Should there be a political IPL, Captain Narendra Modi would be hailed for his masterstroke on the Patna pitch. Bowled over and caught behind the sticky wicket is the Jumping Jack of Bihar, Nitish Kumar. Modi has managed to not only expose the brittle marriage called the INDIA alliance, but also thrown shade on the credibility of the ragtag bunch of regional rajas and ranis.
The truth is that the Opposition has nothing to offer. Words without context are as real as bread pakodas in a Michelin restaurant. Rahul Gandhi was on steroids after the Congress won the Karnataka Assembly polls; a victory attributed to the Bharat Jodo Yatra. But karma is a bitch; his party was eviscerated in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The Yatra’s message was that India is broken and Rahul will glue it back.
He is yet to credibly explain where India is broken. What’s his panacea? Love? The meaning is as clear as a Delhi airport runway in January. His new yatra tagline is Nyay. Justice, for who? The Modi government has redesigned India as a welfare state that works; in the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “Power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE”.
Government funds being spent on health, insurance, education, direct transfers of dole, schemes and loans for hawkers and domestic help could not get more socialist. The difference: Modivaad ensures last-mile delivery unlike Rajiv Gandhi’s admission in 1986 that out of every government rupee spent on welfare, only 25 paise reaches the average Joe. Even when he was PM, Rajiv couldn’t get the people their 75 paise. Modi did.
If the Congress is serious about its survival—my bet is Modi’s BJP will cross the 320-350 mark if elections were held today—it should minimise Rahul’s decision-making and forget about the 2024 polls. Concentrate on rebuilding the party in states; Uttar Pradesh is its crematorium. Modi ain’t going anywhere, his genius for calculated reinvention—Balakot, CAA, Triple Talaq, Kashmir, Ram Mandir—will keep the woefully inadequate Rahul on his toes. He should call off his yatra. Even considering Rahul an alternative to Modi is laughable: blowing kisses works for Netflix, not at a pilgrim queue in Ayodhya.
In 1976, during the Emergency, Indira Gandhi amended the Constitution to add ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ in the Preamble using the 42nd Amendment. Removing Emergency patois from India’s sacred book is indeed a national emergency. The Congress is running on grouses: the new copies of the Constitution given to MPs don’t include ‘socialist’ and ‘secular.’
This is the 21st century, folks, socialism is as relevant as a circus clown at a funeral. It is a tired trope that insists on the separation of religion and politics. In India, religion is and was politics. Indira Gandhi was advised by Dhirendra Brahmachari and conducted a mahamritunjaya paath at home before Operation Blue Star.
This was not soft Hindutva, but the real thing. The Bhagalpur riots of October 1989 in Bihar killed 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, when her son was in power: Manipur’s Biren Singh could take heart that Rajiv blocked the transfer of Bhagalpur SP KS Dwivedi who had taken the Hindu side. The INDIA alliance is yet to formulate the meaning of its message. For this, it needs a unified message that makes sense succinctly. Modi’s message is always clear: janta, bhagwan, desh.
Modi is the man whose hour keeps coming. Rahul may be counting the minutes to his coronation, but his timing, as usual, is wrong again. Nitish, the master of timing and the leader of Janata Dal (U)-turns may have a word or two to say about that.