Far & Near: Pied Piper’s pursuit of power

The grander idea of politics has tended to get submerged in recent times under statistical information mostly to do with growth rates, price trends, so-called corruption indices and pre-election surveys exposed as being of doubtful value since many have been done by pollsters ready to bend the analysis depending on the weight of the purse thrown at them.

Sheer propaganda relying on data with little basis in fact, especially the fabrication of the much touted but non-existent “Gujarat model of development”, has also been made to fill the electoral landscape with the aim of refurbishing the image of Narendra Modi to make him look as though he is just the PM the country has been waiting for.

The idea of a political imagination, a theme to carry India pushed by an individual of substance, one who carries respect (and some affection) even if s/he drives an agenda that may not appeal to all, has generally been the characteristic of our elections. By that measure, “India First” is vacuous. It is no thought at all. It is all too obvious and silly; worse, it may even connote chauvinism.

Mr Modi’s big logo simply does not compare with Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialistic pattern of society which took a poor country by storm at a certain point of time, or with Lal Bahadur Shastri’s “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”, a deep thought that enriched a Prime Minister’s career cut short by fate. Neither does it bear comparison with Indira Gandhi’s prime ministerial narrative written in power fonts directed against “the vested interests” in society and her bold acts in the face of an America which had tilted towards Pakistan.

On another plane, Rajiv Gandhi’s technology missions that grandly took India into the brave new world of the electronic and communications revolution and the computer age, V.P. Singh’s somewhat divisive but distinctly original new mission to extend the frontiers of democracy to the backward classes, P.V. Narasimha Rao’s balancing of India’s ideological and intellectual resources to meet the massive challenge posed by the end of the Cold War era, India’s first push under Vajpayee to attain growth rates this country dare not imagine before and his sincere-though failed-efforts to close the saga of bitterness toward recalcitrant neighbours and Manmohan Singh’s distinctly superior achievement of producing a growth rate of near eight per cent over a 10-year span, quite simply unheard of in a large democracy, while producing at the same time the world’s largest rural employment programme, were forged by individuals who imagined big and delivered big.

Mr Modi flounders on all these counts. Leave alone the country, there is a serious debate — except on our television — on whether he has given anything new and good to his own Gujarat. Helping a clutch of big industrialists at the expense of thousands of needy farmers happens to be a long discredited idea which is as old as the colonial mode of production.

The result of this is unprepossessing. To take an example, recent data (“Level and Pattern of Consumption Expenditure, 2011-12”) released by the National Sample Survey Organisation only last month shows that the average spending capacity of rural Gujarat households as reflected in the monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) information is '1,536. This is lower than AP, Haryana, HP, J&K, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand, but Gujarat’s case is still higher than the national average of '1,430. However, in the case of urban households, the state ranks below the national average.

Many other sets of figures concerning the living conditions of ordinary people in Gujarat also show that the chaiwallah leader has betrayed his class.
It will be noticed that all our leaders — from Nehru to Manmohan Singh — were individuals who were deemed respectable by virtue of their birth and attainment, or upbringing, or their selfless hard work, or their tenacity in doing something worthwhile. People are likely to have been happy, perhaps even grateful, if any of them, for instance, walked into their home. On the other hand, the Gujarat Chief Minister, a driven and extremely ambitious individual devoted to the unrelenting pursuit of power and little else, shows altogether different characteristics. He is boastful. He is dismissive of dissent. He looks the kind who would crush opponents. For these reasons even his Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh colleagues are said to fear him. In his speeches, he is caustic and vituperative and usually speaks ill of others.

The question to be posed is: How fitting is it for such a politician to adorn the position of valuable and lauded national leaders who preceded him?
Remember, this is a man the role of whose closest political aide, Amit Shah, is under scrutiny, of all things, for stalking a woman. In secretly recorded conversations, Mr Shah suggests he is following “saheb’s” orders. Who is this mysterious superior being to whom Gujarat’s former home minister kowtows? Orders have been passed for an enquiry into this sordid affair.

There are indications that the country may be positioned to move toward the Right, in some degree. But in doing so it must not be led by a Pied Piper.