Prime Minister won’t take open questions and he won’t explain his failures.
India is voting. Let me rephrase it. Poor Indians are voting to elect their representatives who will help form a new government made by some of our richest and criminally accused fellow citizens. Certainly, regular elections are the only valid feature of Indian democracy. India’s democratic institutions including the judiciary and media are battling a major crisis of credibility.
Indian Media blames Modi for this. But that’s incorrect. Our institutions have weakened by every successive government in power and sheer abuse of power by an inept bureaucracy. This long-term decline stems from a lack of accountability on part of political, judicial and media elites.
Not taking questions is the easiest way to avoid any scrutiny. Compromised media only makes it worse. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh only took three press conferences in a decade. PM Singh and his ‘super-boss’ Sonia Gandhi will only take “pre-approved” questions from pro-Congress media. Indians are unaware of the individual position that Modi or Rahul Gandhi might hold on contentious issues.
When Modi won power in 2014, Indian media was reeling under a near absolute dominance of pro-Congress media barons. In the last 5 years, that dominance has been curtailed to some extent with the rise of few pro-BJP media outfits. BJP government has responded to claims on India’s ‘unemployment crisis’ and growing welfare populism so far.
In the post-Balakot airstrike scenario, “Mr 56 inch” Modi changed the entire election narrative towards the national security issues. A feeble Congress-led opposition remains divided and never much recovered from its 2014 rout.
Yet PM Modi avoided coming clean on various core issues and promises. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Illegal Bangladeshi
Back in 2014, Narendra Modi asked Bangladeshi illegal immigrants to pack up once he wins power. PM Modi did win a historic victory. But once he got power, the issue was put in the back burner. In the last 5 years, Modi government deported fewer illegal Bangladeshi than UPA government did just in its last year. In its last full year, UPA government deported over 5000 illegal Bangladeshi citizens. Modi government deported just around 2000 as per the latest data.
There is no official data on the number of illegal Bangladeshi living in India. Even after the National Register of Citizens in Assam, mass expulsion of illegals will be a near impossibility without signing a repatriation agreement with Bangladesh. Myanmar and Bangladesh signed it last year for the return of hundreds of thousands of Bengali Muslims living in Bangladesh. For the 2019 election campaign, Modi even avoided speaking on this failure forget explaining the reasons for his government’s inaction.
2. Minority Ministry
Another shining ‘mantra’ from Modi that we first heard in 2013. Not sure if Modi picked this up after reading BJP ideologue K. R. Malkani’s masterpiece with the same title, but Modi failed to walk his talk here too. Modi government not only continued with the Ministry of Minority Affairs created by the Sonia led UPA government, but it went on to fund it with over Rs. 15,000 crores. The ministry has always been led by a Muslim minister (another practice continued by BJP government) and works exclusively for non-Hindus.
3. The Hypocrisy in Kashmir
The 2014 BJP manifesto promised “the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the land of their ancestors” and reiterated the party’s commitment to the abrogation of Article 370. BJP swiftly dumped both these commitments after May 16, 2014. When Modi led BJP shared power in Jammu and Kashmir, it continued with thousands of crores worth of LoC trade with Pakistan. This despite the warning of NIA that the LoC trade is a mere cover for drug trade and recce of army positions. Around 10,000 cases were withdrawn against the stone pelters in Kashmir valley which included many repeat offenders. Even secessionist outfits like Hurriyat were never banned and its leaders enjoyed state patronage until the launch of election campaigning a few months back.
4. Avoiding Ayodhya
BJP regularly presents itself as the savior of Hindu cause and flagbearer of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. While the occupied temple was reclaimed in 1992, the constructed has been delayed due to the political sabotage of the issue in Indian courts. PM Modi has avoided speaking on the issue but he also kept away from the holy town. Even during the grand ‘Deepotsav 2018’ organized on the eve of Diwali and attended by the South Korean first lady, PM absence was conspicuous.
5. Corruption and Communalism
The Modi government prides itself with clean governance. The claim holds ground to some extent. There is no denying that this government has remained largely scam free, unlike its predecessor that was mired with successive scams and financial irregularities. Sadly, PM Modi showed no resolve in pursuing the UPA corruption and so-called “black money”. To this day, there is no data from Modi government on the amount of “black money” that was recovered from foreign banks which as per his own claim amounted to around “Rs 15–20 lakh per Indian citizen”. There is no official data or report that can be used to measure the success of demonetization. Cases like CWG scam and others became victim to judicial blockage. The growing partisanship in apex judiciary has favored former UPA ministers like Chidambaram and ilk. PM Modi is yet to come clean on all this.
Similarly, the issue of growing communal polarisation is a reality. The extent of religion-based crimes has expanded in the last decade. While media is quick to highlight the cases with Muslim victims, the growing extremism among Indian Muslims and communal attacks on Hindus is no less an issue of concern. But PM Modi failed to acknowledge or condemn the incidents where Hindus were at the receiving end. The ‘secularisation’ of Modi has been a tremendous success so far.
PM Modi has taken successive media engagement in the last two months. This was an attempt to compensate for his political muteness right before the voting begins to garner maximum attention. He has been very successful on this front. But the questions remain unanswered. Failure of UPA-II has been accepted as the new benchmark of governance. Anything above that is declared a success.
