It’s all about the messaging

In simple terms – it’s all in the messaging and how deep down it has percolated. Narendra Modi loves the term ‘last mile connectivity’. And he has assiduously promoted that. And it’s the simple things like DBT, toilets, roads, water, housing, mobiles, and basic healthcare. If Modi has managed to take those benefits and the messaging his government have been talking about, to the last man, he has little to worry about.
I remember an election in the South during Indira’s time all of us thought she would lose, which she ended up winning. When journalists asked the people who they voted for and why, the answer was simple and uncomplicated: ‘Indramma’. It wasn’t the candidate or the party. The poor villager only identified her with the vote because she was was the face. And this was when very little of the basic services had reached the poorest villager.
In ten years, has Modi changed that? I think he has – at a frenetic pace. And he has shown time and again that he has no time or patience for slackers. It’s for the government and the party PR machinery to continue to reach out and do the rest. How well all of that counters the Congress narrative of ‘intolerance’ and ‘bigotry’ in each state and district is what will matter in the end. Because that is where the Congress and Opposition is going to hit them hard in the next 10 months. They have nothing else to take on the government with. And the government and the party need to confront that head-on.
You can sneer at his Mann ki Baat but what it has done is taken Modi’s messaging right down to the last man. He might claim it’s not political but who’s he kidding? Imagine the prime minister of the country calling up someone in a small town about debating something no one had heard of. And the whole country is listening. He has used the ubiquitous radio to reach the last man while we were squabbling on social media and thinking we were Tees Maar Khans.
I am only afraid of one thing – the MPs who owe their seat to Modi seem to have become complacent and arrogant. Not all, but there are many who believe winning their seat is his problem, not theirs. He keeps warning them that they need to work in their constituencies but how many do?
Just making a comment in favour of Modi or his policies on social media arent going to win a politician an election. For that he/she needs to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Verbal wars on social media are also not going to win elections, whatever the Left-Liberal or the Right might think. Even they need to understand that abusing and trolling, often personal and vicious, isn’t really helping the cause.

This Congress Party and Opposition can’t defeat Modi!

Am I the only one who thinks so, but do the rising decibels of foul language against Modi and other BJP leaders have anything to do with the dwindling fortunes of the Congress party and the Opposition as they get ready to take on the NDA in 2024? Since mid-2000, Congress has seen power slipping away. Modi has chipped away, state by state, dismantling the ecosystem that protects the family.

Fanning the fires of Gujarat 2002 has run its course. Corruption and cronyism accusations have fallen by the wayside. Every attempt, even the latest, to throw dirt on Modi has failed. Yesterday in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the specific allegations against Modi by Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge were expunged in both Houses because they were without any basis. Attempts to link Modi and Adani fell flat. And that is frustrating the Opposition to no end. And the only way they know how to retaliate is by being abusive. They are running out of answers. The problem is all Q&As come from one source. And that’s the elephant in the room – the dynasty.

The nose and the constant reminders of ‘martyrdom’ by the family notwithstanding, NONE of the family have the charisma, the guts or the guile of Indira Gandhi to take on Modi. Congress had hoped the Bharat Jodo Yatra would do it for them. They can thump their chests all they want, but what has it achieved? It’s like SRK’s PR machinery rigging the box office returns of Pathaan even when theatres across the country run empty. So getting two-bit celebs, sidelined politicians, bureaucrats, retired generals, and a smattering of rabid Modi-haters, all with their own agendas, to walk with you is not going to change the fortunes of the party.

Even throughout the walk, the only thing consistent about Rahul Gandhi was the nonsense he spoke. And like a running tap, it flowed constantly. As his beard grew longer, so did his inanities. He’s been made to believe that the walk was a resounding success. Now that it’s ended, someone seems to have whispered to him that he needs to travel from East to West now. All the best to him!

You would think the long walk might have changed him, but no. He shot off his mouth again! The latest blooper was to call an elected chief minister a thug who doesn’t understand religion. Yogi Adityanath is also a mahant of a math, and probably understands more about religion than Rahul’s entire dynasty starting from Motilal. But hey, how does it matter when your people don’t dare to tell you that you’re damaging the party and whatever chances you have at the hustings and the political careers of all those who have tied their fortunes to it?

Yogi said a few days back that BJP will keep winning as long as Rahul is around. And it is true. That’s also why all the smart ones have unhitched themselves from the Congress gravy train. Only those who nobody else will hire and those Rajiv Gandhi once called limpets are hanging around the party. They will continue to be around long after.

Meanwhile, Rahul keeps saying that he has been questioning Modi for the past decade, but he is not giving him answers. What he doesn’t say is that the courts have answered all his questions. What unfolded on Thursday in the Rajya Sabha was an embarrassment, and the behaviour of those we call our ‘elders’ an abomination. Hooliganism was the only thing visible as the PM spoke. That he completed his speech with all the shouting in his face is a credit to the man. And the entire nation heard it. Is this how Congress and the Opposition want to defeat Modi in 2024? Is this how Rahul wants to defeat Modi? If this is their strategy, Modi has nothing to worry about.

Time to leave, Rahul

I say this as a former long-time Congress supporter/voter. Feel free to correct me, but I don’t believe that in 18 years as MP, Rahul Gandhi has given even one sensible, well-meaning, and crucial suggestion to the govt in power on any issue. All he has done is whine, complain and exaggerate. And the issues he has raised in parliament have usually been overshadowed by the blunders he makes while speaking. And when he’s not doing all of that, he’s holidaying.

Many of us then felt that if Rahul had to take over the reins of the country someday, he needed to understand how to run a state machinery. Becoming chief minister of a Congress-ruled state would be the perfect place to start. But the reason given against that was that Rajiv Gandhi also had no administrative experience when he took over.

The truth is Rajiv took over at a difficult time for India. Most Indians born after 1950 had never experienced the trauma of an assassination. Indira’s death affected the country deeply. For whatever reason, the Congress party decided to impose the son on us. The country was too shocked to comprehend then. It was just relieved to see the young man step up and accept the responsibility.

But as events proved, the Rajiv Gandhi charisma unravelled pretty fast. Rahul had no such encumbrances. On the contrary, he has had the collective experience of senior Congressmen and women around him from a 100-plus-year-old party, whom he could observe closely and learn. He could have studied the political nuances and the nitty-gritty of running a party and country. But he didn’t. He didn’t think he needed to understand governance for that.

He believed, and his fawning courtiers around him have made him think to date in the illusion that he is anointed to lead, first the party and then the country, because he is a member of the dynasty that ruled India the longest. And that probably would have happened if one Narendra Damodardas Modi hadn’t decided to storm the citadel, which was the preserve of the Congress and its well-cultivated ecosystem.

It has been eight years, and the Modi wave shows no signs of abating. The BJP has stated that it is no longer willing to play second fiddle. BJP has stamped its presence, and Modi has become this larger-than-life persona domestically and globally, who isn’t an aberration like the Gujrals, Deve Gowdas, Charan Singhs and Chandra Shekhars of the world. Or even a full-term PM Vajpayee. He’s here to stay. And neither the 137-year-old Congress party nor the dynasty that straddled it for decades can do anything to stop him.

But even as Rahul’s ardent admirers (yes, he still has many) have been drumming it into us since 2004 that he’s a better choice than Modi, he has been found wanting in every box where you want to tick ✔️ you can only tick X — Political acumen, commitment, long-term stability… you name it. He’s failed everywhere. Listen to his speeches and stage-managed interviews. They are bereft of facts, figures and substance.

Even in parliament, he has come across as a politician who is more interested in having fun than engaging in serious debate with facts and figures. More often than not, he ends up looking like a joke. In politics, it is not enough to be a nice guy, which I am sure he is. But, as pictures have proved, he comes across as a personable, affectionate man. But is that enough to beat a ruthless Modi or anyone else who comes after him? BJP has shown that it is here to stay, and the majority (no pun) would rather have them and Modi in power than Congress.

Can this Rahul Gandhi change that?

It’s the liberal way or the highway…

I had tweeted this as a thread, but I thought I should put it on my blog for posterity.

I think the only reason I became such a vocal Modi supporter in 2014 was that the despicable, hypocritical left-liberals with the tacit support of Congress and the Left decided they would not respect the election mandate or the laws and blindly oppose anything this government proposed with protests and PILs.

I had never seen anything like it since I began voting at an early age. Whatever my political leanings, I stood by the government in power. I was too young to vote but remember the protests against Indira for subverting democracy. That’s how democracy worked then – until 2014, at least.

In 2014, Narendra Modi won an election fair and square. Even those like me who didn’t vote for Modi, knew he was going to win because India had hit a huge pothole called Congress and its dynasties that ruled us and people wanted them out. Modi promised to do that.

Now had the protests against Modi begun in the middle of his first term one could understand, but they began in the first few weeks of his rule. I thought people were letting off steam and things would settle down. But they didn’t. They picked up the pace. Then I saw those familiar faces behind protests and PILs.

This was the power-hungry dynasty and its stooges being bad losers and instigating the people to protest against a legally elected PM. They were scared of losing power to a generation that had seen through them. Sane voices were rudely shoved aside, jeered and heckled. This was a new India I hadn’t seen before. And I didn’t like it.

The hypocrisy of left-liberals left me quite breathless and so did their justifications for political expediency. Certain definitions were being assiduously promoted. It began with the whitewashing of the Delhi riots. A riot in a BJP-ruled state after a train is burnt was a pogrom but a state-managed riot after the killing of a PM was just an aberration so can we look beyond it, please? Riots before 2014? Nah, again just aberrations. “SHUT UP. We don’t want to talk about it”.

Befriending a Muslim, visiting a mosque, eating beef was the sign of being a liberal. But visiting a temple or wearing a Kautuka or Janeuyu made you a rabid ‘bhakt’. Having a Muslim friend, who wore a skull cap and prayed five times a day and calling him ‘bhai’ made you a liberal but befriending a Hindu who said ‘Jai Shri Ram and wanted a Ram temple, made you a Fascist.

I will hold the left-liberals responsible for this divide. The more they tried to vilify a community, the louder the other side got. Now, I am no temple-hopping, chest-thumping Hindu. Not even today, despite all that’s swirling around me. But back in 2014, something inside me snapped. Today, the neo-liberals (and I call them that deliberately because they are no better than the neo-fascists in Germany) were and are browbeating people to come around to their viewpoint.

If you think I am exaggerating, look at what is happening around you today in India and all over the world. It is they who want a new world order and a new order in India even if it means resorting to violence and mayhem. They believe Modi and his ‘bhakts’ are a threat to their existence. Well, they have a fight on their hands.

The ‘bhakts’ have seen Power and want more. Their man rules this country and they are propagating His vision of a new India. They’ve waited a hundred years and if you don’t like it, it’s just too bad. They don’t care anymore what anyone thinks. And again, this wouldn’t have happened if the liberals hadn’t tried pushing them into a corner. Because now more than anything else, all they want is to keep the liberals out – come what may.

To understand more read this: https://mohansblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/from-a-nehru-dynasty-fan-to-a-modi-bhakt/

 

Right time to criticise BJP govts at the Centre and States

I don’t understand why one cannot criticise the NDA govt at the centre. This is the start of their second term and it’s the right time to criticise them so that by the end of this term they clean up their act.

Also, all the chest-thumping by some people doesn’t impress me and neither does the whataboutery. You want to pretend everything is ok, feel free, I don’t have to. Yes, I know that there is a narrative being built against this government of mob lynching, etc. But the government has to do something about it. It can’t bury its head in the sand and expect it to go away. It began in 2014 and will continue until the next election – and every election after that until a Congress government returns.

So, it’s time the narrative was nipped in the bud because say what you want, but the liberal ecosystem is far more powerful than some people sitting on Twitter can imagine. It stretches outside this country’s shores and the damage it can do is unimaginable. Prime Minister Narendra Modi can’t wish it to just disappear with a wave of his magic wand. And he can’t expect his band of loyal bhakts and supporters, who get uptight and abusive every time he is targeted, to do it for him.

It’s for the Prime Minister to take the bull by the horns. And as someone who voted for him, I have the right to criticise him. And one of the things that stick in the gut are the events in Unnao, and his complete silence on the issue.

What happened in Unnao is an utter disgrace, nay depravity. But that’s nothing new in UP. Murders, rapes, abductions are an every day affair. But one expects the new CM Yogi Adityanath to change it. But he can’t do that if he runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds.

Think about this girl, raped by the MLA first two years ago, then gang-raped by his goondas, her father “allegedly” killed in police custody, the eyewitness to his death also dying. And now this accident which killed her aunts and has her in the hospital on life support. And then tell me, the CM Adityanath didn’t know?

Don’t tell me the CM only knew yesterday that Sengar was a criminal and of his crime/s. In this day and age if a CM doesn’t keep tabs on what his MLAs do and doesn’t crack the whip on them he has no business being there. For example, why did MP Sakshi Maharaj visit the MLA who was in jail? And, why wasn’t he reprimanded for doing so?

Also, no point saying A does it so why not B? We voted the BJP to power because they said they were a party with a difference. If they’re no different from the rest why should people vote for them again? We need better governance, not cosmetic surgery or whataboutery.

So, when I voted for the BJP and Modi it was because I didn’t want the Congress and the dynasty. If this govt is going to pass the buck to the last one for every wrong done, next time I’ll vote them out. These 5 years are when we want to see the changes they promised before 2014.

So stop defending Modi and his government and his party’s governments around the country. It’s time to ask questions instead of sweeping them under the carpet.

If this govt doesn’t have the courage to handle the bureaucracy, opposition and judiciary, they might as well step aside or they will by the end of five years be pushed aside by a voter who has no time for losers, whiners and wafflers, or for those who indulge in whataboutery.

As for the UP CM, he needs to decide if he wants to be a headline in the state’s history or just another ignominious footnote like so many others before him.

For both, the clock is ticking.