The Game Changer

The Game Changer

The starkness of the proposition that is Narendra Modi for prime minister, has served to awaken  a discourse never before given to such clarity. It is a discourse that takes on the hypocrisies and myths built up over 65 years since independence.

It covers the whole gamut from communalism, secularism, poverty alleviation, development and most importantly, governance as a responsibility to deliver results and not another set of empty promises. This has so set the cat amongst the pigeon s that the entire political class is having to adjust to a new paradigm in the history of Indian politicking.

Many in the BJP, let alone the UPA and elsewhere, are shell-shocked, and are trying to dilute the proposition. They are saying it is not at all certain that Narendra Modi will in the end be projected as the prime ministerial candidate.

What these good people miss is the fact that in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of the rank and file of the BJP and its ideologically compatible and supporting organisations, the vote has already gone in. The tryst with destiny has been logged on.

Whatever the outcome of the elections turn out to be, Mr.Modi has been given a chance to get as many seats for the BJP as he can. If he does well, it will be difficult to resist his bid to ultimate power, and if he fails he will go back to Gujarat. Mr. Modi himself  is not afraid of risking his arm and needs to be commended for his fortitude in the face of blistering opposition from within and without. And the campaign has not yet begun in right earnest.

Broadly speaking however, the need to project leaders and their ideas has become crucial in the age of 24x7 Television, Social Media, blogs on the Internet, the 140 letter Twitter, and a sharpened, even activist, editorial comment.

Not to mention some very motivated, if light- weight, headlines in papers that should be prouder of their work. In this wealth of choice of expression, every medium and moniker is fighting to influence, if not form, the opinion of its adherents.

It  has become all about news and views debated by ordinary people. The days of pundits talking down to an audience are largely gone. Today even a Nobel laureate like Amartya Sen is seen as a devotee of the establishment and the Congress Party, a blatant campaigner to his cause, and not as an oracular voice from the height of his tremendous intellect. And there are a good number of such partisan  ‘experts’ all pounding their pulpits and grinding their axes.

But fortunately, ordinary people go on social media at a minimum today, or on their mobile phones and Whatsapp,  on an interactive basis. And most of this discourse displays a growing dissatisfaction with the state of play on practically every item of governance, and the functioning of the polity, much of the vital and unvarnished commentary delivered with a sense of humour.

The High Priestess style adopted by Mrs Sonia Gandhi may be of a piece with a carefully cultivated mystery. But there is a certain impatience amongst the public, if not amongst the unasked rank and file workers in her own party, who expect her to win elections for them.

The impatience is with this consistent behind the arras statement from the ‘High Commmand’, subject to multiple interpretations as it is passed down via many hands. Inaccessibility, at least physically, amongst the powerful is understood in these dangerous times, but an absence of an electronic presence even as one clearly plays puppetmeister is seen to be a little offensive. Politician, one might say, explain thyself.

The silence and inaccessibility substituted by cohorts of  spokespersons strenuously parroting the party line, comes across as somewhat sly, because it is shadow- play, and does not compute on camera or admit to any clear attribution or accountability.

And British royalty style waving from the balcony, or the podium for that matter, does not do the trick, though the clung to urgency with regard to Welfare is expected to even in the face of adverse  Opinion Poll results.

After all, British royalty for all its quirks and stage management, does enjoy a crusty constitutional support, whereas the remnants of  the Gandhi family has devised a peculiar power without direct responsibility model all of its own . But there is a poignancy about this role playing against the backdrop of Time and Change. 

Prince William married a Commoner, and his son, 3^rd in line to the throne, has the blood of a Democrat and reportedly, even an Indian woman from Surat, flowing in his veins.   

On another familiar, Octavio Quatrocci, has died relatively early, but his ghost  along with the guns he allegedly had a hand in supplying, is still very much around. The Bofors scandal may now stay likewise shrouded in mystery, but its effects still have play.

This partially is a positive, because the now ancient Bofors guns, enhanced by some local jugaad, did acquit themselves very   well in the Kargil  skirmish in Mr. Vajpayee’s time.

At the receiving end, Pakistan and its formidable ISI intelligence apparatus admit, if in private, that sometimes two, or even a dozen wrongs, do make a right. It is all a matter of managing perceptions.

The Government has also thought fit, in desperate messaging, to drastically  reduce the poverty line based on some wizardry  in the Planning Commission. It is a time-tested Stalinist move, where statistics seek to substitute reality.

Not only that, it claims the best results on poverty alleviation have come from Bihar and Odisha. It is no secret that the incumbent Government is wooing both states and their current rulers for the post poll scenario. This is surrealistic jugglery of statistics, by excluding the last two years of drastically lower growth in GDP, say many sceptical economists. And determined propaganda to believe and claim the welfare spending is working.

Of course it is working, for many in the delivery pipeline, but not the poorest of the poor. If only anyone on 24x7 TV cares to ask them instead of relying on Planning Commission statistics.

 The Government, like all central and state governments elsewhere, is adept at projecting happy illusions seeking to replace reality, relying on acolytes in the well- inclined mainstream media via legitimate advertising spend.

And those flattering junkets/accolades, and the all- important access to power. It is a win-win for both,  designed only to amplify matters which tend to be in the public domain already, churned out  dutifully by the Government’s own  truth- and- lies publicity machine.

1,103 words

July 24^th, 2013

Gautam Mukherjee