Cries of ‘democracy is dead’ have been repeated often since Narendra Modi became prime minister. The man who is his main challenger has personally taken this message to international audiences more than once. And last week, when the Congress Party announced that its bank accounts had been sealed, Rahul Gandhi repeated his charge that democracy was dead. Some hours later, when the Chief Minister of Delhi was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, it did seem as if opposition leaders and parties were being targeted in a way that would cripple them just before voting begins for the Lok Sabha election.
Democracy may not be dead, but the timing of these two events made the government look bad. What is puzzling is that there appears to be no need to weaken opposition parties who are already so enfeebled. My election travels have begun, and the truth is I have met nobody who believes there is an opposition leader who can defeat Modi. It is interesting that people say Modi and not the BJP. When pressed, they rarely hesitate to say that their local BJP leaders have been a disappointment. In one village, I met a group of men who joked that the only time they had seen their MP since the last election was when they caught sight of him on TV, seated behind Modi in Parliament.
On my travels, I always ask people what has changed in their own lives since the last election and to this question, the answer is nearly always ‘nothing has changed’. But when asked about Modi’s welfare programmes, they admitted that they are working better than ever. When I asked why they liked Modi so much, almost the first thing people said was that they believe he has improved India’s stature in the world. The Ram Temple and the abrogation of Article 370 are also seen as his personal achievements. In the squalid little towns and villages I wandered through, there were saffron ‘Ram flags’ everywhere and I heard that buses now take pilgrims to Ayodhya daily.
As for me, personally, I was happy to see that Internet and cell phone services work much better in rural and semi-urban India than they did five years ago. And I was truly impressed by the quality of the roads and highways that I traveled on. What made me sad was that our shiny new highways are lined with rotting garbage and plastic waste. What made me sad was to see abandoned, hungry cows scrabbling in these filthy deposits for food, even if it was a plastic bag. The squalor and ugliness of the towns and villages I visited saddened me more than it usually does, because I have just driven around Sri Lanka and been totally blown away by the public cleanliness of a country that is much poorer than India. I drove from Colombo to Anuradhapura and on to Kandy, and saw no garbage, except once in the cluttered bazaar of a small hill town.
If Modi wins a third term, it is my fervent hope that he revives his Swachh Bharat campaign and adds a punitive element. Municipalities and village councils that cannot dispose effectively of waste should be heavily fined. It must be done. And if it can work in Indore, it can work in other cities. India is never going to be counted as a fully developed country if we continue to have the filthiest, most polluted cities in the world. A recent survey found that forty-two of the fifty most polluted cities in the world were in India, and that Delhi won first prize for being the most polluted capital city.
As someone who has grown up in this city and spent most of my life here, I was disenchanted long ago with Arvind Kejriwal’s ideas of governance. He did nothing to clean up the Yamuna or get rid of the smouldering mountains of garbage that have grown out of landfills. If you drive into Delhi from the north, almost the first thing you see are these mountains of filth. As long as they exist, we cannot hope to have clean air in the city because they give off noxious gases that are more harmful than the smoke that rises out of burning farm waste in winter. But I admit that Kejriwal did a great deal to improve government schools and healthcare.
It is soon going to be for the people to decide whether he was a good chief minister or a bad one. If charges of corruption are proven against him by the Enforcement Directorate, it will certainly go against him. This economic watchdog has lost a degree of credibility when it comes to politicians, because more than 85% of the people they have gone after, were from opposition parties. BJP spokesmen, when questioned about this, say that this is because nobody in the BJP is corrupt. The finance minister herself said this at the India Today conclave, so who am I to challenge this assertion.
What I will say is that for now it looks as if arresting Kejriwal just before a general election will work to enhance his image rather than damage it. For those opposition leaders who routinely mourn the death of Indian democracy, I have bad news. On my recent travels, I talked to a range of ordinary voters and met nobody who believes that democracy is dead.
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If Modi wins a third term, it is my fervent hope that he revives his Swachh Bharat campaign and adds a punitive element
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24.03.2024
Cries of ‘democracy is dead’ have been repeated often since Narendra Modi became prime minister. The man who is his main challenger has personally taken this message to international audiences more than once. And last week, when the Congress Party announced that its bank accounts had been sealed, Rahul Gandhi repeated his charge that democracy was dead. Some hours later, when the Chief Minister of Delhi was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, it did seem as if opposition leaders and parties were being targeted in a way that would cripple them just before voting begins for the Lok Sabha election.
Democracy may not be dead, but the timing of these two events made the government look bad. What is puzzling is that there appears to be no need to weaken opposition parties who are already so enfeebled. My election travels have begun, and the truth is I have met nobody who believes there is an opposition leader who can defeat Modi. It is interesting that people say Modi and not the BJP. When pressed, they rarely hesitate to say that their local BJP leaders have been a disappointment. In one village, I met a group of men who joked that the only time they had seen their MP since the last election was when they caught sight of him on TV, seated behind Modi in Parliament.
On my travels, I always ask people what has changed in their own lives since the last election and to this........
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