Taking up SG's challenge: Why Congress can never be dead.

Indians note against bad governance; not for a person, party or Government

Politics is always a complex game between political and economic forces, that shift the balance of power among various class and caste groupings in the polity, giving rise to new winners and losers.  

Generally, a political party that reads the tea leaves of economics right, and works to enhance the the economic and political prospects of its constituents, wins.  The one that fails to do so, loses.  

You can create endless permutations and combinations of caste and class constituencies, varying from one or region to another, shifting with times.  Your strategies for growth determines the supply of cakes that you can distribute to your constituents. The economic and political are then the two elements you manipulate in the larger political game.

The third leg, more the meta of politics than politics itself, the system for communication with the masses, through a free press and media, was always  taken for granted in a functioning democracy, with a bias against the ruling party, and thus, overall favorable to those challenging the rulers.  

And it is here that Modi has brought about the biggest revolution in contemporary politics.  

Not only has Modi created the world’s largest  party-owned mass propaganda foundry since the Nazi Party in Germany, but has also commandeered the media, especially the TV channels, in service of his party, in a manner that was only possible during wartime emergencies.  

The difference between 1989 or 2004, and now, is that the media back then was largely neutral, or vehemently against the ruling party, giving enough space to opposition, even its disparate and incoherent voices, a salience that is impossible today, especially in the vernacular press, where it matters most.  

In fact, there is ample evidence for not only shutting down the opposition access to media, that we see everyday, but also, evidence for active collusion between the media and the ruling party.

The founding fathers of democracy never foresaw a situation where media would turn legitimizers of wrong-doing by a ruling party.  A neutral media, is one thing.  A media that has been suborned to do the ruling party’s purpose is another.  

But beyond that, we see media legitimizing and normalizing heinous practices like IT and ED raids on political opponents, dissenters, sections of the press that don’t toe the line, and businesses who the ruling party needs to bend to its will. This role of legitimizing the unfair and immoral acts of the ruling party is an entirely new phenomena; in scale and magnitude, and pervasiveness.  It has made evil banal.

An intrinsic pillar of democracy, the 4th estate, that was meant to keep the ruling party honest, has turned out to be an active collaborator of the powers that be.

It is this tilting of the level playing field, in terms of media access, that makes the opposition invisible and incoherent.  It has practically no access to any public platform to get its message across to the public.  And the Anonymous Electoral Bonds, an institutionalized form of corruption, no less, deny the opposition the funding it needs to buy legitimate access.  

Not surprising SG doesn’t find the opposition cohesive, coherent, and comprehensively present in the public mind.  He has only to look into his heart and mind to find out why that is so.  “Woh aajkal bahut bolne lage hain,” quoth a venerable editor of the free press to the courtiers of the ruling party, in a meeting designed to ensure good coverage for the latter. If the opposition is absent from the public mind space, it is by design, not accident,

Has all this made actual political and economic performance of the ruling party irrelevant?  Political analysts like SG pretend so but that’s actually not true.  

Politics can be distinguished from economics by noting that politics in the short-term is about zero-sum games, while economics is about growing the cake.  Good governance is mostly about growing the cake so that there is more to share out among citizens.  There is room for some politics too, when you use the redistribution capability of the state to funnel income and wealth from the well off to those more deserving, to correct for past errors.  

The effect of these forces is felt in different in time frames.  Zero-sum games are easily detected by the people, [we are very sensitive to being treated unfairly] and so the impact of political games is immediate. It takes time to assimilate and benefit from economic growth, or the lack of it.  So its impact takes time to become visible.  But in the long run, the things that change fortunes of people and polity are economic change, not zero-sum games that only exacerbate social friction and reduce overall productivity.

What has been Modi doing here?  

This an area for the press to discuss, day in day out, as the fourth pillar.  But SG will not even mention them.  

The serial disasters of demonetization, poorly designed GST that is no longer recognizably VAT, the short-term tariff walls that have become predictably permanent, the rising protectionism that has slayed exports, and locked us out of FTAs, the falling growth rate quarter after quarter for 3 years, before the pandemic, and the world’s worst handling of the pandemic that tanked India GDP by 7% [the highest in the world], destroyed 30 million jobs, and added 75 million to the ranks of the poor.  All record numbers in the world. 

On top of the this carnage, Modi has imposed an incremental tax burden of 4.3% of GDP, or nearly 8.3 trillion INR, annually, largely by way of inescapable indirect taxes, that hurt the poor most, and gifted away about half of that, by way of tax cuts to corporates.  This is larceny from the poor on a humongous scale.  The results are already visible in people selling gold, taking children out of school, malnutrition, and 75 million people added to the ranks of the poor.  The farmers sit in Dharna against invidious Farm Laws for nearly a year, half of them from UP.

Why does Shekhar Gupta find  Modi forged from Titanium?  

Precisely because it is for the likes of Shekhar Gupta to the highlight the carnage in the economic field that Modi has wrought.   But he knows he won’t be doing it, nor will any one else.  So he can safely trumpet from the ramparts of his citadel that Modi is forged from Titanium, immune to the economic havoc.  What he doesn’t tell you of is his own role in making that happen.

But what of politics? 

The strategies for marginalization of the Muslim, by shrinking his or her social, economic, and political space, are in full swing.  They have not attracted the opprobrium such invidious policies would normally attract because media has become the new Brahminical &  ecclesiastical power, that legitimizes any act of the ruling party.  

Far from plying the role of a conscience keeper, the media has unleashed tropes that justify the marginalization of Muslims, or connive at it.  True that Modi and his party have always been experts at communal polarization.  But prior to 2014, the media was always there to report on such polarization, call it out as wrong, and fight it where necessary.  In contrast, today it uses any and every means to legitimize such marginalization, and if that fails, to brush it away as something all political parties do.

What else has Modi contributed to the politics of the country?  

Corruption has been institutionalized; and its new scale dwarfs the old.  Never before has 4.3% of GDP been whisked away from the poor and the middle class to corporate coffers without a demur.  The farmers are up in arms.  The polity is deeply divided.  The poor sullen. The citizen at large hassled beyond distraction by the pandemic and shrinking economic prospects. The children no longer go to school. The poor kids will never return to school.  

The Chinese are in Ladakh, some 18 km inside our lines.  The Taliban are in Afghanistan after 20 years.  Kashmir simmers tying down record number of troops.  We are out of almost every major trade pact in the world.  Exports growth over 7 years are zero.  We are encircled by China as never before.  A railway line now connects Chengdu with Yangon, opening Bay of Bengal directly to China.  We are estranged from every neighbor.  And our US, global partner, won’t do a trade deal with us.  Worst, not a penny of the tax cuts to corporates has produced any incremental growth in GDP. Plant after plant in automobiles, that is 40% of manufacturing GDP, is shutting down.

Honestly, tell me.  Is not for Shekhar Gupta and his ilk to be asking these questions from Modi, rather than I?  

Why doesn’t he talk of his own inability to discuss such issues, in sustained manner, such that they become the central topic of our discourse, as they would be in a normal democracy?

I leave you with a quote from Mein Kampf from Adolf Hitler, the master of propaganda, where he explains why people find it so difficult to detect the big lie in propaganda.  His words:

“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

The big lie in SG’s National Interest column today, is not about Modi, BJP, Congress, or the polity, but himself; in the deft way he deflects from his own duty to ask the questions I have asked; his own obligation to sustain such interrogation of the powers that be, in concert with others in the press; to demand that Modi hold a press conference, and stand alone and answer all questions squarely; to demonstrate he is not only running the show, but also knows what he is doing.  

These are the elemental duties of a free press in a democracy.  Instead SG stands proclaiming the entire opposition incompetent, impotent, and worse.

Not to forget that this charade is now of a familiar trope; project subtly to the masses, through fake and contrived polls, erudite opinion pieces, and tilted debates, that while things may be bad, there is simply no other option; a trope designed to herd the harried, anxious, and wretched sheep into the Bhist fold.  Once UP is in the bag, 2024 becomes easy.

May I remind y’all that it wasn’t Indira Gandhi in 1977, or Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, or even ABV in 2004, who defeated themselves.  That is rhetorical flourish from a smart editor.  Not fact.  

The people voted them out. 

Consider the plight of father in a small UP town like Kasganj today.  His daughter no longer goes to school.  His son may need to work at his Uncle’s shop.  The father knows the future prospects of his daughter shrink by the day.  His savings gone, he no longer puts enough food on the table. His heart bleeds, his tears unshed, what can he do?  Nothing.  

He is not going to show you a placard; he is not gong to be marching on streets soon.  Only his wife knows his agony.  But he will vote on voting day.  Not for Modi, not for Congress, not for Hindutva or Rahul Gandhi.  He will vote for his daughter’s future.

That is why the Congress, or any other opposition party, is not dead.  And will never die. Perhaps editors have forgotten that elementary political lesson.  Indians largely vote against a Govt.; not for one. The powers that be want to erase that fact from our collective memory.

What you can’t tell is where that spark will come from that galvanizes, not just one anxious father in Kasganj, but all of them from UP.