Today’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and tomorrow’s — Rahul Gandhi
THE DEFEAT OF the Bharatiya Janata Party in three Hindi hinterland States of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan not only spelt the revival of the Congress Party which was almost becoming extinct, but may also be a trailer for the 2019 parliamentary election
Political analysts are busy listing the reasons for the failure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP’s main leader. Neutral observers feel Modi’s party lost because non-issues like renaming of cities and roads, rebuilding of Ram temple in Ayodhya, pro-Hindutva acts like cow vigilantism, raised by the fringe elements in the party, became dominant and stole headlines.
It cannot be denied that Modi remained silent and did not check these fringe groups – perhaps because he has to depend on them in elections. Though he himself attacked the Congress only politically and on ideology, there were too many loose cannons in the BJP and the government shooting their mouths off.
On the other hand the Congress, ruled by a dynasty, has to depend only on one family as
Muslim cap, Cross and janeu (sacred thread)
it does not belong to any of its numerous caste-factions which consider defeating each other more important than being democratic as against dynastic.
The common man in India understands abusive language better than anything else and Congress leaders indulged in calling Modi a thief, bluffer, chaiwala (tea-seller) low-born (neech aadmi) and worse. The illiterate voters understands only gutter language and it is only they who vote. Educated ‘intellectuals’ enjoy the holiday and think politics is ‘dirty’
So the dynasty sycophants won and Modi Bhaakts lost. The rural voter. cannot understand that ‘Bhakti’
(devotion) is better than boot-licking and that a tea seller being PM is a tribute to democracy, (as against all grass-root level hard work and sacrifice being preferred to loyalty to the dynasty).
Modi did not lose the three states because of the 2002 ‘massacre in Gujarat’ ,or demonetisation. Renaming cities that glorified autocrats and invaders is a big crime, as is installing the Statue of Unity.
Congress-led genocide of Sikhs in1984, and the Army attacking the Golden Temple did not stop the dynasty coming back to power in Punjab or a Sikh minister embracing the Pak army chief, belittling his own CM as “only an Army captain” while Rahul was the captain of the whole nation as the grandson of Feroze belonged to the Dynasty. While Gujarat riot cases resulted in convictions, Congress rewards a Sikh genocide ‘hero’
Several WhatsApp groups received the following post, by a Modi ‘Bhakt‘ obviously,(only slightly edited):
MODI LOST BECAUSE OF 100 MISTAKES ‘opposed’ by those who go to Pakistan and seek help to depose India’s PM, who back J&K stone-pelters and want black money and Swiss bank accounts to remain untouched.
These elements openly appealed to one community, backed casteism and relied on anti-Hindu vote banks. That, of course, is secular!
Modi’s 100 mistakes are:
1. Surgical Strike against Pakistan which they disliked and questioned.
2. Implementation of the historic GST scheme which they kept in cold storage
3. Demonetization which hit their stashed wealth
4. Providing bullet proof jackets to the Indian Army
5. Providing modern weapons to the Armed Forces
6. Providing electricity to 18450 villages which leads to development, as they want backwardness – their main source of votes
7. Introducing Ayushman Bharat medical insurance
8. Not letting the terrorists into India like the UPA government
9. Opting for generic medicines
10. Reducing the prices of stents
11. Mainiaining good relations with Russia, USA and China
12. Providing employment through ‘Make In India‘ scheme
13. Having not a single corruption charge in four years of government
14. Making a Dalit the President of India when Rahul claims to be a ‘januadhari’ Brahmin
15. Making a woman India’s Defence Minister
16. Making an Olympic medalist as Sports Minister and promoting sports
17. Working 18 hours a day for the nation
18. Striving towards making India known and respected all over the world
19. Providing 33 % reservation for women in police department
20. Repaying Rs 2 lakh crore loan taken by the UPA government with interest
21. Making India a lending nation from a loan-receiving nation
22. Detecting three lakh shell companies thanks to GST
23. Controlling black money
24. Curbing stone pelting with note ban
25. Detecting thousands of crores of illegal trade by linking Aadhaar and PAN
26. Providing subsidy to Khadhi industry employees of and saving Rs 150 cr.
27. Breaking the backbone of urban terrorists and naxalites
28. Finding the missing 500 students and uniting them with their family
29. Detecting 13,000 fake teachers
30. Deleting 1.43 crore fake ration cards from Tamil Radu alone
31. Working towards ban on cow slaughter
32. Improving bonds with Japan
33. Bullet train project
34. Securing highest number of medals in Asian Games
35. Distributing LPG to five crore poor families through Ujwala Yojana
36. Doubling MSP on several agricultural products
37. Closing 250 fake companies
38. Launching digital India and easy and quick money transfer
39. Starting Swacch Bharat to promote cleanliness
40. Launching Skill India programme
41. Giving special package to agriculture
42. Introducing NITI Ayog
43. Enhancing India’s security
44. Strengthening international ties
45. Initiating Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao schemes
46. Making India the world’s third highest electricity producer
47. Making crores bank account holders through the Jan Dhan scheme
48. Drive to voluntarily forego LPG subsidy
49. Saffronising 22 states
50. Supporting women empowerment
51. Introducing the Smart City scheme
52. Launching Sukanya Samrudhi Yojana
53. Reintroducing Kisan Vikas Patra
54. Subsidising agricultural equipment
55. Making India a mobile-phone making hub
56. Communicating with people in Man Ki Baat and on his website
57. Subsidising fertilizers
58. Getting World Yoga Day accepted
59. Imposing death penalty for rapists of children
60. Bringing the girl child under Indra Dhanush scheme
61. Establishing AIIMS hospitals throughout India
62. Covering 50 crore people under Modi medicare
63. Making progress in Clean Ganga plan
64. Implementing One Rank One Pension in defence services
65. Spreading and modernizing BSNL which was on the verge of closure
66. Reducing Air India’s losses and trying to revive it
67. Electrifying ALL Indian village though Deen Dayal Upadhya Gram Jyoti scheme
68. Reaching nuclear agreements with Russia, Japan, Canada and France
69. Modernising Indian Railways and making it profitable
70. Indian Postal Payment Bank
71. Getting Naxals into the mainstream
72. Solar power schemes all over India
73. Using Israeli military techniques in India
74. Improving diplomatic ties throughout the world
75. reducing corruption in government
76. Seizing Dawood Ibrahim’s assets
77. Striving to make India free from dynasty rule
78. Linking Aadhaar to bank account and thus monitoring fraudulent transactions
79. Enhancing Indian Air Force’s role in India
80. Negotiating with China in Doklam
81. Trying to get back money stashed in Swiss Banks
82. Making India open-defecation free
83. Providing visa on arrival to several countries reciprocally.
84. Reviving plans to link rivers to control floods
85. Trying to ban triple talaq
86. Trying to construct Ram Mandir
87. Making air travel popular – taking India ahead in aviation
88. PM Mudra Yojana in banks
89. Cancelling Haj Subsidy
90. Increasing/doubling the tax base and making more file IT returns
91. Increasing the speed of highway construction like never before
92. Fasal Bhima Yojana (crop insurance)
93. Earning respect for India in the international community
94. Uranium deal with Australia
95. Raising the salary of Grameen Daak Sevaks through 7th pay commission
96. Increasing number of bunkers on the Indo-Pak borders
97. Signing deals to create an anti-nuclear shield for India.
98. Starting 2+2 talks with USA
99. Making India’s economy world’s fastest growing
100. He or the President visiting countries never visited, or the first time in decades.
There are hundreds of more schemes implemented by Narendra Modi which the Congress could never do in its 60 years of rule.
Modi, while striving to make India a Vishwaguru forgot that we are mentally slaves who like dynasty rule.
All we want are freebies promised by the Congress using your and my tax money, not the leaders’ wealth. The big business evades taxes and makes more money by bribing politicians whose minor children too are millionaires without working.
INDIAN NEWS CHANNELS ARE MORE concerned about the frivolous affairs of celebrities, thanks to their race for TRPs The newspapers are imitating them, thinking that is what the readers want.
And in the bargain they have lost their credibility. They remain sources of entertainment and titillation more than serious thinking and ideas. Paid news has become the order of the day, a rule rather than exception. Social media once held a glimmer of hope as sources of serious information, but are now plagued by fake news, propaganda, rumors and manipulation by vested interests.
INDIA, LIKE ALL COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD, had its days of monarchy. The memories of kings and autocratic rulers are still in the of minds people. Some seniors alive today were born in the days of ‘Maharajas’ and ;Nawabs’. But by then these were mere titles devoid of real power.
Power they did not have, as the British were the real rulers, but even after Independence the Constitution of India bestowed on them privileges and privy purses till 1972 as The Constitution (26th amendment) Act was passed only atthe fag end of 1971.
Diwan Jarmani Dass, who was a Minister (Diwan) of Kapurthala and
PVG Raju
Patiala kingdoms, wrote a book in the ’70s, The Maharajas, which gave a graphic picture of the lavish life of perversion, orgies, debauchery and pursuit of pleasure these ‘kings’ enjoyed , especially in Punjab and the North, in return for allowing the British to rule the country.
WAS IT THE ‘BETTER-RED-THAN -DEAD’ philosopher Bertrand Russel who said, “If you are sixteen and not a Communist you have no heart. If you are sixty and still a Communist, you have no head”?
Whoever has said it is absolutely correct. Young hearts are moved by inequality in the society, poverty and helplessness which exist in all countries, though to varying degrees. It is easy to believe that liberalism (Americans equate it with Communism) is the only answer.
Soon ‘leftism’ becomes a dogma. Comrades are split into many groups. One took orders from the Chinese Communist Party and another from the Soviet Union. Another, founded by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, kept itself alive on the myth that he was still alive. Some more believe that by killing poor police constables and innocent people, the proletariat, they would achieve ‘power through the barrel of the gun’ just because Mao said so.
Everyone is free to think and express as long as it is not a crime. Gurmehar Kaur is right in being not afraid of ABVP. She is free to say her father was killed by India’s war and not by Pakistan’s terrorism. She is free to think India should seek peace even when thousands of Indians get killed in hundreds of terrorist incidents and scores of Indian youth are getting radicalised.
She has freedom of expression, as her supporters say. But they deny the same freedom to those who oppose her views. Sehwag saying his bat scored and not he is ‘trolling’. Tharoor says so simply because she is against ABVP and so is he
No doubt violence by ABVP is to be condemned. Also that by the comrades against it.
The ABVP expelled and sought police against two members who had attacked the Ramjas College students when they glorified a man shouting slogans that India should break up and be destroyed because it executed a man convicted for attacking Parliament.
Older people may remember Youth Congress special trains whose passengers, going to a Congress party convention, used to loot shops at each railway station. As such a train approached, the shopkeepers used to pull down shutters.
Did Congress take any action against them? It did not expel its own ‘leaders’ who killed or instigated crowds to kill, thousands of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. But it harps on riots that followed the Godhra carnage just because Modi was in power in Gujarat.
Gurmehar, a Sikh, may not have been born when 1984 anti-Sikh riots were led by Congress leaders. Or she did not condemn them as she calls herself a “Lion that roars only once.” Only once against India and Hindus, not again.
How many of those condemning ‘trolling of Gurmehar Kaur’ now had condemned the Sikh genocide then? Javed Akhtar is a great poet. He finds anyone who opposes Gurmehar Kaur an ‘illiterate’. All leftists find them intolerant.
You call Modi a dog, a donkey, a ‘feku’ – it is freedom of speech. A joke about Pappu who wants to make potatoes in a factory or extract coconut juice is intolerance.
You abuse me, it is freedom of speech. I reply – it is intolerance.
THE WORLD LAUGHED when Donald Trump, initially unsure of his victory and riled by the higher popular vote Hillary Clinton got, floated a theory that the US election was rigged and declared he would not accept the verdict unless he won.
Conspiracy theories crop up everywhere. The high-pressure campaign in the social media in India in favour of Narendra Modi was attributed by his detractors, mostly of Congress, as the handiwork of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Later, when BJP won, the Continue reading EVM Conspiracy Theories
“Why write?”, they question, “No one reads. Who has the time? Facebook and WhatsApp have killed reading.”
That was from my blog post (Tomorrow becomes Today, Dec20, 2016). So get used to writing without expecting anyone to read. I still write, though almost no one reads.
But when I wrote that, a friend responded that in my decades as a journalist I must have realised that writing was like throwing a stone at random – it may hit someone somewhere.
Chinnamma sheds tears with television cameras focussed on her. OPS stages a drama at the Amma Samadhi earlier. Hundreds tweet comments and jokes on the power struggle.
Public memory may be phenomenally short, but not short enough to forget a letter of apology by Sasikala declaring her family members who had become power centres and reportedly amassed wealth as ‘personal non grata’ and then see them all there, as soon as Amma died, to take over the house whose whose doors were closed for them.
So the promise in the letter to keep them away was a lie? The humble, grovelling, ‘mixture mama’ was good enough to be CM thrice, but suddenly becomes a ‘traitor’!
How could a people known to be highly intelligent and capable stand the sight of ministers and legislators prostrating before a ‘leader’, see a Chief Minister to be treated like a menial and stopped from seeing the dying leader after going to the hospital every day for weeks or fall for a politics of freebies and sops to voters at tax-payers’ cost?
The social media are flooded with jokes and comments about the political developments in Tamil Nadu, which seem to be driven by tears, melodrama, Twitter tweets, WhatsAppp posts and blatant power-struggle based not on ideology, policies or capability but personality and gimmicks..
When I joined a newspaper in 1957 after a few contributions were published, it was under a notion that journalism, in a way, was meant for the betterment of society and therefore was social work, the field I was associated from the age of 14.
It took me decades to realise that I was wrong. The Press of the freedom struggle days has become extinct. Print medium is overwhelmed by the TRP-driven electronic media with its sensationalism and hype. Both, therefore, have no time and space for anything not sensational or ‘hot’ news.
THE WORLD LAUGHED when Donald Trump, initially unsure of his victory and riled by the higher popular vote Hillary Clinton got, floated a theory that the US election was rigged and declared he would not accept the verdict unless he won.
That was from my blog post (Tomorrow becomes Today, Dec20, 2016). So get used to writing without expecting anyone to read. I still write, though almost no one reads.
ted from the age of 14.