This is my last column of the year, and the truth is that it is hard to write. Hard because I find columns that give you a compendium of the year gone by excruciatingly dull, and duller still those that try to prophesy what the next year will bring. Political columns, in my view, should analyze the present moment and not dwell drearily on the past or the future, which makes it hard to think of what to write in the dying hours of a year. So, what I did before sitting down to write this last piece of 2023 was close my eyes and concentrate on remembering the political changes of the past twelve months that, in my view, had a special significance.
The most significant political change that came to mind as I did this exercise was that in recent months Narendra Modi has succeeded in making himself the only big BJP player. When he first became prime minister, the party had chief ministers and ministers who were of considerable importance and behind them was the mighty machinery of the RSS that, in its way, was as important as the BJP. Nowadays, when I ask the average voter who he will vote for in next year’s general election, the answer is: Modi. I cannot remember the last time that anyone said BJP.
In the latest round of state elections, Modi personally made it clear in his speeches that voters should think of him and only him as the person they were voting for. Once powerful chief ministers were pushed aside during the election campaign and warned that they should not believe that they would automatically become chief minister again. It turns out that they should have known what was coming because when the election was done and won it was Modi who chose relatively unknown people as chief ministers. Instead of satraps.
If you turn on radio or television these days and spot BJP campaigns, it is Modi’s ‘guarantees’ that voters are reminded of. These advertisements usually have snippets of his speeches in which he personally reminds voters that ‘Modi ki guarantee hai’ and so it will be fulfilled. One of these guarantees was that there would be a Ram Temple in Ayodhya before the next general election, and it is already here.
Last week, before Modi’s inspection tour of Ram’s city and birthplace, every news channel used the temple as their political lead story. I discovered how many floors there will eventually be, how many pavilions, arches and statues, and even that when Modi performs the inaugural puja on January 22, he will use a gold coin to put kajal into ‘Ram Lalla’s eyes’.
The man who hopes to break through the barrier of Modi’s seeming invincibility declared last week that his fight was not for political power or high office, but for ‘ideology.’ Rahul Gandhi was speaking at a public rally to commemorate the 139th founding day of the Congress Party and explained his ideology in these words. “The foundation of the battle for political power is ideology and the Congress’s objective is to hand over power to the common man.”
The question we all have a right to ask is why this did not happen in the many, many years that his family ruled India. Was the objective different then? Is he devising a new political system that will replace representative democracy?
The truth is that the abstractions in which Rahul speaks have so far had little resonance with the average voter. If Modi’s guarantees have more resonance, it is because he seems to have understood exactly what appeals to the Indian voter today. In my own conversations with the average voter, I find that they are convinced that Modi has made India into a strong, powerful country that is respected by the world. The G20 annual meeting and the massive publicity it was given has convinced them of this.
Voters also approve of the abrogation of Article 370 and the temple in Ayodhya. So, whether we like it or not, there are no signs, yet, that Modi will not become prime minister again next year. He may have made the BJP and RSS subservient to himself, but these entities continue to seem more solid than the INDIA alliance that Rahul hopes will fuel the Congress Party’s return to power.
Not only is this alliance skating on thin electoral ice, it is also deeply confused about who its leader should be. As for having an ideology that all the parties share, there is not the smallest sign of this. The only thing that all the twenty-eight parties in the alliance appear to agree on is that they have a mission to get rid of Modi. But as things stand, they have been unable to convince voters that this is an important political goal or that the reason why he must be gotten rid of is because he is ‘destroying democracy’.
This last charge looks more than likely to end up in the same garbage bin in which lies the charge that Modi made money on the Rafale deal, and the charge that he is ‘stealing’ money from the poor and giving it to his rich friends. There is now the additional promise from Rahul Gandhi of a caste census, and again, it sounds like a weak response to Modi’s guarantees that people of all castes will prosper.
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31.12.2023
This is my last column of the year, and the truth is that it is hard to write. Hard because I find columns that give you a compendium of the year gone by excruciatingly dull, and duller still those that try to prophesy what the next year will bring. Political columns, in my view, should analyze the present moment and not dwell drearily on the past or the future, which makes it hard to think of what to write in the dying hours of a year. So, what I did before sitting down to write this last piece of 2023 was close my eyes and concentrate on remembering the political changes of the past twelve months that, in my view, had a special significance.
The most significant political change that came to mind as I did this exercise was that in recent months Narendra Modi has succeeded in making himself the only big BJP player. When he first became prime minister, the party had chief ministers and ministers who were of considerable importance and behind them was the mighty machinery of the RSS that, in its way, was as important as the BJP. Nowadays, when I ask the average voter who he will vote for in next year’s general election, the answer is: Modi. I cannot remember the last time that anyone said BJP.
In the latest round of state elections, Modi personally made it clear in his speeches that voters should think of him and only him as the person they were voting for. Once powerful chief ministers were........
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