Beware of manufactured narratives

As India is on the cusp of a general election within the next few months to elect the next leader, it is instructive to closely observe the shifting narratives and manufactured debates. There will likely be attempts, as seen before, to divert public attention from crucial issues and introduce distractions—an exercise of gaslighting, the act of deceiving or manipulating people into believing things that are not true. Just in case we don’t realise it, we are on the verge of a transformation, or a seismic shift—depending upon the prism through which we look into this—on which our country is poised.

Notable critics of Modi’s India, such as Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, have gone on record to remark that India appears to resemble the islands of California in a sea of sub-Saharan Africa. There is palpable despair in a few of today’s super rich, flying in and out of Dubai, London, or New York, about living in India, for whom our ruling establishment might be prompted to prop up enclaves of luxury—akin to areas designated as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) as across countryside Britain. Mukesh Ambani’s home in Mumbai, which overlooks the panoramic calm of the Arabian Sea alongside miles of squalor in the slums of Dharavi, is a typical testimony to the Sen-Drèze statement. Or take Delhi’s Greater Kailash, shadowed by a haze in a city that is one of the most polluted in the world.

Among the believers, Naipaul found a “new, historical awakening” in the instance of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which reaffirmed his faith in Hindu revivalism. He is not alive to see the wheel come full circle, as all eyes are set upon the inauguration of the Ram Temple on January 22, a day for which no attempt will be spared to make it a life-changing event. But it is crucial not to be swayed by the spectacle and overlook pressing issues requiring urgent policy intervention. The art of keeping people busy with trivialities before elections is a time-worn tactic, as is the one that swings public opinion on emotive matters that are unconnected to their development and well-being. By laying undue importance, for instance, on the religious identity of people, a religious event, or by re-invoking the discourse over citizenship, legal or illegal, to pit one category of people against another on religious and ethnic lines, is to create a false sense of urgency and to drum up a drama where none exists. The government of the day would desperately engineer agendas with a specious ring of expediency to them, which are nothing but vapour baths. People are quite likely to fall prey to them unless they are adequately sensitised.

Now that the stock agendas of the BJP, such as the abrogation of Article 370 or the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, have been fulfilled, the next move surely would be the introduction of the Uniform Civil Code. The concern lies not in the items on its agenda but in how these changes are implemented. Political parties have resorted to diversionary tactics and even gone to the extent of orchestrating riots to polarise the electorate, portrayed a false picture of victimhood, stirred up base passions, exploited caste identities, and alternately used regionalism and nationalism to woo voters, not to speak of having resorted to jumlas and half-truths. With no ideological mooring to hold on to, we also witnessed MPs and MLAs shifting loyalties at will and being sold at the marketplace, for instance, in Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Assam, MP, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Meghalaya. We have seen institutions lose their independence.

Meanwhile, the Opposition finds itself unable to ask relevant questions. Opposition MPs can be suspended en masse at will. The manner in which the three new bills—the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita—were passed recently in both houses of Parliament in the absence of opposition highlights the BJP’s arrogance of electoral majority. The BJP is in power in 12 of the 28 states in India and is in the ruling coalition in four others. Surging unemployment, an inflationary market, the situation at the Indo-China border, the crisis in Manipur, and crony capitalism—a litany of woes and issues that could threaten the government—have all been put on the back burner.

India’s priorities vary with each regime. Indira Gandhi wanted a committed judiciary—that is, a judiciary committed to the policies of the government—echoes of which we have heard from the current ruling dispensation as well. A much disparaged Prime Minister of our country—incidentally, the first one—proclaimed the dams as the ‘temples of modern India’ because he thought the dams would integrate agricultural development and the village economy with rapid industrialization and growth of the urban economy, contrary to the obsession of our current PM with one temple. On the flip side, be it Nehru’s Forward Policy that led to the Chinese aggression, or the declaration of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi, or Modi’s demonetisation (regardless of how such policies affect the macro economy), inappropriate PM-level decisions had hugely negative consequences for the country, which stand to the scrutiny of institutional checks and balances, a vigilant media, and a vibrant opposition flagging them, all of which have now been significantly compromised. India ranks 161 out of 180 countries in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index.

As we gloat over the fact that India will soon become a $5 trillion economy, we tend to forget that not very long ago we were bothered by unemployment, which had risen to a 45-year high, and consumption, which had dropped to a 40-year low. The promise of economic development looks unconvincing when considering India’s GDP per capita of $2,389 in 2022, significantly lagging behind the US ($75,269), China ($12,598), Sri Lanka ($3,408) and Bangladesh ($2,688). Without a counter-narrative and a lack of consensus, as the physiognomies foretell, the anti-Modi animus will hit against a rock of conflicting egos and may well end not with a bang but with a whimper.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on geopolitics, development, and culture)