To Vote or Not to Vote - For Narendra Modi
Category : THOUGHTS Author : Kartikay Saxena Date : Tue Apr 10 2018 Views : 364
With 2019 round the corner, every Indian is now an election pundit. And if by chance one isn’t, they definitely will have an opinion about who is winning 2019. I am no different. I too have an opinion, but being active on Social Media, I am also aware of the perceptions & theories floating around. And presently, one can’t escape the ‘Modi has not done enough’ narrative that us being peddled in full flow. I say peddled, because the people promoting this narrative have based this on propaganda, instead of facts.
I do not know who will win 2019, but here are my two cents worth on the takeaways of Modi Sarkaar –
1. Modi – The Superhero – It won’t be any exaggeration at all to say that the expectations Indian public have had from Narendra Modi have easily surpassed those from any other Prime Minister of India. It’s almost as if Modi is the panacea of all ills. He is the one man army that will fight against corruption, price rise, terrorism, naxals, Pakistan & even ISIS & Global Warming! Now, Modi himself is partly responsible for this having pitched himself as a savior (Pradhan Sevak) during the 2014 campaign, but come on, you realistically cannot expect one man to change the ecosystem that’s been thriving since decades! Anything happens in the country or even beyond (39 Indians killed in Iraq) & the default reaction is, ‘What is Modi doing?’
Modi is doing a lot. Probably more than what any Prime Minister before him has done. But even he has his limitations, and it will serve well for everyone to not lose sight of that.
2. Acche Din – The oft used phrase to deride the Modi Sarkaar has been ‘ Where are the Acche Din?’ or ‘ Are these the Achhe Din?’. Before we delve into that question, here is a simple question ‘What are Acche Din?’ Does anyone actually believe that a day will come when all the evils afflicting the world will disappear & we will live with peace & harmony in a perfect world? No? Then what constitutes Achhe Din? This question will evoke a different response from every person. For we all want something different from the next person.
For example, will you ask a woman who has been cooking in front of a chulha her whole life, whether a gas cylinder has ushered Acche Din for her? Or a child who has studied under street lights or kerosene lamps, whether getting electricity has brought in Acche Din? The village that had no road, the labourer that had no bank account, the farmer who could not get loans from banks but had to depend on sahukaars instead, or the women who had to resort to open defecation at wee hours in the morning because there were no toilets?
Do any, or all of the above mentioned examples constitute Acche Din? If you say Yes, then to answer your question, for a vast majority of forgotten India, Acche Din have arrived.
3. The 2014 Climate – Before you castigate the current government while making up your mind for 2019, cast your mind back to the events preceding the elections of 2014. We Indians are notorious for having a short memory, but even then, what was the mood then? What I remember are the scams being exposed on almost a weekly basis, the scale of some beyond our comprehension only (1 lakh 76000 crore), large scale corruption a part of daily life, crony capitalism a reality and all that meant a mood of utter despondency. Do you feel the same today? Actually, No. There have been problems, but they were always going to be. India is too vast a country for a ‘One size fits all’ policy for anything. And while you should not ignore the problems, equally important is to not lose sight of the fact that in the last 4 years there hasn’t been a single scam under this government (PNB Scam originated from UPA 2). Corruption, which dominated the headlines incessantly in the build up to 2014, has almost become a thing of the past. It’s almost as if Indians have woken up in an alternate universe where corruption had never been an issue for us! So don’t forget, it wasn’t always like this.
4. Boldness in Action – You can blame Modi for anything, but not shying way from making big calls. Demonetization, Surgical strikes, GST roll out are to name, just 3 examples where Modi took the bull by the horns and implemented decisions which his predecessors had dithered to. No one should underestimate the courage needed to implement even one, leave alone all 3!.
When it was announced, Demonetization was greeted as the most anti-poor, anti-middle class step, sure to alienate these sections from Modi. However, post UP elections in 2017, the same ‘analysts’ proclaimed that Modi did Demonetization to win over the voters! I mean, come on… Make up your mind! You can’t change the narrative as you go along!
GST, pilloried by many as a cumbersome, too complex to understand tax which was anti trader & sure to lose Modi votes of the traditional trader BJP voters has also started to yield results with collections now showing a marked surprise.
Surgical strikes was probably the toughest of all the decisions Modi has taken. To cross the LoC into enemy territory, carry out a military operation & come back without a single casualty was testament to what our Army can achieve given proper backing. To put into perspective, even zero casualties did not deter the entire opposition along with sections of the media to question & even criticize a decision so obviously beneficial for the nation. Imagine the backlash had we actually lost a soldier. It required courage of Himalayan proportions to give the go ahead to such an operation.
5. Perception – Let’s get one thing clear, the Media hates Modi. Have hated him since he was made CM of Gujarat & this hatred reached it’s peak when Modi won the mandate in 2014. As a result the hit jobs have been relentless. Online portals like The Wire, Print India, Scroll & news channels like NDTV have carried story after story targeting the Modi government. So called 'journalists' like Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Abhisar Sharma, Nidhi Razdaan to name a few, have used their position & reach incessantly to promote a biased, one sided agenda against the current establishment. That has now led to a perception being created that all is not well in the country today.
Breaking News – India is exactly the kind of place it was & has been for decades.
But the biggest failure of Modi has been his inability to correct this wrong perception. While ‘Mann ki Baat’ is a good outreach initiative, it doesn’t come across as a platform to educate the people against the dangers of misreporting. That job falls to the spokespersons who, quite frankly, are lame, uninformed & timid. Add to that the litany of BJP leaders who cannot resist shooting their mouths off the moment they see a camera which inadvertently gets attributed to Modi! The Result? A deadly cocktail of fake news & stupidity which the media outlets are only too happy to circulate on a loop, & pin Modi & his government on the backfoot.
The events like church attacks, Award waapsi, Intolerance, JNU, Azaadi gang, Akhlaq/Dadri have all had some effect on people’s perception of Modi sarkaar. And truth be told, BJP has not been able to counter this narrative effectively. Take Dadri for example. What happened was gruesome. But it was an issue of law & order, which is a state subject. State government was led by the secular messiah Akhilesh Yadav. But the entire story was spun in a way that made Modi responsible while Akhilesh was given a free pass! It is this agenda that Modi needed to counter swiftly & decisively.
6. The Alternative – Picture this for a moment –
Rahul Gandhi – Prime Minister
Mamata Bannerjee – Home Minister
Akhilesh Yadav – Defense Minister
Asaduddin Owaisi – Human Resource Development Minister
Mayawati – External Affairs Minister
Tejashwi Yadav – Railways Minister
Sharad Pawar – Agriculture Minister
Mulayam Singh Yadav – Law Minister
This is just a teaser of what the alternative to Modi Sarkaar looks like. Rearrange them any which way you like, it still looks equally scary. Today they have all joined hands with one purpose & one purpose only - Defeat Narendra Modi. My simple question to them is this - Alright, you beat Modi. Then what? What is your plan for the country? Do you even have one? How will YOU deal with all the problems that you say have plagued the country today? Forget Intolerance, for that was you creation only, but do you have a coherent economic policy? A foreign policy? A policy to deal with the threat of Naxals to our internal security? Any concrete policy to deal with the threat of cross border terrorism? Or, is your agenda only to grab power by any means, the nation be damned?
I think the answer is pretty obvious.
There is still time for 2019 elections & rest assured as we get closer to the business end, things will get even dirtier. So much so, that it might become impossible to separate the truth from fiction. This is a matter of survival for those in opposition today & they will go into this no holds barred. They have laid their cards on the table. No trick is out of the equation, no agenda too low to implement if it results in a defeat for Modi. The question is what will Modi & his supporters do. Will they be as enthused as they were in 2014 of will indifference take hold like it did in 2004? That one mistake 14 years ago cost India a decade of development & straddled us with peak corruption.
No matter what your grouse is with Modi, agreed he had promised a lot but not delivered everything, agreed he has not been 100% efficient in his execution, but what you cannot fault is his intent. And after a long time India has a leader with clear vision to make us progress as a nation. A leader who is not beholden to others for the sake of power. If for nothing else, then for this he needs to continue. Not for his, but for our sake. I know what I want. I will make sure I line up at the voting booth in 2019. Will you?
With 2019 round the corner, every Indian is now an election pundit. And if by chance one isn’t, they definitely will have an opinion about who is winning 2019. I am no different. I too have an opinion, but being active on Social Media, I am also aware of the perceptions & theories floating around. And presently, one can’t escape the ‘Modi has not done enough’ narrative that us being peddled in full flow. I say peddled, because the people promoting this narrative have based this on propaganda, instead of facts.
I do not know who will win 2019, but here are my two cents worth on the takeaways of Modi Sarkaar –
1. Modi – The Superhero – It won’t be any exaggeration at all to say that the expectations Indian public have had from Narendra Modi have easily surpassed those from any other Prime Minister of India. It’s almost as if Modi is the panacea of all ills. He is the one man army that will fight against corruption, price rise, terrorism, naxals, Pakistan & even ISIS & Global Warming! Now, Modi himself is partly responsible for this having pitched himself as a savior (Pradhan Sevak) during the 2014 campaign, but come on, you realistically cannot expect one man to change the ecosystem that’s been thriving since decades! Anything happens in the country or even beyond (39 Indians killed in Iraq) & the default reaction is, ‘What is Modi doing?’
Modi is doing a lot. Probably more than what any Prime Minister before him has done. But even he has his limitations, and it will serve well for everyone to not lose sight of that.
2. Acche Din – The oft used phrase to deride the Modi Sarkaar has been ‘ Where are the Acche Din?’ or ‘ Are these the Achhe Din?’. Before we delve into that question, here is a simple question ‘What are Acche Din?’ Does anyone actually believe that a day will come when all the evils afflicting the world will disappear & we will live with peace & harmony in a perfect world? No? Then what constitutes Achhe Din? This question will evoke a different response from every person. For we all want something different from the next person.
For example, will you ask a woman who has been cooking in front of a chulha her whole life, whether a gas cylinder has ushered Acche Din for her? Or a child who has studied under street lights or kerosene lamps, whether getting electricity has brought in Acche Din? The village that had no road, the labourer that had no bank account, the farmer who could not get loans from banks but had to depend on sahukaars instead, or the women who had to resort to open defecation at wee hours in the morning because there were no toilets?
Do any, or all of the above mentioned examples constitute Acche Din? If you say Yes, then to answer your question, for a vast majority of forgotten India, Acche Din have arrived.
3. The 2014 Climate – Before you castigate the current government while making up your mind for 2019, cast your mind back to the events preceding the elections of 2014. We Indians are notorious for having a short memory, but even then, what was the mood then? What I remember are the scams being exposed on almost a weekly basis, the scale of some beyond our comprehension only (1 lakh 76000 crore), large scale corruption a part of daily life, crony capitalism a reality and all that meant a mood of utter despondency. Do you feel the same today? Actually, No. There have been problems, but they were always going to be. India is too vast a country for a ‘One size fits all’ policy for anything. And while you should not ignore the problems, equally important is to not lose sight of the fact that in the last 4 years there hasn’t been a single scam under this government (PNB Scam originated from UPA 2). Corruption, which dominated the headlines incessantly in the build up to 2014, has almost become a thing of the past. It’s almost as if Indians have woken up in an alternate universe where corruption had never been an issue for us! So don’t forget, it wasn’t always like this.
4. Boldness in Action – You can blame Modi for anything, but not shying way from making big calls. Demonetization, Surgical strikes, GST roll out are to name, just 3 examples where Modi took the bull by the horns and implemented decisions which his predecessors had dithered to. No one should underestimate the courage needed to implement even one, leave alone all 3!.
When it was announced, Demonetization was greeted as the most anti-poor, anti-middle class step, sure to alienate these sections from Modi. However, post UP elections in 2017, the same ‘analysts’ proclaimed that Modi did Demonetization to win over the voters! I mean, come on… Make up your mind! You can’t change the narrative as you go along!
GST, pilloried by many as a cumbersome, too complex to understand tax which was anti trader & sure to lose Modi votes of the traditional trader BJP voters has also started to yield results with collections now showing a marked surprise.
Surgical strikes was probably the toughest of all the decisions Modi has taken. To cross the LoC into enemy territory, carry out a military operation & come back without a single casualty was testament to what our Army can achieve given proper backing. To put into perspective, even zero casualties did not deter the entire opposition along with sections of the media to question & even criticize a decision so obviously beneficial for the nation. Imagine the backlash had we actually lost a soldier. It required courage of Himalayan proportions to give the go ahead to such an operation.
5. Perception – Let’s get one thing clear, the Media hates Modi. Have hated him since he was made CM of Gujarat & this hatred reached it’s peak when Modi won the mandate in 2014. As a result the hit jobs have been relentless. Online portals like The Wire, Print India, Scroll & news channels like NDTV have carried story after story targeting the Modi government. So called 'journalists' like Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Abhisar Sharma, Nidhi Razdaan to name a few, have used their position & reach incessantly to promote a biased, one sided agenda against the current establishment. That has now led to a perception being created that all is not well in the country today.
Breaking News – India is exactly the kind of place it was & has been for decades.
But the biggest failure of Modi has been his inability to correct this wrong perception. While ‘Mann ki Baat’ is a good outreach initiative, it doesn’t come across as a platform to educate the people against the dangers of misreporting. That job falls to the spokespersons who, quite frankly, are lame, uninformed & timid. Add to that the litany of BJP leaders who cannot resist shooting their mouths off the moment they see a camera which inadvertently gets attributed to Modi! The Result? A deadly cocktail of fake news & stupidity which the media outlets are only too happy to circulate on a loop, & pin Modi & his government on the backfoot.
The events like church attacks, Award waapsi, Intolerance, JNU, Azaadi gang, Akhlaq/Dadri have all had some effect on people’s perception of Modi sarkaar. And truth be told, BJP has not been able to counter this narrative effectively. Take Dadri for example. What happened was gruesome. But it was an issue of law & order, which is a state subject. State government was led by the secular messiah Akhilesh Yadav. But the entire story was spun in a way that made Modi responsible while Akhilesh was given a free pass! It is this agenda that Modi needed to counter swiftly & decisively.
6. The Alternative – Picture this for a moment –
Rahul Gandhi – Prime Minister
Mamata Bannerjee – Home Minister
Akhilesh Yadav – Defense Minister
Asaduddin Owaisi – Human Resource Development Minister
Mayawati – External Affairs Minister
Tejashwi Yadav – Railways Minister
Sharad Pawar – Agriculture Minister
Mulayam Singh Yadav – Law Minister
This is just a teaser of what the alternative to Modi Sarkaar looks like. Rearrange them any which way you like, it still looks equally scary. Today they have all joined hands with one purpose & one purpose only - Defeat Narendra Modi. My simple question to them is this - Alright, you beat Modi. Then what? What is your plan for the country? Do you even have one? How will YOU deal with all the problems that you say have plagued the country today? Forget Intolerance, for that was you creation only, but do you have a coherent economic policy? A foreign policy? A policy to deal with the threat of Naxals to our internal security? Any concrete policy to deal with the threat of cross border terrorism? Or, is your agenda only to grab power by any means, the nation be damned?
I think the answer is pretty obvious.
There is still time for 2019 elections & rest assured as we get closer to the business end, things will get even dirtier. So much so, that it might become impossible to separate the truth from fiction. This is a matter of survival for those in opposition today & they will go into this no holds barred. They have laid their cards on the table. No trick is out of the equation, no agenda too low to implement if it results in a defeat for Modi. The question is what will Modi & his supporters do. Will they be as enthused as they were in 2014 of will indifference take hold like it did in 2004? That one mistake 14 years ago cost India a decade of development & straddled us with peak corruption.
No matter what your grouse is with Modi, agreed he had promised a lot but not delivered everything, agreed he has not been 100% efficient in his execution, but what you cannot fault is his intent. And after a long time India has a leader with clear vision to make us progress as a nation. A leader who is not beholden to others for the sake of power. If for nothing else, then for this he needs to continue. Not for his, but for our sake. I know what I want. I will make sure I line up at the voting booth in 2019. Will you?
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