Shame Has A Poor Memory

Shame Has A Poor Memory

Shame has a poor memory

Gabriel Garcia De Marquez

With the economy in sharp decline due to the neglect of a highly discredited government, electoral politics has temporarily displaced concern with economics. We are now in the thick of the slog overs of the campaigning and voting process, alongside the deepening onset of summer heat. Everyone is living on hope of a sea change in governance, and counting the passing days to the new government.

With about 25 days to go before the votes are counted, the Congress seems to know the outcome, and acts cornered, as if it is already defeated. This despite raising every negative point it can think of constantly in an effort to prejudice the voters against the BJP and the NDA.

The BJP too is sharpening its attack, particularly on the massive corruption allegations against Sonia Gandhi and her   ill-begotten  billions, and Robert Vadra, her exploitative and street-smart son-in-law. Many other famously corrupt Congress and UPA ministers are rightly worried about being investigated by the arms of the expected BJP/NDA government. However Modi himself, has made it clear that development, his main poll plank, will indeed be first priority.

Narendra Modi, acknowledged as a superior, even thrilling orator in his political rallies, has recently also given a series of lengthy one-on-one interviews on multiple TV channels as well as in the print media. He has answered searching questions in depth, with charm, finesse and authority, putting paid to those critics who were complaining that he was not available to answer questions. And the contrast with the childish and vacuous effort put up by Rahul Gandhi in his interviews could not be more stark! The Congress, which tried so hard to project Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate has failed because the candidate itself is not up to the task.

This even as a disgraced but shameless government, which has wilfully brought business and industry to its knees, with high interest rates, scarce credit, corrupt banking practices, profligate allocation of natural resources, and spectrum, partisan behavior with the States, unforgiveable defence procurement scandals, high food prices, snail’s pace infrastructure development, critical power shortages, acute water deficits, disgraceful policing, slack law and order, poor international diplomacy, yawning intelligence failures, frequent Islamic terrorist attacks, border incursions etc.; still thinks nothing of attacking the BJP!

Congress, unashamedly, continuously tries to debunk the prosperous Gujarat model, lying about it being mere big business cronyism, while ignoring the 80 per cent development of small scale industry for example, besides Modi’s stellar track record in the crucially important area of agricultural development. Modi wants to give farmers a 50 per cent return on their produce going forward. Congress question this, calls it inflationary in its usual obtuse, churlish and sour grapes manner. It cannot see the irony of its surface concern for the poor when it won’t restructure government processes to grant dignity and prosperity to the rural population, instead of a humiliating dole. Nor has it managed to garner more than a 3 per cent agricultural growth anywhere in the country, to Gujarat’s year on year 10 per cent, that too for the last decade and more.

Typically, though it has failed on every front itself, without so much as an apology or any kind of remorse,  it feels free to air its resentment for the confidence shown by Indian business in Narendra Modi. Congress seethes at the fact that business and industry around the country, is looking forward to Modi becoming prime minister of India very soon.

Modi clearly inspires extraordinary confidence in the minds of ordinary people longing for progress and prosperity in the shape of jobs and mobility, as well as the high and mighty searching for better profits. So much so, that the strength of the Modi Wave is bewildering to his political opponents.

They find their seasoned politicking, their rural-urban divides, the constant half truths, outright lies and vicious name-calling, are bouncing off NaMo, and falling on deaf ears elsewhere. Instead they find themselves being laughed at, contemptuously disregarded, and counter-questioned, all by a mocking electorate fed up of non-performance. The public wants to know how is it that nothing has been done to benefit them over the last 10 years. It is as if Modi, with all his exhortations, has opened the eyes of the public, and now they are not willing to be fooled for another moment, let alone another day.

In Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 23 per cent of Muslims, despite ugly efforts at scare-mongering by the Congress, are reportedly in the process of voting for Modi and the BJP this time.  Minority confidence, after all the toxic and one-sided noise on Godhra, is Modi’s litmus test. His even-handed secular message of ‘One India, One people’, and refusal to indulge in Congress style vote-bank politics, is getting through, as intended. It has, after all, been working very well in Gujarat for over a decade.

Congress, on the other hand, is in the process of losing its already split and dwindling vote-bank of much exploited and betrayed Muslims. This, on top of the loss of the Dalits and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in earlier elections to the now powerful regional parties.  

While BJP is growing more sure-footed by the day, the ruling government is in disarray, thoroughly demoralised to the extent that its stalwarts are scared to stand for elections, and in retreat. The Congress’ so called Brahma-astra Sonia Gandhi, after the insipid and uninspiring Rahul failed to enthuse, far from turning the tide, looks stricken and ill, seemingly unable to carry the burden of sure defeat any longer.

(936 words)

April 20^th, 2014

Gautam Mukherjee