Rajdeep Sardesai: Where is PM Modi’s ‘new India’? // Modi Is Taking India to a Dangerous Place. By Prem Shankar Jha

One of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s great skills as a political communicator has been his ability to constantly summon up catchy buzzwords. If 2014 was the year of ‘acche din’, Make in India and Swachh Bharat, 2015 was about Start up and Stand up India, 2016 was Digital India and 2017 is now about ‘New India’. But shorn of the artful messaging, what does ‘New India’ really mean?”

Is it a ‘new India’ when over 70 ill-fated children tragically die in a Gorakhpur government hospital, an annual monsoon ritual in one of the more backward regions of the country? Is the prime minister assuring us that Japanese Encephalitis will be conquered, that public investment in health will be doubled, or that primary health centres will be strengthened? The truth is, the public health system in the country is in ICU.

Is it a ‘new India’ when Assam is flooded every year, when thousands are displaced in another annual catastrophe? Are we being assured that there will be a genuine effort to plug the encroachments of river banks, the lack of drainage, rampant deforestation, all of which contribute to the sorrows heaped upon hapless people by a swelling Brahmaputra?

Is it a ‘new India’ when government schools struggle to provide quality education to lakhs of students across the country? In a statement in parliament in December 2016, the HRD minister acknowledged that 18% teacher posts in government-run primary schools and 15% in secondary schools remain vacant. Is the government assuring an end to this acute teacher crisis in the immediate future?

Is it a ‘new’ India where agricultural land-holdings are shrinking, where small and marginal farmers remain indebted to village money-lenders, where deepening agrarian distress means that even in a year of a bountiful harvest, farmers denied a remunerative price commit suicide? Is it a ‘new’ India where the government is in denial on the reality of a manufacturing slowdown and jobless growth, especially in a post-demonetisation universe? A recent study of the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) reveals that 1.5 million jobs were lost post-demonetisation in the first four months of 2017… read more:


There was a discernible note of self congratulation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech this year. As usual, it was replete with claims – “In our country everyone is equal”, “Those who have looted the nation and looted the poor are not able to sleep peacefully today” – and exhortations – “Bharat jodo“, “Let us create a new India” – that are entirely devoid of content. But these are not the sources of his satisfaction. That arises from his confidence that he has ensured a continuation of the BJP in power for the foreseeable future. He has done this by ensuring that the opposition is unable to unite to face the BJP in 2019; and by relentlessly undermining the constitutional safeguards upon which India’s secular democracy has rested, should it become necessary to retain power through constitutional sleight of hand.

The path India is being taken on: In the last three years, Modi and Amit Shah have removed virtually every institutional hurdle to the creation of the ‘new nation’ he talked about. The BJP now has a president and vice-president of its choice, thus ensuring that any conceivable future head of state will follow Modi’s instructions. After its successes in Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Assam, the party will soon have the majority in the Rajya Sabha that it needs to enact transformative legislation.
By overturning the seniority-cum-merit system of promotion in the army, Modi has sent the message out loud and clear to the army that henceforth, it does not serve the constitution but the prime minister. The spate of statements from all and sundry in the armed forces that have begun to equate dissenting with the BJP with treason shows that the army has got the message.

The obstacle of the Supreme Court remains. But Chief Justice J.S. Khehar, who had overturned the judicial accountability Bill and saved the collegium system for the appointment of Supreme Court and high court judges, will retire in a few months and it is a safe bet that Modi will renew his struggle to destroy the higher courts’ capacity for judicial review after he is gone.

Modi’s ideal state: Only the electoral system, the beating heart of our democracy, will remain standing in the way. Despite all their bluster, Modi and Shah are acutely aware of the fragility of the BJP’s hold on power. In 1967, the Congress had required 40.7% of the vote to win 282 seats. In 2014, the BJP did it with under 31% of the vote. They will never, therefore, feel truly secure till they have captured that additional 10%.

Since that extra vote is not yet in sight, they have been following a two-pronged strategy to regain power in 2019. The first is to woo away the crucial 10% of the electorate by creating paranoia among caste Hindus in order to create a ‘Hindu’ identity as distinct from caste. The second is to ensure, by hook or by crook, that the opposition remains fragmented. To do this, the Modi-Shah duo launched a no-holds-barred campaign to destroy state-level parties like the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar and the Trinamool Congress in Bengal, that enjoy a measure of constitutional autonomy and therefore the capacity to form an alliance capable of defeating the BJP in 2019.
But what is the goal that Modi believes is now in sight? Behind the camouflage of his grandiose and so far unfulfilled promises lies a single unswerving aim. That is to build a Hindu rashtra. There are hints of this in his speech, but three years into the BJP’s reign one does not need these pointers to understand the kind of India that Modi, and the RSS, intend to build…read more : https://thewire.in/168526/narendra-modi-india-bjp-shah/



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