It was like a collage capturing contrasts. If there were scenes of chaos there were also celebrations: a tale of two C’s so to speak, the third somewhere lost in the din. But on that, a little later.
To take the first of the two, if uniformed personnel guarded the city like a fortress spelling chaos, over a lakh of diyas were lit across major locations in the country.
Both events, some two weeks apart from each other, marked two birthdays.
The diyas, lit on September 17, marked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday while the protests on October 2 coincided with the day Mahatma Gandhi was born.
If the protests centred around Modi’s anarchical and dictatorial rule, the diyas were lit to hail his leadership and the strides the country has taken under his leadership. It was also to flag the culmination of Modi’s 25 uninterrupted years in public office.
Born on September 17, Modi turned 76 this year. He also completed two and a half decades in office which include his tenure as Gujarat chief minister when he first took the oath of office in 2001.
Therefore, the first C: the Celebration followed by the second, namely Chaos: read protests.
Spearheaded by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Gen Z plus the political Opposition led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, protests in cities across northern India, brought life to a standstill.
Anger spilled to the streets following alleged irregularities in the voter lists linked to the Special Intensive Revision exercise which has been underway to sift genuine voters from fake ones.
Following a media expose, people took law into their hands, demanding that the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar must go.
This escalated to demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Modi on grounds that the Election Commission had worked in tandem with the government to engineer election victories by striking off genuine voters from the electoral rolls.
Both CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and Gandhi have created havoc. To say that they are giving sleepless nights to the Modi government would be an understatement. If anything, they are holding the government to ransom, asking both the CEC and Modi “to go”.
Pitch this against the celebrations wherein the BJP has launched a month-long service and public outreach campaign, including the Aashirwaad ka diya campaign, as also bike yatras to highlight two political milestones: Modi’s birthday and his 25 years in public office.
To say that the Modi government has fallen short on work would be unfair. Even the bitterest of his critics would concede that under the Modi government digital and financial inclusion has resulted in hundreds and thousands of citizens having access to banks through personalized accounts, particularly women. Add to this, the bid to revolutionize digital payments and making India a cashless country or expanding broadband connectivity for that matter.
One also cannot take away the rapid expansion of national highways and massive growth in airport and port networks.
As for welfare schemes, how can one skip mentioning the world’s largest funded health insurance scheme, tap water connections, toilets in rural homes, income support schemes for farmers, LPG gas connections to women, houses for the rural and the urban poor, and so on and so forth?
That apart, one cannot take away the rapid expansion of national highways and massive growth in airport and port networks.
The list is long, but so are the gaps in implementation.
The toilets for instance are being used as storage rooms; the LPG connections exist but the cost of cylinders is prohibitive; the health cards though issued do not work on the ground: there are umpteen cases of hospitals not entertaining patients enrolled under the government scheme.
As for infrastructure, several projects that were inaugurated have exposed fault lines.
Take the Jewar airport for instance which faced heavy waterlogging and flooding within months of it being operational; a bridge washed away in Bihar within a month of it being inaugurated, leading the Opposition to cry foul: “A bridge constructed in eight years collapsed in 29 days of its inauguration” politician Tejashwi Yadav had then said, pointing a finger at the Nitish Kumar-headed government.
The Delhi Dehradun Expressway developed potholes within 79 days; part of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway twin tunnel, collapsed within nine weeks of it being thrown open; the Dehradun bridge caving in within 15 days of it being inaugurated and of course the Lucknow Kanpur Expressway that cracked in less than a fortnight of it declared functional.
But does this undermine the intent of the Modi government or take away the initiative of launching welfare schemes?
Actually, it does not because despite the fault lines, benefits have reached the rural poor, and women in particular have benefitted.
The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, for instance, mandates that houses must include the woman of the household as the owner or co-owner before accruing benefits under this scheme. Equally no prime minister before Modi had even thought of the need for toilets in rural homes.
Critics may accuse the government of making tall claims, but one cannot take away from the Modi government many of its firsts.
But there is a flip side and one that white-washes the gains.
Even as one counts the hits and misses of a government well into its third term, what does stare one in the face is the attempt to undermine institutions and make them subservient, the Election Commission allegedly being one such. And this is where the second C namely Chaos comes in.
An interesting aside is that this has overtaken yet another C that the BJP is known for: Communalism. The saffron party which is clearly anti-Muslim is known for pitching Hindus versus the minorities.
But in recent times, communalism seems to have taken a back seat. Focus has shifted to exam paper leaks and more recently irregularities in the functioning of the Election Commission.
Evidence or lack of it notwithstanding, the perception is that under this government, the people’s constitutional right to vote has been tampered with. This is enough for the common man to stand with the Opposition and demand that this anomaly be corrected.
Consequently, people are out on the streets protesting that their rights have been taken away; crying for freedom of speech and asking the government to end anarchy and let the country breathe free.
There is some truth in this at least as far as allegations of this government being intolerant of dissent. Equally one must accept that the protests are not as spontaneous as the organizers claim them to be. There is anger, but it is also fanned by elements who are waiting to see India burn; those who decry an intolerant government are willingly embracing anarchy and advocating bloodshed in the garb of “peaceful protests”.
Otherwise, how can one explain activist Neha Bora saying that the youth movement in India is inspired by Bangladesh movement which had led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s government two years ago?
Or Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan saying that a revolution might be needed as also warning of a “bloodshed”. Or YouTuber Dhruv Rathee asking the army to revolt or “join the revolution” to quote him. If reports are anything to go by, Rathee has admitted that he urged the police and army to “rise in mutiny” against the government.
None of this can be dismissed as off the cuff remarks. There is a design and one that is being sponsored from outside the country. In this context, allegations of a foreign hand at play cannot be dismissed as unwarranted.
Any government worth its salt is well within its right to take cognizance. However, this does not give it the carte blanche to blur the lines between genuine anger and one that is orchestrated by elements waiting to see India plunge into chaos.
Therefore, what is required is a balancing act between sifting what the people of this country are demanding against what India’s enemies may desire.
While on the first, a spirit of give and take between the ruled and the rulers is the answer, on the second there can be no compromise. The government of the day must come down with a heavy hand and one that should strike hard.
The Gyanesh Kumar episode is not the first and the way things have panned out, it may not be the last also. The government should do what it takes to get the country back on track. It should win back the confidence of the people who have voted it in, despite dwindling margins in 2024 even as it sifts the anti-national from those nursing genuine grievances and feeling suffocated under a government perceived to be insensitive and dictatorial.
Therefore, irrespective of the number of diyas being lit in celebration, the government must take necessary steps to dispel the darkness that has enveloped the landscape of the country. It must also ensure that the iron hand which rules must soften and caress rather than strike even as it does what it takes to crush and destroy anti-national elements.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator
The post The Three C’S Of Modi’s India: Celebration, Chaos And Communalism appeared first on India Legal.