The only credible answer to poverty and deprivation is faster development in every sector, whether it is education, health, agriculture or business. But the Congress does not want the Modi regime to succeed
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice to his partymen at the BJP National Executive meet in Delhi to bring the development agenda of his Government back in focus was a timely attempt to prevent the national discourse from getting lost in non-issues. The way Opposition leaders stirred up the intolerance debate, first at the political level and then by involving student groups in prestigious universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University, exposes how desperate they are to retain their brief moments on the TV screen.
Whatever be their sharply reduced size in Parliament after the 2014 general election, Opposition leaders have constitutionally a wide enough role to play by analysing the Government’s programmes and even seeking to alter them through intelligent debate and convincing arguments. However, what the opposition parties, specifically the Congress which has been dethroned by a popular vote, have chosen to do is to block each and every new scheme of the Government and raise controversies to disrupt legislative progress.
What happened on the Aadhar legislation should alert the Congress to the fact that the limit to the Parliament-disruption agenda is fast approaching. Over the last four weeks, ever since the Budget Session of Parliament began, many regional parties that usually went along with the Congress on the disruption agenda, have wisely seen its negative impact on their constituencies. They are no longer allowing the Congress to lead them by the nose, especially since the party now stands wholly discredited.
The Prime Minister has already seen through the Congress gameplan — prevent the Union Government from implementing its flagship programmes that will pull the country out of the mess created by the UPA2 regime and its crippling policy paralysis.
The fight that the Congress put up till the last week of the current half of the Budget Session in Rajya Sabha, to block any legislative progress on the Goods and Services Tax, is bound to be a black chapter in the party’s long presence in India’s political horizon. The political murder of its own child may further damage the Congress’s credibility but perhaps it’s not too embarrassing for a political outfit that has thrived on doublespeak.
The brand of secularism that the Congress promoted ended up in sickening genuflection to the most orthodox sections of the Muslim community. The AK Antony-led panel, set up by the Congress after the 2014 election to probe its terrible performance, admitted as much. It’s only fig leaf was that such was the perception of the Hindu majority. Even after the devastating setback it suffered in 2014, the Congress could not muster enough courage to admit that its appeasement of Islamist extremists was a problem.
Also, it is amusing to find the Congress cavorting with the left in West Bengal, in the hopes of securing at least a corner for itself in that State Assembly while opposing the same combination in Kerala. Notably, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi rushed to JNU and Hyderabad University mostly to keep company with the left. He shed crocodile tears and came out in support of those who are against the national interest.
Yet, it was the Government led by his party that executed Parliament terror attack mastermind Afzal Guru. Similarly, it was the Congress or its allies that were in power for over four-fifths of the years since independence. Yet, they could not change the deprivation that the Dalit people feel so deeply. Instead, Gandhi now blames the present Union Government that has been in power only for 22 months.
Going back to the Prime Minister’s speech at the BJP meet, in demanding total focus from his partymen on the issues of development, he also warned them against walking into traps set by the Congress and the left. The latter wants the NDA, especially the BJP, to engage with them on the non-issues, which the Union Minister for Finance termed as “manufactured issues”.
It is logical to wonder whether all the political sloganeering we heard from some elite institutions in these days is actually meant to obfuscate their unsatisfactory, if not poor, records. By amplifying the deprivation and inequality, both social and economical that has been in the country for ages, the Opposition wants to pin these deficiencies on the less-than-two-year-old Modi Government.
The Marxist slogans and Ambedkar nostalgia emanating from these institutions seeks to stymie the BJP and its Prime Minister and push to the sidelines those important social development programmes such as those designed to offer universal housing, smart cities, smart railways, medical and farm insurance, as well as mega infrastructure projects in the fields of irrigation and agriculture.
Take, for instance, the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana aimed at a financial turnaround of power distribution companies which, in turn, will significantly improve electricity supply. It will be a great leap forward. This government has introduced reforms that have raised coal production and reduced India’s dependence on coal imports.
The Congress is seeking to underplay all this by a general statement of disdain that most schemes are repackaged versions of old initiatives. If that’s case, then the Congress has all the more reason to analyse and criticise them constructively. This will compel the Government to welcome the Opposition’s discourse. But this is not what the Congress is doing by finding one excuse or the other to disrupt Parliament every day.
The only sensible response of the ruling party to this diversionary tactic is to take its programmes to the people and sideline the ideological cry that the Congress is raising through student politics. The Prime Minister himself has clarified his Government’s stance through his addresses at the World Sufi Conference and before that, the global cultural meet organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
The Congress, however, is not interested in a policy statement or commitment in affirmative terms for the country as a whole. It wants Modi to get into the debate on the anti-national issue and push the ‘intolerance’ discourse to the hilt. These conversations can go on till the cows come home and it is time for the next general election. That is what the Congress and the left want.
It will be a huge mistake and even a political blunder for the BJP and its leadership to ignore the trap that the Opposition has set for them. The agitating student leaders are only the cat’s paw for the Opposition. The Prime Minister himself has refused to take the bait without missing any opportunity to reiterate his Government’s principles. He has also remained focused on the development agenda. After all, the only credible answer to poverty and deprivation is development in every sector — education, health, agriculture.