Amit Kushari
At the moment India is being ruled by a very powerful ruler, Narendra Modi, whose party BJP has absolute majority of 281 in a Lok Sabha of 543. Over the last 3 years of his rule Modi has skillfully managed to increase the number of his alliance partners, commonly called NDA. He initially started with Akali Dal and Shiv Sena. Like BJP, these two parties are nationalist parties, Akalis representing Sikhs of Punjab, and Shiv Sena representing the Marathi Hindus of Maharashtra. BJP represented the entire Hindu community of India who constitute 80% of India’s population. Using his political skills and using both the carrot and the stick he has managed to bring a number of regional parties under the NDA umbrella. The TRS of Telengana, the Telugu Desam of Andhra Pradesh and AIADMK of Tamil Nadu were brought into the NDA fold by offering carrots in the form of liberal grants from the Central Government. The YSR party of Andhra had many corruption cases pending and they feared the stick. The JDU of Bihar joined the NDA to free itself from the company of a corrupt ally. Some small parties of the North East as well as the PDP of the Kashmir valley became a part of NDA to get more funds from the Center and also to enjoy power in the state government getting numerical help from BJP in the Assembly. If you look at the map of India, PM Modi managed to paint a large number of states with the orange colour by managing to bring in the local parties to the NDA fold. Even Muslim majority Kashmir has been painted orange with the help of BJP voters of Jammu region and pliability of PDP leaders of Kashmir.
Today the sphere of influence of our PM is so vast that he has 396 members in the Lok Sabha who are obedient to him. This is more than 2/3 of the total number. We have never seen such a powerful ruler in the recent past after Smt. Indira Gandhi in the period 1970-1984. Though Rajiv Gandhi was numerically very strong he never had the political determination and acumen to be a strong ruler like Smt. Indira Gandhi or Narendra Modi. Vajpayee was also a powerful ruler but he was of a different category. He was similar to Emperor Akbar or Jawaharlal Nehru. Now our PM is politically so strong that he is in a position to make laws to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya, introduce uniform civil code or make such amendments in the constitution that the present invincibility of Article 370 could be demolished. He could have brought back POK within India but the existence of militarily powerful China always breathing down our necks in Arunachal, Sikkim, Ladakh, and Bhutan has made that proposition difficult. However the other three tasks could be performed by him and if he could really do it in spite of the difficulties of being a democratic country, with an independent judiciary, PM Modi’s name would be written in golden letters in Indian history. However, in many financial and banking matters he has taken many controversial decisions and this has made him unpopular among large sections of the people, especially outside Hindia (Hindi speaking states and Maharashtra, Gujrat, Punjab Jammu and Goa) His victory in Assam and UP were remarkable but let us not forget that after 2014 he lost the elections of Bihar, Punjab, Goa, Manipur, although by numerical manipulation NDA managed to retain power in Goa and Manipur.
The main factor which has contributed to the phenomenal growth of Narendra Modi is the disgraceful weakness displayed by the Congress party and the Gandhi family. Congress being the most important party of the Hindia region has the biggest responsibility of fighting Modi in 2019. Naturally Modi has to be challenged by a big leader of the Hindia region. Mr Stalin of DMK, Mamta Banerjee of TMC and Naveen Patnaik of BJD as well as CPM of Kerala and Tripura may be politically and electorally very strong but they are all non Hindi speaking people from outside Hindia. They cannot fight Modi directly. It was expected that Hindi speaking Nitish Kumar would lead the fight against Modi but he buckled under pressure. He realised that he cannot defeat Modi and so he jumped into his bandwagon. It used to happen frequently in the olden days when defeated kings joined the emperor’s grand army. It goes without saying that Congress has to put up a strong leader for fighting Modi. They could consider leaders like Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindya, Anand Sharma or some one else belonging to Hindia. They have to win at least 120 seats in 2019 to pose a challenge to Modi. Other big leaders of Hindia have to be roped in, like Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Kejriwal, Laloo Prasad. The leadership cannot be left to non Hindi leaders like Stalin, Mamta, Naveen Patnaik. Time is running out fast and a credible opposition has to be stiched together in the beginning of 2018.
PM Modi has a solid support base among the upper caste and upper class Hindus of Hindia. Atleast 50% of this group support PM Modi and would want him to continue as PM. Even in non Hindi areas 25% of the upper caste Hindus support him. In India this is the most powerful group of people who are well placed in every sphere of life. They dominate the national media also. Most of the TV anchors of the national media are also admirers of PM Modi. They have already started saying that there will be no opposition to PM Modi in 2019. If there is nobody to stand up against the ruling party we may lose the benefits of a vibrant democracy.
(The author is former Financial Commissioner
Feedback to the author at 09748635185 or amitkus@hotmail.com)
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