Three Years of Gau-Vernance by Modi
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
The Modi government completed three years in office this May and a jubilant mood is prevailing all over the RSS led Hindutva camp throughout the country on this occasion. This is visibly the last year to celebrate being in office safely, as the country will enter a poll-mode in the next summer. Thus, the BJP leaders are boasting about a long list of “developments” done by the Modi government in the last three years and they are parroting the list wherever they are visiting to do propaganda on behalf of the regime.
During the listing of the Modi government’s achievements, the senior BJP leaders, including the party supremo Amit Shah, are claiming that the socio-economic problems of India are in decline and there is a new India on the rise, where the poor are happy and becoming prosperous gradually, thanks to the innovative measures taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Though it sounds like the “India Shining” campaign by Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his last year in office, the BJP and the RSS are denying to link this new campaign with the catastrophic campaign of 2004.
If one goes by the verbiage used by the BJP and the RSS leadership in hailing Narendra Modi and his government during the last three years, then it will seem like India was in a quagmire since the British left the country and the people were waiting for a promised “Messiah”, an avatar of the Hindu god, to deliver them from the rotten mire to the realm of happiness and prosperity. Narendra Modi is presented as that historic personality who liberated the Hindu majority from the shackles of secularism and casted the villains, i.e. the Congress and other opposition parties, into the oblivion of history.
As usual, the BJP leaders didn’t care about sharing data or facts to support their claims of building a qualitatively different and better India; but who needs data and figures in Modi-fied India where only rhetoric and blind faith counts and being a lackey of the Hindutva camp helps one to earn brownies. The journalists of the yellow press caught the baits thrown by Amit Shah & Co. and propagated the same over all platforms to brainwash people, especially the middle-class into believing that “all is well”.
Amid the drumbeats of the third-anniversary celebration of the Modi regime, there are several questions that the majority of the people of India, who are poor, downtrodden, oppressed and exploited, gagged and banished, wants to put forth to the BJP government and its helmsman, Narendra Modi. Those people who are willing to ask these questions are many and the very democracy that paved Narendra Modi-led Hindutva brigade's path to power, won't be able to allocate any space to those numerous people to question the regime.
Let’s try to see a dozen of bizarre questions that the reckless poor are asking:
- Why did Narendra Modi’s government fail to bring the black money from foreign shores back home, which he promised to do within the first 100 days of his government? The BJP fought the general election of 2014 on the promise of bringing black money back and punishing the culprits who have stashed immense unaccounted wealth abroad.
Now the people of the country are eager to know the sum of the money that the Modi government was able to bring home from abroad and the number of people it prosecuted for stashing ill-gotten wealth abroad.
How successful was Narendra Modi’s demonetisation exercise in curbing black money in cash, when the reports say that only 5 per cent of the total black money remains in cash?
Didn’t the economy suffer due to the demonetisation exercise? Did the government trace any huge amount of black money after the demonetisation exercise? What happened to the promise of stopping terrorism, Maoist attacks or Kashmir protests by demonetisation?
What exactly happened to the government’s data collection machinery - why there is no data released by the RBI on the amount of demonetised currency notes it got back from the people?
Why is the government reluctant to let people know, with facts and figures, the amount of black money that died a painful death due to the demonetisation exercise? Why don’t the government show the people few examples of rich people who have become poor, or at least descended to the level of middle-class due to the demonetisation exercise?
Why don’t Narendra Modi and his coterie informs the world about the connection between India’s demonetisation drive and the USAID’s Catalyst?
- The Modi government asked the poor to open bank accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana but didn’t tell them that they will certainly need to apply for Aadhar Card to link their bank accounts.
Why did Narendra Modi and the BJP opposed the Aadhar-UAID project earlier, when they were in opposition, and made it mandatory for seeking the benefit of several services and government schemes when they came to power?
Why the Modi government allowed the State Bank of India to charge a hefty penalty for non-maintenance of the account balance in the saving accounts, while it asks people to not use cash but their bank account / electronic payments to do transactions?
Why there is a pressure on the poor to repay their farm loans and other loans, while the corporate houses led by the Tatas, Ambanis, Adanis, etc. are sitting on piles of bad loans taken from PSU banks and are also enjoying corporate tax relaxations?
- Narendra Modi claimed that his government will work extensively to uplift the condition of the farmers, while under his reign why did the country saw extreme apathy of the government towards the drought-hit farmers?
Why did the BJP minister claimed that the farmers are committing suicide after failing in their love affairs or after being diagnosed as impotent by doctors?
Why is the Modi government pushing the G.M. crops, especially mustard, to the Indian farms with an intention to harm the existing farming practices? Why is the Modi government not against the FDI in the retail sector anymore and is seeking FDI in organic farming and contract farming?
Why the Modi government is talking about doubling the income of the farmers by 2021, which will make a farmer household earn ₹5000 per month vis-a-vis ₹2500 per month during 2015-16?
Why can’t it work on an innovative programme to end poverty in the rural areas by providing extreme support to the farmers and by subsidising farm equipments, fertilisers, etc.?
- While, the overall condition of the tribal people of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, etc. worsened under the Congress regime during 2004-2014, the anti-tribal Operation Green Hunt got immense booster under the Modi regime and the tribals were evicted with more brutality than ever from their homeland, their forests and villages, so that the giant mining corporations owned by the US monopoly and finance capital can extract the valuable mineral resources underneath their land and through big dams, kill their rivers and the flora and fauna.
Why did the Modi government shamelessly overturned all types of environmental guidelines and tribal regulations to hand over the forests and villages to the big mining corporations in an unprecedented haste?
Why the Modi government and its helmsman Narendra Modi, tries to “hard sell India” and its mineral resources to foreign monopoly and finance capital during foreign tours?
Why does a government that calls itself “patriotic” and “nationalist”, is desperate to sell its country and its mineral resources, natural resources and human labour to the foreign capital?
Why the same “nationalist” government is waging a large scale war on the majority of the tribal people of the country on behalf of big mining corporations? Why the Modi government or the Raghubar Das or Raman Singh-led BJP governments in Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh are not supporting the tribal people against the corporate plunderers but vice versa?
What is it that so closely links Narendra Modi and his coterie with the big mining corporations? Why anyone who calls the Modi government’s nexus with mining corporations is jailed under UAPA or threatened with dire consequences by the Hindutva camp?
Why the Chhattisgarh government is given unlimited power in thrashing those who oppose its corporate appeasement agenda and unleash private armies, militias or vigilante terror on the journalists or human rights activists when they hold the BJP government responsible for the goriest crimes committed against the tribal people or when they probe the complicity of the Hindutva leaders in the quest of the big corporations for mineral resources and land?
- Narendra Modi’s government has sold the crucial sectors like defence, railway and telecom to the foreign monopoly and finance capital and tied up with the US military-industrial complex, built a strong relationship with the Zionist Israeli government and turned the country, through agreements like LEMOA, into a satellite neo-colony cum military base of the US.
All these were done by the Modi government while drumming the beats of RSS endorsed “nationalism” and “patriotism”, which gave irony a severe cardiac arrest.
Can Narendra Modi or his sycophants, who act as lackeys of foreign capital, justify that why the Indian defence sector was sold out to the foreign big capital by jeopardising the national security of the country?
Why the US military will now be able to use India as a military base in its overseas pursuits and get logistical support from the Indian Army? Why big foreign corporations and the Indian crony comprador capitalists like Reliance were allowed to forge strategic alliance to manufacture and sell military hardware to the Indian government?
Why the big comprador and crony capitalist enterprises like Reliance are getting more leverages in defence deals than the PSUs?
- The cow became more precious than human beings in the neo-Brahminical rule of Narendra Modi and people, especially the Muslims, are killed with utmost impunity by the self-styled Cow Vigilante or Gau Rakshaks.
The police provides aid to the killers of Muslims, while the Dalits are thrashed, raped, murdered under legal immunity cover provided by the BJP governments of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and our prime minister can afford to only shed some drops of crocodile tears during election seasons for the Dalits. Muslims are considered expendable, so no tears for them.
Muslims won’t just die for the sake of the cow, even small incidents like wearing a skull cap or praying in a mosque can make them vulnerable as a target of the mob that rules the country. They can be killed simply for any reason and then their killers can go scot free by throwing the cow card.
Can Narendra Modi tell the people of the country, the majority of whom are non-Hindutva believers, that why does he and his sycophants serve the interests of the bovine breed more than the interest of the people who votes in the polls?
Can Narendra Modi explain to the country that why a blanket ban on beef is required in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural India? Can Narendra Modi’s government compensate those poor farmers and dairy owners who are now crippled by government laws and will not be able to sell-off their old cattle to slaughterhouses or in cattle markets, even during droughts?
- In the so-called democracy, dissent has become forbidden, questioning the government has become an unforgettable sin and raising finger at the emperor or his sycophants is considered as blasphemy and can be punished with death.
People who question the policies of the Modi government are called “anti-national” by the same people who provide shelter to ISI spies in their IT Cells, where the latter call online dissenters - “anti-national” and women - “sluts” for criticising the Modi government.
Rape threats to women dissenters, character assassination of men and women who oppose the government and few violent attacks here and there by “fringe” elements have become so normal that when these elements remain quiet, then questions arise regarding the economic health of the Sangh Parivar.
The condition of Indian democracy is in a new perilous state at the moment as the Modi government is trying hard to surpass the records of atrocities committed by the Indira Gandhi regime, in quantity as well as quality, to establish itself as the most heinous and most grotesque regime India has ever seen.
The people are keen to ask Narendra Modi that when would they get their due right to question the government and hold it accountable or criticise its policies without being bullied by a boisterous “fringe” mob that gloats on the Modi government’s achievements?
- Education is, on one hand, turned into a commodity that only the rich can afford, as the universal free school education is becoming a utopian thought slowly and there are efforts to sell-off institutions of higher educations to big corporations, so that the latter could mint money from them and use the campuses to produce mechanically programmed, half-witted, wannabe type corporate robots, who will be human in appearance but uncritical in essence; the perfect citizen of the fascist kingdom.
Students who think or raise uncomfortable question are either jailed or gagged or beaten on the streets, while those rich brats from feudal families with few SUVs full of well-paid musclemen reign in the campuses with the blessing of Amit Shah & Co.
ICSSR is now headed by RSS knicker clad Braj Bihari Kumar, who despise people who can think. Kumar is strongly advocating that the students are not taught about Hindu-Muslim riots, lest they learn social science and turn into anti-government critics.
The likes of Kumar are advocating why there should be tanks parked inside the campuses to inculcate “patriotism” among students. Probably General Pinochet or Franco would be turning restlessly inside their graves.
While the mother of Rohith Vemula demands justice for her son and the mother of Najib still wanders in the hope of tracing her son who was abducted by the notorious ABVP, the campus militia of the RSS, the students are taught by institutions about the numerous qualities of the mother cow.
What makes the Modi government to sell-off higher education to big monopoly and finance capital and jeopardise the future of the youth and children? And finally, where is Najib?
- We know the Congress was not better, but the people voted the BJP with the hope of experiencing the “better days”.
Nearly 160 million votes in a country of 1250 million people were cast for the BJP, but it didn’t really bring any “better days” for anyone except big corporations, stock brokers, middle-men, real estate kingpins and brokers, usurers and unscrupulous money lenders, black marketers and smugglers.
Better days only ushered in the lives of godmen, Hindutva-fanatic film actors, directors, pseudo-intellectuals and everyone else who would labour to whitewash the crimes of the Hindutva brigade. Better days came to the lives of the likes of Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, Sadhvi Pragya, Aseemanand and other Hindutva terror mongers, who are now eyeing better positions in the administration and a chance to eulogise themselves as true “patriots” of the nation.
Narendra Modi must answer that why the poor and the landless peasants, factory workers (both contractual and permanent workers) are not happy under his reign?
Why did the government took away numerous jobs from the labour industry, which worth nearly $8.8 billion? Why the government couldn’t do anything to protect the jobs of those thousands of employees of the IT sector who were sacked recently?
Why did the government didn’t provide some great funds in developing and nurturing musical talents than giving a high amount of money to yesteryear singers to either play music for them or to abuse women online, if they criticise the government?
- Three years of Modi regime saw the utmost stooping of the corporate controlled mainstream media before it and journalism suddenly transformed itself into PR machinery of the government.
The questions were raised against the opposition and those who dared to oppose the Modi government either faced the vitriol of the likes of Sudhir Chaudhary or Arnab Goswami or they were lampooned at by the highly paid columnists and editors of the major media outlets.
Asking questions to the government became a crime for which the toady media outlets of the Modi government has reserved special punishments, including but not limited to propagating vile slanders and hardcore character assassination.
Anyone who questions a single decision of the Modi government has to first face the ire of the regime’s loyal puppet media and its highly paid scribes. The corporate-controlled mainstream media has partnered with the government and despite being called “presstitute” by the military general turned politician cum minister, the media outlets are wholeheartedly working towards achieving the goal of an “opposition-less India” by 2022, when the BJP is all set to have a Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha majority and use the same to change the constitution of the country.
The media certainly is the major pillar of the regime now as democracy has taken a long leave. Why Narendra Modi needs such a puppet media that never questions him or his coterie for their role in forcing India down the gutter of the Brahminical medieval rule, alike the Taliban rule in Afghanistan?
This machinery, manned and captained by the RSS full timers and hired staffs from different industries, including the above mentioned corporate media industry, serves two great purposes: firstly, it glorifies Narendra Modi’s rule and secondly, it spreads vitriol against those who dare to oppose it, from Muslims to intellectuals or upright journalists.
The Sangh propaganda machinery works extensively well in seducing the upper-caste Hindu youth with bush telegraph campaigns and by inciting the Dalits and lower-caste Hindus with fake news, morphed videos and pictures, they use them as the pawns of the Hindutva camp in the pogroms against the Muslim community.
The propaganda factory is running unhindered and Narendra Modi is certainly benefiting from such campaigns as the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly election showed.
Now, as the BJP and the RSS are targeting West Bengal as their new laboratory, more such propaganda in the state will be run, which will allow the RSS to reap benefits from troubles like Malda, Hazi Nagar or Dhulagarh.
The people of the nation, or a majority of them, would like to ask Narendra Modi why he needs such vitriol and venom spitting to win elections when he and his party claims that they are pursuing a line of “sabka sath; sabka vikas”, i.e. everyone’s association and everyone’s development?
Why does Narendra Modi’s entire campaign strategy is based on taking the route of success through fake news or toady journalism based campaigns? Can Narendra Modi win a single election without playing the propaganda card? Can Narendra Modi dare to be himself before the people, the servile agent of big foreign and domestic corporations?
The Sangh propaganda machinery works extensively well in seducing the upper-caste Hindu youth with bush telegraph campaigns and by inciting the Dalits and lower-caste Hindus with fake news, morphed videos and pictures, they use them as the pawns of the Hindutva camp in the pogroms against the Muslim community.
The propaganda factory is running unhindered and Narendra Modi is certainly benefiting from such campaigns as the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly election showed.
Now, as the BJP and the RSS are targeting West Bengal as their new laboratory, more such propaganda in the state will be run, which will allow the RSS to reap benefits from troubles like Malda, Hazi Nagar or Dhulagarh.
The people of the nation, or a majority of them, would like to ask Narendra Modi why he needs such vitriol and venom spitting to win elections when he and his party claims that they are pursuing a line of “sabka sath; sabka vikas”, i.e. everyone’s association and everyone’s development?
Why does Narendra Modi’s entire campaign strategy is based on taking the route of success through fake news or toady journalism based campaigns? Can Narendra Modi win a single election without playing the propaganda card? Can Narendra Modi dare to be himself before the people, the servile agent of big foreign and domestic corporations?
We know that Narendra Modi or Amit Shah will never answer these questions, so it is now up to the people to seek the right answers to the problem and to innovate new ideas to build up a strong resistance against the saffron Hindutva kingdom.
The desire to do something will not suffice and every progressive and democratic individual or organisation must plunge into a great anti-fascist front of democratic struggle against the Modi government. Unless a strong unity is built and connections with the people at the grassroots get established, mere words and social media posts will not help us in defeating Narendra Modi and his coterie. It’s time we take some decisive action to save the future of the country and the people.
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