Figuring out where to buy affordable oil now that Iran is under siege will be a priority. So will worrying about the shortage of quality ammunition for the armed forces. Or appointing new ambassadors to Islamabad and Beijing for the high-octane diplomacy that is needed this critical international year. The government that is sworn in later this month has a job on hand.
But perhaps the most important and immediate job is to reassure a quarter of the country’s population that they need not fear being targeted by lone wolves, mad dogs, or officially encouraged vigilantes.
The saffron-robed, motorcycle-riding Pragya Singh Thakur, handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janta Party president Amit Shah as their candidate against two-term Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh, was a metaphor for the political leadership’s use of fault lines in the body politic to their own advantage.
She is enlarged on bail and still faces charges of terror in the Malegaon bombings. But, says the BJP-Sangh rhetoric, as a member of India’s majority, she is incapable of terror. By implication, that ghastly anti-national act can only by the handiwork of the others.
Not many are named, but that dog whistle does scream Muslim, occasionally Christian, and when dealing with relationships with Canada, even a muted Khalistani. It has polarized the country as it has not been since the summer of 1947.
The agrarian distress in the country born of droughts, unpaid loans, and farmers suicides, found solution not in a revolutionary economic and social safety net, but birthed a crazy cattle law that banned interstate transport of all cattle and an accompanying penalty on even distress sale of bovines. In one stroke, the agrarian economy, dependent as much on a fair price for crops as in the periodic refurbishing of the dairy farm, was shattered. Dry cows and emaciated aged bullocks were turned out to roam the streets and invade fields.
Taking to the streets
Also, on the streets were self-styled Gau Rakshaks, cow protectors, who were themselves protected by politicians and police.Like it or not, there is a sense of unease, very apparent in northern Bihar, or central Jharkhand, or in the Mewat trijunction of the states of Rajasthan, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, the site of most such deaths.It does not help that the continuing political crisis in the Kashmir valley creates a bi-monthly clash between militants and the security forces.
Polarization
The death of the young and armed militants alienates the valley further; their funerals attract thousands of mourners, and perhaps persuade another youth to take to arms.
The inevitable death of soldiers, called martyrs, in the shoot-outs, and their funerals in their distant villages, carries the images and gunfire sounds of this confrontation to the villages in states far removed from Jammu and Kashmir. The polarization is expanding.
Caste politics
Caste is divisive too, and the Dalits have their own calendar of persecution and state coercion. A Dalit bridegroom still cannot ride a mare to wed his bride in a village or small town for fear of upper caste violence. And collectively the community is anguished that courts have connived with the government to dilute laws that were put in place by the wise Dr. B R Ambedkar to protect them.
The last straw was the 10% economic relief to the poor of the upper castes. It is not that the poor Dalit is callous. It is just that salt has been rubbed into their wounds.
These are deep wounds, and sharp fissures. The government in the next five years will have to find urgent solutions. It is too much to expect of any government that they will at all try to bring a law against Targeted and Communal violence as was hoped for during the UPA decade.
But there is much that can be done. Agricultural economy and rural distress will surely be addressed. But will it extend to withdrawing the harsh cattle transportation laws? One hopes so. The government will also have to send strong, very strong signals that though it is perhaps committed to its version of cultural nationalism, it will not allow the social and criminal targeting of religious minorities under whichever guise.
Poison in the air
It is not just curbing Gau rakshaks, or muting the vile politician who spews poison against fellow Indians. The police, administration a junior judiciary will have to be reminded of the Constitution’s guarantee of fair play to the poorest.
If they get the majority and try a change in the Constitution, one hopes it will be to strengthen the secular guarantees and the protection of ethnic and cultural diversity of this vast land. Our future depends on it.