Intellectuals like Shekhar Gupta moved back into the shell of neutral intellectualism after the famous Press meet where he sat with another so-called independent intellectual, Yogendra Yadav, who walked in much acclaimed Bharat Jodo Yatra of Rahul Gandhi, and publicly expressed a desire to hold by their collars, the voters who voted for Narendra Modi in the 2019 elections. These state elections, which predicted a complete rout of BJP, as per the political pundits whose idea of getting the pulse of people is to have breakfast in famous joints of city joints, made them float on the frothy foams of false euphoria before the elections and ended with a painful thud and public humiliation post the polls.

As results began to pour in, their agony touched the heights of lunacy as lament turned into anger and anger turned into a bitter sense of rejection. Soon an avalanche of articles began to hit the media that made little effort to look into their own alienation from the masses and the message that the elections gave. They focused more on giving a message to the Congress, with an assessment about where the Congress went wrong and what they should do to revive the Party which is a cottage industry in which the society of left loonies live now. They look at the world with their biased eyes and hope that the world will be watching at it in the same way.

These were the people who compared Bharat Jodo Yatra with Mahatma Gandhi’s travel through India after he returned from South Africa. They forget the glaring difference between Gandhi’s travel in a third-class train across Bharat and Rahul Gandhi’s luxurious travel across India along with a fleet of air-conditioned containers, funded by unknown sources. Some could claim that the expensive travel was funded by the internal sources of the Congress party. But then, the question remains, why would a political party fund the idiosyncratic travel of the son of an erstwhile president of the party and now merely an MP from Wayanad when it keeps crying about lack of funds and finances?

What these impartial advisers did not notice was widely visible to the common people. Unlike Gandhi’s spartan travel across India, trying to understand India, Rahul’s Bharat Jodo was an ugly display of the party’s ill-gotten wealth aimed at making the dynastic politician understand the ground realities of India.

When the Mahatma traveled across India, Gokhale, his political mentor told him to keep his mouth shut and observe. When Rahul Gandhi traveled, his advisors, Jairam Ramesh and his team advised him to be shrill and shouting from day one. So, he started the Yatra with a Christian Priest who had been badmouthing India and her spirit, then walked with the Youth Congress leader who butchered a calf to oppose the beef ban (a dream of Mahatma Gandhi, a constitutional directive and implemented across the states of India by Rahul’s grandmother, Indira Gandhi). It was a disaster from the word go, but the dynasty sycophants wanted the stupidity to sustain. And it did.

Post-Yatra Congress faced massive defeat in Gujarat, which was facing anti-incumbency. It won Himachal Pradesh, where the Yatra did not go and Karnataka where it did go, riding on shrill and fanatical Islamist wave, supported by the now-banned Islamist organisation PFI. People with staunch anti-Hindu ideas like the son of the Neo-Buddhist chief of Congress, Priyank Kharge were given important ministerial berths. Much like a non-graduate leads Health Ministry in Bihar, a Non-Graduate was made IT minister in the state which competes with other states on technology and cosmopolitan outlook. The six months long yatra had traversed for 16 days in Rajasthan and 12 days in Madhya Pradesh.

Coming to the current election, Madhya Pradesh was kind of a repeat of Gujarat. Reports stated Shivraj Singh's government was facing strong anti-incumbency. In 230 seat assembly, the BJP safely sailed home with 163 seats, increasing its tally by 54 seats. Pratap Bhanu Mehta in his piece in Indian Express (IE, 7th of December, 2023) blamed this defeat on poor communication strategy of the Congress. He is right to an extent, but when he writes - an abstract critique of Adani (in a state like Rajasthan which is receiving a Rs 5000 Crore Adani investment) was beside the point. He fails to accept, perhaps blinded by his own ideology, that the problem is not with the communication as much as there was a problem with the content.

The people are getting tired of communism. We no longer live in a world plagued by much acclaimed class-conflict theory of Communism. We have outgrown rhetoric and in a post-pandemic world, we have understood that IT is not an elite concept when zero-touch transactions based on UPI and Direct Benefit Transfer came to the rescue of the poor and downtrodden. The world does not hate the rich any longer. Those who came to their rescue with oxygen supplies, medicines, and hospitals were Adani and Ambani, much maligned by the Congress. People now admire them, love them and want to be like them. Congress communication is based on the communist hatred for successful entrepreneurs. The world has lost patience with them.

We have an aspirational generation that celebrates success. They have understood that there is no nobility in poverty, death and hunger when those who tell them to hate capitalism have been seen chaperoning men like Union Carbide chief Anderson in an alleged quid pro quo with the US government to get a friend of Rajiv Gandhi released from the charges of terrorism. Blaming the BJP for the acts perpetrated by Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya under Congress are now backfiring. The problem with Congress is the lack of constructive alternatives. Sometimes the alternative need not be opposite, it could also be the creation of ten new Adani and Ambani to write the success story of the Indian economy, like taking credit for creating Adani by giving their first port license of Mundra. It was this Congress-granted foundation on which the business behemoth now stands. Instead of disowning it, Congress could have hailed it and taken the credit for it.

In Madhya Pradesh, per capita income almost doubled from Rs 38,437 in 2010 to Rs 65,023 in 2023 (Source: MP Planning Commission report). The State Budget under the last Congress Government was Rs. 16,392 Crore Rupees and it increased manifolds by 2023 to Rs. 2,47,715 Crores. The Congress proposition for eradication of poverty is rolling out freebies. Indian welfarism under the Modi Government has been that of prudent distribution of state support. For instance, much is written comparing Modi’s free ration scheme for the poor with Arvind Kejriwal’s populist freebies politics. But we need to understand how the complete cycle of MSP procurement and the free ration scheme now extended for another five years, by implication costing Rs 12 Lakh Crores addresses overflowing state grain storage of FCI and the sale of rotten foodgrain to liquor manufacturers which this free foodgrain circumvents. Even in MP, where naysayers mocked DBT schemes like Ladli Behna and Medhavi Chhatra, let us consider that Debt-to-GSDP ratio in MP has gone better from over 40% under the Congress regime in early 2000 to less than 30% post-pandemic in 2023. The extension of credit to the poor in the agricultural sector went up from Rs. 6.935 Crores in 2005 (Congress rule ended in 2003) to Rs. 55, 531 Crores in 2022. The Communist refugees that Rahul Gandhi now shelters in his island of insanity within the party do not see that. When content is messed up, communication cannot help much.

Another point Mr. Mehta makes is about, Hindutva. He again superficially looks at the matter and says that the BJP has created a core amongst Hindus that is comfortable with the political marginalisation and even violence against Muslims. Again, to my mind, it is a lazy analysis that ignores the inherent benevolence and acceptance of Hinduism which made it accept the persecuted Jews and Persians centuries before Nehru came out with his tryst to destiny and Indira forcefully inserted the term ‘Secular’ in the Constitution of India during Emergency. If Hindu votes have shifted to the BJP, it is because Hindus were marginalised and pushed to a corner and the violence by belligerent Muslim mobs are supported and justified by the Congress leadership. When riots are triggered at will by Islamists during Hindu Festivals and the state stands either in support of violence or incompetent to handle it, it is a little surprise that when the BJP talks about the heinous beheading of Kanhaiya Lal, Hindus en masse move to support the BJP. The extra 42 seats added to BJP’s kitty is due to that trust, taking its tally to 115 seats. Rajasthan became a textbook case of infighting and administrative nightmare. The crimes rose high and morals fell low as reports of minor girls raped and burned down alive hogged the headlines.

The results of these elections not only paved the way for the Modi government in the 2024 general election but also proved the futility of bringing back the Old Pension Scheme. The week-long enthusiastic salute by the stock markets is a testimony to that. Himachal which returned to OPS, has now Pension bills amounting to Rs. 7000 crores, against their own tax revenues of Rs. 9282 crores, a whopping 76.29 increase. Little wonder that the state struggles to pay salaries to their current employees. PM Manmohan Singh who once famously said that money does not grow on trees proposed the reintroduction of OPS to the New Pension Scheme.

The Congress message is thoroughly rejected. This is reflected in a vote share increase for BJP in MP, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh to 48.55%, 41.69% and 46.27% respectively. The new challenge for the opposition is the cracks appearing in the incoherent INDI Alliance with the only agenda being a change of regime. There is no alternative vision offered by the Alliance they haven’t even projected a leader. Even at the time of fractured Janata Party post-emergency, JP was an acknowledged leader although he was not a political contestant.

The current coalition lacks unity of purpose, direction and most importantly an ideology. Rahul Gandhi keeps doing temple runs and Southern partners keep attacking Sanatana. Crazy calls to eradicate Hinduism also keep coming from SP leaders and RJD leaders in the North, mostly to please their captive vote. Congress leaders from the south including the son of Congress Chief keep adding to the anti-Hindu noise of the INDI Alliance. Rahul Gandhi, desperate to be back in power, has been quietly fuelling these fractures instead of acting against it. He tried to divide the voters on caste lines harping on OBC Caste surveys, casually chanting- Jiski jitni Sankhya Bhari, Uski Utni Hissedari (The more the number, the more the participation in power). 

The insidious strategy failed in states, often famous for voting along caste lines. In Telangana, where Rahul Gandhi’s party won (although BJP increased its tally from 1 seat last time to 7 this time), Congress had fielded 22 OBC out of 118 seats contested. The cabinet has three Reddys, two OBCs, one Brahmin and no Muslim. This is sad that an uneasy and insecure leadership is pushing Congress on the very path that Dr. Ambedkar warned during his speech in the Constituent Assembly on 25th November 1949, where he said-

“This anxiety is deepened by the realization of the fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds, we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of our blood”.  

Let us remember Ambedkar and the famous Congress leader and poet from Tamil Nadu, Subrahmanya Bharathi who said passionately- Ellaram ennattu makkal – (Everyone, all the people of India, are my countryfolk). And wrote in a poem

“The mighty Himalaya is ours

There is no equal anywhere on earth

The generous Ganga is ours

Which other river can match her grace?

The sacred Upanishads are ours

What scriptures else to name with them?

This sunny golden land is ours She is peerless, let’s praise her!”

Our liberation will be in defeating Stalin and making Bharathi victorious. India needs an able opposition but the betrayers rooting for balkanisation of Bharat are not the kind of opposition India deserves.

 

Image source: CNBC TV 18