New Delhi
In 2014 within hours of BJP's election win, I was asked by a news website
- Why did India succumb to Modi mania?
My response was: "Now, that’s the real question. It’s the hunger for change. Modi and BJP played ‘dream merchants’ at a time when people’s mood was down-slide and everyone, even in villages, was feeling demoralized. ....Modi represented different aspirations to different sets of people and perhaps that’s the yardstick of a mass appeal of a leader".
This has remained a constant factor in Indian polity during the last eight years. While Moditva as a
phenomenon is still being associated with generation next and aspirational Indian youths, the
opposition Congress party has turned to be an image of old - something stale and outdated.
The age gap between older Modi and younger Rahul Gandhi is also not helping the Congress cause.
This is the major drawback with the principal opposition party in India and also some other parties who
largely ape the good old Congress style. Look at the likes of Sharad Pawar-led NCP or Mamata Banerjee's
Trinamool Congress. In substance one would not find much of a difference between them and the Congress
party.
Other regional parties also have some of these inherent baggage of Congress culture. The 'dynasties' still
not just survive in parties such as TDP and Samajwadi Party - they have thrived and others do not have any
chance!
Like Modi, Mamata Banerjee is a single and spinster. But unlike Modi and like Congress leaders - she too has groomed
a nephew - ambitious and at times aloof from real polity.
Major political parties be in India or elsewhere most often are forced to battle contradictions within themselves.
This is no exception to Indian parties too. The communists and chiefly the Marxists did not quite tried to revisit
the traditional 'disconnect' with globalisation and reality and the results are reflected in the mandate of West
Bengal and Tripura. The survival instinct helped in Kerala but that too due to major fault line in the Congress.
Hence, the Moditva thrives.
On administrative front, India has changed in more ways than one. But expectations are nevertheless built
around the man called Narendra Modi.
People in Nagaland also clamour with their version of 'hunger for change'; they want Solution to
27-year-old Naga peace talks.
If one believes Naga veteran politician S C Jamir, the Prime Minister has "guts" and it is so essential
to deal with the Naga peace talks as there is a great risk of abrogating the 27-year-old ceasefire.
As the talks lingered, some of the former Babus and ex-negotiators had gala time. These need not be
discussed here, but now pressure has been built up on all stakeholders. The NSCN (IM) has convened
a key meeting of all leaders and regional chieftains on May 31.
The day to day citizen-civil service dealings are no longer lost in the allegations of corruption. There is ease
of doing business too.
One knows of netas of all hues who say now there is now 'no guarantee' - unlike
the Congress or so-called Janata days - that the right lobbying would fetch expected results.
Be these for national awards or contracts or even some much sought after postings.
This is also true to business, government contracts and also getting a few key political appointments.
Unpredictability has become a strength of the Moditva phenomenon and also for the BJP as a big
political party.
No journalistic genius and political pundits could predict that a first timer such as Bhupendra Patel
could become Chief Minister of India's 'show-case' state Gujarat. In Nagaland yet again, BJP
tried a revolution by nominating S Phangnon Konyak - a woman - to Rajya Sabha.
The Christian state has far had only one female MP in the 1970s and no woman legislator in the
state assembly since statehood in 1963.
All speculation about Modi-Yogi rift has come a cropper. And notwithstanding Pegasus row
or other campaign about human rights excesses and so on, the people of India still stand with the man who
delivered Ram temple and abolished Article 370 in Kashmir.
On the foreign policy front, as articulated by External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar
"Yes, the Indian Foreign Service has changed. Yes, they follow the orders of the Government.
Yes, they counter the arguments of others. No, its not called Arrogance. It is called Confidence....And it is
called defending National Interest".
But there are issues and matters of concern too. The government of the day cannot wish them away outright.
Minorities have their grievances. The 'Freedom House' report in the US last year made some
caustic and vitriolic comments on the status of Muslims in India under Modi.
"The political rights of India’s Muslims continue to be threatened," it said and referred to the central
government enacting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which grants 'special access to
Indian citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants and refugees from neighboring Muslim-majority
countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
It also said Muslim candidates notably won 27 of 545 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, up from 22
in 2014. However, this amounted to just five percent of the seats in the Lower House of Parliament
even when Muslims make up over 14 percent of the population.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had dismissed the reports as acts of hypocrisy.
"Do you want a truthful answer? It is hypocrisy. We have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world
who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval," Jaishankar had said.
But it is also true that over the years due to a plethora of reasons, India is generally being pushed
towards a pro-Hindu majoritarianism.
Even Kerala state’s communist Chief Minister P. Vijayan and Mamata Banerjee
have tried to run extra mile to be on the right side of the majority Hindu voters.
Banerjee visited more than half a dozen Hindu temples and chanted Hindu mantras in public places
during election season of 2021.
In Kerala, detractors of Marxists say the Chief Minister P Vijayan has tinted the red flag of the
communists with the hues of saffron.
It is argued that the communist regime is feeling the pressure of BJP's
growing acceptability in Kerala and so it does not wan to antagonize the Hindus. Congress leader
Rahul Gandhi has tried to dub himself as Brahmin and a Shiv Bhakt.
Well, Yogi Adityanath, a monk-turned-Chief Minister, said it bluntly: "It is our success that Mamata Banerjee is now forced to chant Hindu Mantras. This is the change we talk about. This is New India."
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