Bengaluru: “I make no pretence whatsoever to be impartial. I am prejudiced against Narendra Modi, dead against his party, oppose his government and proud of all these things,” said Mani Shankar Aiyar, diplomat-turned-politician, whose forthrightness had his audience in splits from start to finish.
Mr Aiyar's book, Acche Din? Ha! Ha!, was launched in Bengaluru by Minister for Medical Education Sharan Prakash Patil and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Gowda.
The idea for the book came about in June 2013, when the BJP made the most unlikely decision of fielding Mr Narendra Modi as their Prime Ministerial candidate. "I thought then that the Congress would win hands down. It seemed that Modi was so completely out of sync with India's civilisational heritage and had such a doubtful record as the CM of Gujarat that it would be a walkover for the Congress. Quite contrary to my expectations, I was proved wrong," he said.
Mr Modi's overwhelming victory has received a prize spot in the annals of history however and Shankar admitted that he should, out of political correctness, beg for forgiveness. "Somehow, I can't bring myself to do that," he remarked. "It seems astonishing that a person of his academic accomplishments – Modi didn't know the difference between Nalanda and Takshashila – could rise to this. With his steady stream of bloopers, I thought he could be the President of the United States like Donald Trump has threatened to become. Never did I imagine that he would step into the shoes of someone like Jawaharlal Nehru."
Mr Aiyar went on to outline Mr Modi's tenure as PM, marvelling over how the use of two words – 'Acche Din' – was enough to capture the imagination of a whole nation. "The public seems to have this idea that they have been living through bad times, that Modi would signal that change," he said. "15 months on, a certain cynicism has crept in, as has disillusionment. Nothing is any different now and Modi's achievements have their roots in previous governments – the old NDA and the UPA."
Skilling is one of Mr Modi's biggest initiatives, but it isn't a new idea, he argued. "Cleanliness came from Gandhi." India needs a Swachch Bharat, said Aiyar, but that won't do. "It's not enough to build toilets, you have to motivate people to use them."Not a word has been said about the Panchayati Raj either, he pointed out. For thirty years, he said, he has been screaming himself hoarse about making the Panchayati Raj the foundation of governance across the country.
"The NDA government is famous already for rejecting that idea. The only thing Modi said was that one lakh women are presidents of their local bodies – which means five times that number are contesting. What is more socially and politically empowering for a woman to go up to a stranger's house and tell him to vote for her?" The massive women's force in the Panchayati Raj lies unmobilised, "and without them, there will be no Swachch Bharat," he said.
The Modi government has shown a great felicity, he said, for acronyms and abbreviations. "Niti Ayog, for instance, is supposed to, as the name suggests, transform India. Has anything dramatic happened through NITI?" With foreign policy, Modi has outshone his predecessors with his peripateticism. “The Arab countries give us the largest remittances for foreign exchange and India's second largest market is centered around Dubai. Why then are we warming to Israel, which discriminates against its Muslims?"
Mr Aiyar softened his rather fiery speech by saying again, "I'm prejudiced and proud of that. Don't take me any more seriously than you would Narendra Modi!"
