalized for eight
hundred years by Muslims and for another two hundred years by
Christians, and yet we have accorded these two religions a special
status as ” minorities” with privileges that the Hindus don’t have. Has any other country
in the world ever displayed such a spirit of accommodation and
egalitarianism? Is there a more secular civilisation in
the world? And yet, a Hindu who says
he is a Hindu is considered communal!
Does
a Hindu have to prove his secular credentials time and again by greater levels( or
depths) of appeasement of other religions simply so that they can continue
to be vote bank fodder for political parties? Modi has had the
courage to raise these questions and is therefore being reviled by those
political parties whose apple carts he is threatening to upset.
But people are beginning to pay attention. Modi is not considered
secular because he is proud to be a Hindu and refuses to give doles
or concessions to any religious group( including Hindus, but that is
conveniently glossed over) beyond what is provided in the constitution
and the laws of the land. He believes this weakens the social fabric of
the country and that even handed development is the best guarantee for
equitable prosperity for all.
He is not considered secular (
and instead is branded as communal) because he says publicly that he
is proud to be a Hindu. And has he done anything blatantly or
provocatively pro-Hindu in the last ten years? There is not a single
instance of this and yet he is vilified as communal and
anti-minorities by the same party that presided over more than two hundred
anti-Muslim riots in the seventies and eighties in Gujarat, that
massacred 6000 Sikhs in 1984, that lit the fuse in Ayodhya by installing
an icon of Ram in the mosque there, that failed to take any action
when the Babri masjid was being razed to the ground! Modi has
carefully distanced himself from any public support of Hindutva, has kept
the VHP and the Bajrang Dal on a tight leash in Gujarat ever since he
came to power there, and has even incurred the wrath of the RSS for
not toeing the line on their purely religious agenda. It takes time,
and some mistakes, to attain maturity; the Modi of today is not the
Modi of 2002: then he was still in the pracharak mould of the RSS,
inexperienced in the exercise of power, lacking administrative
experience. He has now developed into a politician with a vision, an
administrator who has delivered to his people and caught the fancy of the
entire corporate world in India and abroad. Rahul Gandhi has been around
in politics for almost the same length of time but has still not
progressed beyond his epiphanic perception that India is a bee-hive.
Pause
a while to honestly compare Modi’s qualities with his peers in the political
firmament. His integrity is impeccable, both personal and vicarious.Even Mr. Manish Tewari has
not been able to charge him on this score, and that’s saying something! I
am not aware of a single major scam unearthed during his term( compare
this with the Congress either in Maharashtra or at the Centre: the Congress
has more skeletons in its cupboard than a graveyard does).
Modi
has no family to promote or to insure against inflation for the next hundred years(
compare this with any other party leader, all of whom have given an
entirely new meaning to the term ” joint family”- brothers, uncles,
wives, sons, sons-in-law, nephews-all happily and jointly looting the
nation’s resources). Modi has a vision and a road map for the
future and he has demonstrated in Gujarat that he can
implement his vision.
No other major leader of the parties that are vilifying him comes even close to comparing
with him in this respect- Manmohan Singh once had a vision but his unique
concept of ” coalition dharma” has ensured that he now cannot see, or
hear, or talk; Rahul Gandhi cannot see beyond bee-hives and boats
that rise with the tide, Sharad Pawar cannot see the woods for the
sugar-cane stalks, Mulayam Singh has been fixated on the Prime Minister’s
chair for so long that he has now started hallucinating; Nitish
Kumar’s vision is a peculiar bi-focal which enables him to see
only Muslims and OBCs; Navin Patnaik, being erudite and sophisticated must
be having a vision but he has not deigned to share it with anyone
yet; Mayawati cannot see beyond statues of herself and of
elephants; and as for Mamta Banerjee, she is colour blind-she can only see
red. Modi’s track record as an administrator inspires confidence in
his ability to play a role at the national level.
He
sets specific goals, provides the resources and then gives his bureaucrats a free
hand to operate. He has ensured water availability to
towns and to greater number of farmers, Gujarat now
has 24X7 power and has even offered to sell power to other states.
Modi has realised long before his peers
that future growth can only come from the manufacturing
sector since the past stimulus provided by the service sector is
now bottoming out, and has prepared his state to attract capital:
perennial roadblocks which have bedeviled other states- land
acquisition, labour issues, law and order, lack of decision making,
cronyism- have all been sorted out. It is no surprise then that Gujarat has
been receiving the second highest amount of investment funds after
Maharashtra.
His opponents, looking for anything to
denigrate his achievements, cavil that Gujarat has
always been a progressive state and no credit goes to Modi for all
this. True, Gujarat ( and Gujaratis) have always been entrepreneurial
and progressive, but any economist can tell them that the higher you
are on the performance scale, the more difficult it is to make
incremental gains- and these gains Modi has been making year after year. Gujarat
has consistently been among the top five states in just about all economic, social
and human development indicators, and far above the national figures.
Here
are some figures I picked up in the Hindustan Times of June 12, 2013:
[a] Infant Mortality Rate
2005
2010
Gujarat
54 44
Haryana
60 48
Orissa
75
60
INDIA
58
47
[b] Access to Safe Drinking Water (in%)
2002
2011
Gujarat
84.1
90.3
Maharashtra
79.8
83.4
Andhra
80.1
90.5
INDIA
77.9
85.5
[c] Poverty Reduction (in%)
2004-5
2009-10
Gujarat
31.6
23
Karnataka
33.3
23.6
MP
48.6 36.7
Orissa
57.2
37
INDIA
37.2
29.8
[d] Annual GDP Increase (in%) From 2005-6 to 2012-13
Gujarat
10.3
Uttarakhand
12.36
MP
8.82
Maharashtra
9.97
Delhi
11.39
Modi is no paragon of virtue. He is
arrogant, does not allow a second rung of leadership to
emerge, brooks no opposition, is impatient and authoritative, is not
a consensus builder. But then we are not seeking to canonize a saint
but looking for a political leader who can get this country out of
the morass that its present stock of politicians has got us into. We
are looking for someone who can be decisive rather than justify inaction
under the garb of seeking an elusive ”consensus”. We are looking for someone
who has the courage to have a vision and the skills
to translate it into reality. We are looking for someone who will work
for the country and not for his ”joint family”.
We
are looking for someone who can restore our identities as INDIANS and not merely as
Brahmins or Scheduled castes or Muslims or Backward castes.
We
are looking for someone who will not pander to religions and be truly secular. And we
are looking for someone who will not be ashamed to say that he is a Hindu in the land
that gave birth to the most tolerant and enlightened religion
this world has seen.
Modi may fail- in fact, there are good
chances that he will. But he at least promises change,
whereas the others promise only more of the same. He offers us
Hope. Shouldn't he be given a chance?
