When it was observed in this column a month ago that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suffered a precipitous loss of popularity within one year flat, faster than his predecessors who lasted longer than a year, there was still something important going for Mr Modi — his claim (and that of his party) that he had provided corruption-free government. This meant that celebrations were in order.
The people are less sure today. Indeed, Mr Modi himself may be less sure. That is what his impregnable silence suggests after unambiguous revelations that his external affairs minister and his party’s chief minister in Rajasthan continued to have solicitous dealings with businessman and cricket entrepreneur Lalit Modi who had skipped to London and was wanted by the law in this country, and did everything to keep their relationship with the law-dodger a secret.
In some ways, this is like those holding Cabinet posts batting for Dawood Ibrahim, though “Chhota Modi” and Dawood are required by the law in India for different things — one to stand trial for money-laundering (when the government says it will not allow black money operators), and the other for bomb blasts and mass murder.
Mr Modi has been clever — not that this matters in the end. While maintaining monumental silence himself, he has got his finance minister (Arun Jaitley), home minister (Rajnath Singh), and transport minister (Nitin Gadkari) to insist in public statements that the holders of high office, who knowingly extended favours to a law-breaker who had absconded, had done no wrong. Mr Singh also stunned the country by saying that the present regime was that of the National Democratic Alliance and not the United Progressive Alliance, and no minister was going to resign.
While collectively the country has been subjected to the Sangh school of morality, the volubility of the three ministers — conveniently handing out certificates to wrong-doers (when a political storm is brewing and it will be presumed that they made their statements after considering the facts) — can conceivably put them on the wrong side of the law when those they are defending are found guilty. This is a matter of when, not if. Mr Modi, on the other hand, can squeeze out of the door through a narrow technicality — of not saying anything, although this could prove to be politically highly punishable.
The violent tear in the assiduously stitched fabric of claims of public morality and stain-free governance has occurred not just at the Centre and in the state of Rajasthan, but also in key BJP-run states of Maharasthra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. This cannot but sully the Modi mystique, which in any case was self-crafted. If nothing else, Mr Modi will be held guilty of not even seeking to refute the charge.
The exposure of grave distortions in governance under Mr Modi, and the polity of brazenness spawned on his watch, is an indication that the government would not permit a satisfactory deliberation of the presumed culpability of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in the upcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament. The failures apparent in other BJP states will also be swept under the carpet. Technicalities will be seized upon to meet unworthy goals.
But this doesn’t matter. Given the kind of show being run these days, this is to be expected. But there is a reality check for the Modi sarkar, and that comes in the form of the election to the Bihar Assembly due in just over two months from now. The gallery display of silence as an art to suppress the truth, and to assist those who have betrayed public trust, comes in this context. The much-maligned Manmohan government had sacked a chief minister and several Union ministers without anything proved in a court of law, when civil society sensed wrong-doing. The present government suffers deeply by comparison. That should be a cause for worry for those who preen themselves today, for the “suit-boot ki sarkar”.
These days the media receives no answers. Parliament will receive none either. But the people cannot be set aside. They are participants, not flies on the wall. Voters will soon be scrambling to cast their vote in a major state, in an election that can be a turning point. Mr Modi and his government cannot stop the people.
Mr Modi has long lost what Antonio Gramsci called the “war of position” — the battle for hearts and minds, the battle for influence with the people, the struggle to inform the public that your values should be their values. More, he has silenced his own party by sending a minor flunkey shooting up the ladder to the position of BJP president, a fact deeply resented by all in the ruling party.
Today, BJP folk have come to fear not just Mr Modi (that they did even in his Gujarat days), but also party president Amit Shah. Resentment is rampant. When this sort of thing happens, few will spring to your defence. That point has been reached. A little nudge and the stories come tumbling out.
Last February, Mr Modi was campaigning furiously in the Delhi Assembly election, weaving through tricky lanes in residential areas in a bid to lay claim to public adulation. But none was forthcoming. The BJP was trounced. It is no secret within the party that up and down the saffron ranks in Delhi were those who were praying for an exemplary defeat. Those with eyes and ears know only too well that the situation in election-bound Bihar is, if anything, worse.
The people “want only not to be oppressed”, Machiavelli tells us in The Prince. And this is just what has not happened under the present government. Moves are on to take the farmers’ lands away without their consent, and to punish individual workers in the factory situation when they protest the narrowing window of their right to protest. “Moreover, a prince can never make himself safe against a hostile people: there are too many of them,” Machiavelli cautions rulers about to embark on a folly.
