DYNASTY ON DECLINE AS INDIA MODIFIES ITSELF
Sunday, 17 November 2013 | Kanchan Gupta | in Coffee Break
No matter how hard the Congress and its owners, the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty, try, they cannot stop an idea whose time has come. That idea is Narendra Modi, the man India admires
The idea of Dynasty as representative of a maai-baap sarkar, whether we like it or not, retains a certain appeal among the under-classes, more so in far-flung areas where people lead isolated lives and are still dependent, if they can afford it, on Doordarshan and All India Radio for information. Many do without even that; concerns of the chattering classes are irrelevant for the under-classes. That’s how the Congress has willed it for more than six decades, creating a vast vote-bank of impoverished masses whose ignorance is converted into political capital at the time of elections.
And so it is that Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the crown prince popularly referred to as the ‘Clown Prince’, have chosen to address election rallies in the tribal-dominated areas of Chhattisgarh by speaking down to the gathered masses as the patrons-in-chief of the underprivileged. Such was the callous neglect and criminal exploitation of Bastar and adjoining areas when it was part of Madhya Pradesh during decades of Congress rule (especially the decade when Digvijaya Singh was Chief Minister) that concerted efforts by the BJP’s Raman Singh over the past decade to integrate tribals into Chhattisgarh’s success story have just about begun to show results. That malign neglect, not only of Chhattisgarh but vast stretches across the country, is conveniently forgotten by the Congress and its holding family, the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty, at the time of elections when the underclasses are exhorted to remember on voting day the great ‘deeds’ (and ‘sacrifices’) of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi; selective amnesia is a game at which the Darbar and its supine darbaris excel.
Balasaheb Thackeray had once rudely described Sonia Gandhi’s arms while waving at crowds during a rally as the wipers of a car stiffly gliding across the windscreen. The description was not far from the truth: She performs this gesture unsmilingly — an empress acknowledging the existence of bothersome subjects who need to be reminded every few years about the ‘Hand’ that feeds them lest they turn into ingrates and spurn their benefactor. That done, the speech follows, shrill and high-pitched, read-out from a text prepared by a speech-writer who often gets the facts wrong, confusing, say, Haryana with Chhattisgarh — or Madhya Pradesh, as happened recently. What remains constant is the emphasis on ‘We’ (the Dynasty) did this, but for ‘Us’ you would not be around to listen to ‘Me’. Be grateful and now go vote for the ‘Hand’.
Exalted royalty, even when its blood is numerous shades far removed from blue, does not mention plebeians by name. Neither do Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi mention Narendra Modi’s name at their election rallies. Yet they heap calumny on him while praising the Dynasty. In the process, they end up telling partial lies, outright lies and damn lies. Mother reads out malnutrition figures from her prepared script to claim the BJP in power has failed to tackle hunger and poverty. She skillfully hops, skips and jumps over the terrible statistics that tell the story of hunger in Congress-ruled States and how malnutrition is not endemic to BJP-ruled States alone or that this is one of the horrible consequences of the Congress’s bogus socialism that was but merely a façade to hide its loot of India. Son does not lag behind. He repeatedly asserts how more roads have been built during 10 years of Congress-led UPA rule than six years of BJP-led NDA governance. A shamefaced UPA in its affidavit to the Supreme Court admits its gross failure to maintain the momentum on road building, because of which a third of roads built during NDA years have been built in the past decade. Who is to tell the ‘Clown Prince’ that he either jests or is a duffer?
We are often reminded that we owe our tax-funded roads to the Congress-led UPA Government’s Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana! Thus an NDA initiative becomes, through a sleight of speech, a UPA gift. Neither mother nor son adds her or his name to the list of those to whom the natives should be eternally grateful; they don’t need to. That job is left to fawning darbaris who demand that people genuflect to the Palace whose foundation rests on the misery of more than a billion Indians.
Unerringly Sonia Gandhi also makes it a point to mention, not once but several times over, that the voters are beneficiaries of Central funds, largesse of the Delhi Darbar. It would seem she wants the people to believe that her personal munshi sends money from the royal treasury, of which she is the keeper, to the States. This is not money to which the States have a rightful claim but charity doled out at the sweet will of the Dynasty. Where does the money go, she asks tauntingly. If only Sonia Gandhi knew, which she clearly doesn’t, or perhaps chooses not to know so that she can continue to believe that the Dynasty is not only the owner of the Congress but also the public exchequer, that the States contribute tens of thousands of crores of rupees in taxes to the Union Government and get back a piffling few thousand crores of rupees as their ‘share’, she would have possibly thought twice before making this absurd claim. The States of the Union owe nothing to the Union Government; if anything, the Union Government owes its very existence, including the opulent luxury and comfort afforded to Sonia Gandhi, her son and their darbaris, to the States.
Nor does India owe a farthing to the Dynasty. Sonia Gandhi and her son are welcome to believe, and preach, that but for Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi this would be a nation of beggars, that native effort has contributed nothing to India’s growth and development, and, that the road to salvation does not lie through enterprise but entitlement. But that can at best fetch diminishing returns. For evidence, travel through the hinterland of India where the vast overwhelming majority now sees the state as an enabler, not a provider. Strangely, for all her sophistry, Sonia Gandhi fails to realise and accept that the days when the Dynasty held voters in thralldom are over. Election after election to State Assemblies has demonstrated that voters are no longer persuaded by the professed munificence of the Dynasty, or the alleged charity of the Delhi Darbar.
Contrary to the propaganda of jholawallahs who are appalled by economic growth and its concomitant social development, there’s something edifying about prosperity that serves to push the masses closer to the classes, reducing the gulf that enabled the latter to rule over the former with impunity for the past many decades.
There’s a newfound sense of dignity, a discovery of faith in the individual's potential to excel and break free of the shackles of poverty. The neo-middle class, motivated by unbridled aspiration, is here and it will determine, to a large measure, the nature of governance in the coming years. Critics are free to cavil at Modi for manufactured lapses. But that isn’t going to change the reality. This chaiwallah who once sold tea to supplement his impoverished family’s meagre income has succeeded where those who sell the nation’s interests to keep themselves in clover have failed: In instilling a sense of pride among all Indians.
The Modi-fication of India is at once admirable and enviable. It should comes as no surprise to Sonia Gandhi that glorification of the Dynasty, and the restricted list of do-gooders that she tauntingly flaunts, cuts little or no ice. During the ongoing Assembly elections and the coming general election, the object of adulation and veneration is not a Nehru-Gandhi but a man of the masses called Narendra Modi. If Sonia Gandhi finds that distressing, so be it.
PS: The Queen we can be sure is displeased that the Clown Prince is now greeted with the Modi Chant!
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi)