No wave, the show goes on

Malladi Rama Rao

H.D. Deve Gowda with
N. Chandrababu Naidu and
Mamata Banerjee The five-week-long election marathon is a referendum on Modi Raj but no Modi wave is clearly discernible across the country. The Modi challenger, Rahul Gandhi, sees no wave in his favour either, with his inheritance, Indian National Congress, (INC),pushed aside in the allimportant Uttar Pradesh and marginalised outside the Hindi heartland.
So both the lead players have returned to their basics – Modi to Hindutva and hyper- nationalism; Rahul to Fabian socialism (which fascinated his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru) and to soft Hindutva his father had adopted after Bofors scandal rocked his boat.

Rahul’s Baba log saw their manna in “Chowkidaar Chor hai” (in the Rafale deal) taunt, but are no longer harping on it as the issue has not found much traction after the poll bugle was sounded. Mamatas, Deva Gowdas, and Naidus are trying to be relevant on their turf with big dreams for a big role after May 23, the day results are declared and are therefore content playing to the local gallery. The Dravidian parties and the Communists are not looking beyond their nose in their traditional bastions.

Jagmohan Reddy K Chandrasekhar Rao Amongst the opposition stalwarts, Naidu finds himself on a sticky wicket. His TDP’s fate was sealed in the first round of polling (for the Andhra Pradesh Assembly and the Lok Sabha). He is not sure about the fruits of his virulent anti- Modi campaign. His betenoire, Jagmohan Reddy of the YSR Congress Party, (YSRCP) is giving him sleepless nights, going to the town with the assertion that he has won the ballot.
Reddy is already distributing spoils of elected office. His another bete noire, K Chandrasekhar Rao, KCR, is also in a celebratory mood in Telangana, and has opened his TRS party’s doors to local Congress legislators. Poor Naidu has begun to see devil in the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and VVPATs (Voter verifiable paper audit trail machines). What a pity for a leader who places himself in the league of Badals, Advanis et al by virtue of his long electoral innings !

Naidu’s tryst with the ballot box and reports from Chennai and Kolkata offer good food for thought for analysts. And justify the mid-course correction Modi and Rahul have carried out to remain relevant at the electoral akhara. More so as there is no single issue that appears to catch the attention of the voters. Well, going by the Congress manifesto, and the mainstream media, jobs should be a pan -India issue. But it is not.

“Jobs” is the title of chapter one of the Congress manifesto authored by a team of dream merchants led by Palaniappan Chidambaram – a lawyer by training, who used to prick the best brains for his dream budgets as the Finance Minister in the United Front (UF) and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments.

Pragya taking on Diggy

The Sadhvi is out on bail in a Hindu terrorism case. Her comments on Hemant Karkare, the Mumbai police officer, who had arrested her, did not go down well with the Congress and sections of the social media. Karkare was killed in the 26/11 Mumbai mayhem perpetrated by Pakistan’s Lashkar-eToiba (LeT). “I cursed him for the torture he had inflicted on me and that was why he was killed by terrorists”, Pragya bragged.

Rashtriya Janata Dal of jailed Lalu prasad Yadav, and the BJP are locked in a direct fight for Araria which is one of the 115 most backward districts of the country. Interestingly as Modi was questioning the Congress on Desh Bhakti at Araria, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi was making a frontal attack on BJP some 50 km away in Supaul in Koshi region. He focused mainly on his promise to provide Rs 72,000 per annum to five crore poor families, loan waiver, job creation and a separate budget for agriculture. What about Rafale deal and Modi’s failure on job front.

“Today, unemployment is touching a 45-year high of 6.1 per cent according to the government’s own figures,” it says, referring to a report on job scene the Modi government has suppressed in January. Recent weeks have seen reports that have made job issue to take a backseat.

Survey by YouGov (Jan 2019) found urban youth were more optimistic about finding jobs than they had been six months previously. The Mint newspaper from Hindustan Times stable known for its proximity to the Congress voiced the same view. Both reports give Modi ammunition to claim his policies are working, as the South China Morning Post points out (April 6, 2019). Modi told the Times Now in an interview (after the second round of voting), the government has not yet developed a mechanism to identify much less quantify the jobs created in the informal sector. The official machinery is geared up, as of now, to count jobs in the organised sector. It does come up with the job scene in the farm sector but it does not tell the real picture because of its sample base.

So, the Indian election has descended into a mire – with communalist taunts, bellicose threats, phony promises and fake news. BJP fielding Sadhvi Pragya Thakuragainst Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh in Bhopal and Modi asking why questions over the 2008 Batla House encounter were not seen as insult to martyrs are calibrated manifestation of the fear of the unknown.

The Sadhvi is out on bail in a Hindu terrorism case. Her comments on Hemant Karkare, the Mumbai police officer, who had arrested her, did not go down well with the Congress and sections of the social media. Karkare was killed in the 26/11 Mumbai mayhem perpetrated by Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). “I cursed him for the torture he had inflicted on me and that was why he was killed by terrorists”, Pragya bragged.

She has since rolled back her comments though. Digvijaya Singh had dubbed the Batla encounter as fake and asked the Manmohan Singh government of the day to order a judicial enquiry though Delhi Police Inspector, Mohan Chand Sharma was killed in the broad day lightshoot-out. The Modi-speak on martyrs, while addressing a rally in Araria (Bihar) on 20 April, has a loaded message. Muslims constitute 44% of the constituency.

“Brave policemen destroyed the terror module in Batla House but instead of being happy, Congress leaders had ‘tears in their eyes’ as they did politics of vote bhakti,” Modi thundered; according to a media despatch, his attack on Congress as responsible for creating a “Hindu terror” narrative is part of BJP’s broader campaign theme.

“The country has witnessed two types of politics — of vote bhakti and of desh bhakti. The former was on display when after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks the government of the day did not go after Pakistan for abetting terror, he remarked. And went on to say: “It rather chose to derail the investigations in many terror cases by coming up with the theory of Hindu terror. Desh bhakti was demonstrated by us when the Uri terror attack was replied with a surgical strike and Pulwama was followed by air strikes.” His question: “How could they work for ‘Bharat Mata’ (India) when they sit with the ‘tukde tukde’ gang?”

Rashtriya Janata Dal of jailed Lalu prasad Yadav, and the BJP are locked in a direct fight for Araria which is one of the 115 most backward districts of the country. Interestingly as Modi was questioning the Congress on Desh Bhakti at Araria, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi was making a frontal attack on BJP some 50 km away in Supaul in Koshi region. He focused mainly on his promise to provide Rs 72,000 per annum to five crore poor families, loan waiver, job creation and a separate budget for agriculture.

What about Rafale deal and Modi’s failure on job front. He just made a passing reference to both issues.At his March 25 press conference to announce his minimum income guarantee scheme, he did not field questions about Rafale scandal. “See, today I have spoken about NYAY (Nyuntam Aay Yojana) – the income guarantee scheme. You are asking me about Rafale. Today I do not want to talk about Rafale, and other such things. I want to talk about NYAY”, Rahul told a questioner. True to his word, he has been mostly talking about the income guarantee mantra wherever he goes these days with no concern whatsoever for the critique of the scheme.

Ranjeet Ranjan the Congress MP
who rode to Parliament on a
Harley Davidson The Supaul show showcased the fragility of the Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) Rahul has formed with RJD and other regional parties in Bihar.Congress party’s Ranjeet Ranjan is seeking a second term. Pitted against him is RJD leader Dinesh Prasad Yadav who has entered the fray as an independent. RJD leaders are not campaigning for Dinesh Yadav; it is no small mercy to the Congress but why did they not turn up at Rahul’s rally remains a puzzle to local observers.
West Bengal too has seen communal politics take centre stage with the Trinamul Congress and the BJP locked in a bitter fight for electoral sweep stakes. The saffron party was no more than a bit player till a decade back but its graph increased with the leadership and the RSS honchos working overtime to emerge as the challenger to Mamata’s hegemony. BJP’s growth coincided with the fall of the Left from its high pedestal and the failure of Rahul Congress to put its act together. BJP president Amit Shah has set a target of 23 seats for the party - up from just two of the 42 Lok Sabha seats.

Mamata Bala Thakur Subrata Mukherjee Dilip Ghosh While the TMC considers the Muslims as its vote bank, the party is also working to woo the Matuas, a scheduled caste community, who had migrated from Bangladesh. The BJP is also pampering them. Matuas have a significant presence in North 24 Parganas and Nadia districts of south Bengal; they can tilt the balance in the neighbouring Ranaghat and Barrackpore constituencies. Modi had met Matua community’s Binapani Devi, known as Boro Maa, in February. After her death in March, the family has been divided over its political leanings. Mamata Bala Thakur, widow of Binapani’s elder son Kapil Krishna Thakur is a TMC MP. He is seeking re-election from Bongaon seat. The BJP has fielded Shantanu, her grandson (son of her younger son Manjul Krishna), from the constituency..

Veteran TMC leader and Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee holds the BJP responsible for the lows in the electoral discourse. “We (TMC) are only countering their (BJP) narrative”, he said in an interview.

BJP state president Dilip Ghosh has put the blame at the TMC door-step. And said their (TMC) appeasement politics have pushed up communal tensions in West Bengal. The TMC leadership is using the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the new Citizenship bill to target the BJP, and accuse it of playing communal card.

Now to the allimportant question: what is so different with the 2019 election? Unlike in the past, this time around, we are face to face with a Hindutva that has no political packaging.Because the BJP has said good bye to the architects of its Ayodhya movement, and anointed the likes of Sadhvi Pragya with much fanfare.Its impact? Difficult to crystal gaze. Undoubtedly the coming days offer much food for thought and action in equal measure.

Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly underscored her Hindu credentials, while asserting that she stands for peaceful coexistence of people of all religions in the state. She has been branding Modi as a 'liar', and ‘expiry babu’. ‘Modi is suffering from fear of losing election’, she says. Modi returned the compliment with some tongue lashing. She is a ‘speed-breaker’ he said, and declared: ‘aunt-nephew’ have ruined Bengal.

Rekindling of Hindutva agenda is also underway, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Yogi Adityanath is leading the BJP campaign on his home turf, and elsewhere. “The Congress believes that ‘Ali (Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law) will help them in the polls…..but we think that Bajarang Bali (Lord Hanuman) will help us”, he told a poll rally. His alleged Muslimbaiting made the poll body quarantine him for three days from electioneering.

Bahujan Samaj Party President Mayawati with
Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan as SP
President Akhilesh Yadav looks on in Rampur Mayawati, the BSP supremo and Azam Khan, the loose cannon from SP stable, have also faced similar bans for their barbs that were seen as violating the model code of conduct, (MCC).Navin Patnaik, the Orissa Chief Minister, who is gunning for a fifth term, appears to be the odd man out with his dignified demeanour.
Other players, like President of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, MIM for short, Asaduddin Owaisi, are chipping in with their colourful best.“Insha Allah only one month is left and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to become ex-Prime Minister,” said Owaisi while addressing a public rally at Aurangabad (Maharashtra) on Friday, 19 April.

Varanasi turns saffron as Modi holds mega roadshow

Like our esteemed political leaders, the Election Commission has not covered itself with any glory this poll season. It was at sixes and sevens with the NaMo TV, a venture with no license. It banned the Modi biopic without seeing it. True it has been successful in seizing bundles of currency notes, bottles of liquor and ‘gift’ packets. All because of timely tip offs to local police. But it has not bothered to find out from where these baggage were originating. For reasons not stated thus far.

Now to the all-important question: what is so different with the 2019 election? Unlike in the past, this time around, we are face to face with a Hindutva that has no political packaging.Because the BJP has said good bye to the architects of its Ayodhya movement, and anointed the likes of Sadhvi Pragya with much fanfare.Its impact? Difficult to crystal gaze. Undoubtedly the coming days offer much food for thought and action in equal measure.