Politics has always been a game of perception. Political parties select leaders from their ranks who become candidates and people’s representatives during elections. Though this is called democracy, people have no say in who should represent them. The candidates normally have no experience in social service. The fact that politics is the profession for political leaders and they know nothing about hard work and sweating it out to become successful has been highlighted innumerable times satirically in movies. Eventually people vote based on religion, caste, community and factors that have no relation to governance, administration and social work.
How to make people focus away from facts that matter is completely based on creating perceptions about the candidates. BJP took this to the next level with building Modi’s brand image in 2013-2014. From equating him to Lord Shiva with NaMo to being projected as the leader who can potentially take India beyond the US and China as the most powerful country in the world to making people vote in the name of Modi for assembly elections in different states, BJP’s strategy team literally created magic from out of nowhere. But the same team has withered away in the last 5 years and has been making blunders time and again.
The latest one and that too during election season is the completely ludicrous and incomprehensible attempt to take ownership of the word “chowkidar” with the “main bhi chowkidar” strategy. When the Rafale deal blew up on Modi’s face and Rahul Gandhi publicly called Modi a thief with “chowkidar chor hai”, he literally took ownership of the chowkidar word. BJP’s strategy team could neither counter it nor extricate Modi’s brand image from it.
To make matters worse, Alok Verma proved to be more than handful as an adversary. Modi had to sacrifice his face and perception as “chowkidar” and force Verma out of CBI rather than risk an investigation into the deal, thereby making it evident that the deal is nefarious. “Main bhi chowkidar” is a tactical blunder of epic proportions. First, it does nothing to counter the allegation that Modi is a thief. By not countering the allegation and trying to use “chowkidar” again, BJP’s strategy team is implicitly admitting to Modi being a thief. Put “chowkidar chor hai” and “main bhi chowkidar” together and it literally sounds like Modi is saying “main chor hoon” and “chor aur bhi hain”.
“Chowkidar” translates to security guard in English. Rather than being the protector of the country, he has been perpetrating hardships one after the other for the people in the last 5 years. All whistle blowers of the Vyapam scam have died under mysterious circumstances. Even Supreme Court judge Loya died mysteriously after taking up a case against Amit Shah. Instead of fighting corruption as he had claimed he would in 2014 during election rallies and even now during this election, he has been aiding and abetting with money launderers and corrupt business leaders.
From Vijay Mallya to Nirav Modi to Chanda Kochhar, all have disappeared from India under his watch. Because of colossal corporate NPAs, banks are being forced to pursue middle class borrowers who have defaulted on loans because of circumstances, treat them like willful defaulters and throw them out of their houses to recover loan amounts. This on top of rapidly growing inflation and unemployment and the government’s attempt to manipulate and show an improved GPA from the time of the erstwhile UPA government is laughable at best.
But what he did with demonetization and GST implementation are nothing less than crimes against the people of the country. Even without taking the approval of RBI, the country’s financial governing body, he pushed through demonetization which has become the biggest governance disaster of post independence India. By pulling out all the most widely used currency notes in the system and asking people to stand in never ending queues outside banks to get new currency notes, his personality as a brazen autocrat has been fully exposed. Subsequent RTIs have found out that demonetization failed to recover any hoarded black money which was initially claimed as the objective of demonetization. The added trauma of the botched GST implementation has almost destroyed the MSME sector and increased unemployment and inflation in the country.
To add to all of this, his unbridled fetish to cater to the greed of his election funding corporate friends has taken a huge toll on the country’s public sector. He has been doing his best to move public sector functions into the private sector and into the hands of his crony capitalist friends. Openly promoting Jio and neglecting BSNL completely has almost broken it down to the point where BSNL no longer has resources to pay salaries to its employees. It is the same overt eagerness to move defense into the private sector that has resulted in the Rafale scam and brought HAL to the verge of shutting down.
It is beyond any rationale that on one side, Anil Ambani had filed for bankruptcy and had been dragged to court by Ericsson for non-payment of dues and on the other side his company was being awarded the plum contract of a government defense deal. By writing off hectares of forest lands to Adani and other private players for destroying nature for their financial gains, he hasn’t spared even the tribals and the animals in the wild.
The last straw has been his now evident election gimmick of national security and portrayal of his image as the only leader who can protect the country from enemies and terrorists. First, he ignored clear intelligence warnings of terrorist attack on CRPF convoy, let more than 40 soldiers die and then launched an air strike against a supposed terrorist camp inside PoK which struck down a few trees and did nothing to the empty camps or to the leaders of the terrorist unit.
Pakistan air force retaliated in earnest, its jets crossed LOC, shepherded an Indian jet towards the LOC, shot it down and took the pilot as their prisoner. Modi literally threw Abhinandan and his family under the bus in his frenetic zeal to capture the perception of people and win votes. Without international pressure and without the Pakistan PM choosing to take the road of peace and handing over Abhinandan, Modi could have had done nothing to bring him back.
From nature to forests to tribals to the farmers to all the people of the country to every PSU to MSME sector to the armed forces, there is seemingly nothing that Modi has sought to antagonize and destroy. The only beneficiaries of his autocratic rule has been his corporate friends. He is their “chowkidar” and has no moral legitimacy to claim to be the “chowkidar” of the people. By claiming to be the “chowkidar” of the country, he is implicitly saying that the country and his government caters only to the elite class and everyone else is irrelevant.
The only silver lining from these last 5 years is the hope of emergence of a more critical and vocal population which demands greater accountability from future governments. From taking pride in a less educated man rising to the position of PM of the country, Modi has become the best example to reason as to why the country needs the most well educated people to govern the country.