One year of Modi Government 2.0 : A Betrayal of Development
‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas, Sab ka Vishwas.’ The Narendra Modi government which rode to power for the second term with these three slogans has completed one year in office. Looking back on the year gone by, these slogans seem to have been thrown to the wind with the country now standing steeply divided on economic lines and the government’s focus nowhere on the development agenda. The ‘Sab ka Vikas’ development juggernaut has simply trampled and run over the lives of migrant laborers. Minorities and Dalits are stunned at the betrayal of this government as the Modi government has dumped its ‘Sab ka Vishwas’ agenda.
The discordance between the Centre and the States has grown huge. Hopes and aspirations that Modi would use his second term in office to take the country on the path of development now seem a pipe dream. ‘Coronavirus’ seems to be the only weapon before the Modi government to retain any form of self-respect. The government has already dropped enough hints that it is going to use Corona crisis as a shield to explain its multiple failures
During his first term in office, people suffered because of his controversial decision to demonetize high-value currencies. The Prime Minister had then openly declared that a few officials had misled him and had also expressed helplessness that a five-year term was not adequate to put the country back on the rails of development. In this background, the people were hopeful that the second term would be used to put the country firmly on the path of development.
With the first five years’ experience to back, he was also expected to show more political maturity. His promise of achieving development by taking everybody into confidence further fueled the expectations of people. But the past year has seen only the betrayal of that promise.
Within a few months of coming to power for the second term, Modi slowly took a back seat while his trusted lieutenant and Home Minister Amit Shah was seen setting the agenda in which ‘development’ was abandoned. Instead, emotional issues such as Kashmir, Ram Mandir, National Register of Citizenship (NRC) that are against the spirit of ‘Sab Ka Saath’ were given priority. Realizing that people were quickly losing confidence in this four-month new government and the country staring at a severe economic crisis, the government chose to play up these emotionally charged issues to divert the people’s attention and make sure that they don’t see its failures.
The government’s unilateral decision over Kashmir has created a situation that is difficult to comprehend. The government claims that it has now fully integrated Kashmir into the Indian Union by withdrawing the special status of the State but the people’s representatives of Kashmir are still under house arrest and the state still witnessing a huge presence of the army. If the government’s claim that it is now closer to the people of Kashmir than ever before is true, then why is Kashmir still under siege? Why are the Opposition leaders not able to roam around freely in Kashmir? The country is in lockdown due to Corona over the last few months but Kashmir has been locked down for the last eight months with people’s lives in jeopardy.
The government ignored the sentiments of the people of Kashmir and showed that it is only interested in the land of Kashmir. This hasty decision of the government has not only impacted our country adversely but also our neighboring countries. China is flagging the embers by inciting Nepal. Pakistan is also trying to use this opportunity arising in Kashmir in its favor. We then have to question the government’s decision on Kashmir that was taken when the country was facing its worse ever economic crisis. Kashmir has fallen silent with absolutely no activity in the tourism sector, its mainstay. The state finds itself within layers and layers of confinement, first with the army and now with the Coronavirus. The Modi government might claim that it has taken over Kashmir but it’s important for Kashmiris to proclaim openly that they belong to India.
The other issue for which the Centre is taking credit is the smooth resolution of the contentious issue of the construction of Ram Mandir, as though the judgment was not given by the Supreme Court but by the government. The construction of Ram Mandir can in no way contribute to the development of the country. It is like opium to keep the people emotionally sedated.
Almost at the same time, the government destroyed the lives of thousands of laborers of Assam by implementing NRC. It is pertinent to question the decision of the government to implement NRC as it involves an expenditure of hundreds of crores and whose aim is only to divide the people. The government has failed to respond to any of these questions before the country. Amit Shah’s announcement that NRC would be implemented all over the country, seems to have been given a burial at least for the time being but the seeds of hatred that he sowed have wreaked havoc.
The objective of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was to divide the country but the Coronavirus quickly brought together people who were being divided on the basis of religious lines. People who erupted in protests over the CAA had to come together to fight the Coronavirus. The threat of implementing CAA that already had a bearing on the country’s economy was also used to unleash police brutalities in which many people lost their lives. In the process of implementing these hasty decisions, the government betrayed the agenda of development yet again. Amit Shah who has contributed extensively to divide the country now seems to have faded away and Modi has again occupied the center stage.
The spread of Coronavirus in the country has destroyed the livelihoods of people who were already facing acute economic distress. The rate of deaths caused by Corona in other countries should have alerted the government to immediately swing into action and keep a track on people who entered our country.
According to experts, if the government had taken proactive steps, the Coronavirus would not have spread so much. The ‘Namaste Trump’ roadshow event was responsible for the spread of Coronavirus that led to the lockdown being imposed on the whole country instead of being imposed only on foreign travelers. Even when the lockdown was imposed, Modi’s ‘Sab Ka Vishwas’ agenda bit the dust, and the lockdown led to the humanitarian crisis of migrant laborers many of whom have died on the roadside.
The greatest achievement of Narendra Modi’s one year in office is betraying the ‘Sab Ka Vikas’ development agenda that is now in tatters and exemplified by the visuals of people dying on railway tracks. The Modi government which was trying to ride on the shoulders of Amit Shah is now facing a situation similar to the blind man leading the lame.
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NDA sweeps bypolls to four assembly segments in Bihar
Patna (PTI): The ruling NDA in Bihar on Saturday swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj, receiving a boost ahead of the assembly elections due next year.
Candidates of the Jan Suraaj, floated recently by former political strategist Prashant Kishor with much fanfare, lost deposits in all but one seat, in a clear indication that the fledgling party, despite claims of taking the political landscape in the state by storm, needs to cover much ground.
The biggest setback for the INDIA bloc, helmed by the RJD, came in Belaganj, a seat the party had been winning since its inception in the 1990s, but this time lost to the JD(U) headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of its founding president Lalu Prasad.
The JD(U) candidate Manorama Devi, a former MLC, defeated by a margin of more than 21,000 votes RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh who made his debut from a seat that fell vacant upon election to Lok Sabha of his father Surendra Prasad Yadav, a multiple term MLA.
The margin of victory was greater than the 17,285 votes polled by Mohd Amjad of Jan Suraaj, whom the RJD may have liked to blame for its defeat by causing a split in Muslim votes.
JD(U) national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, "The people of Bihar deserve kudos for rejecting the negativity of the opposition and reposing their trust in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Under his leadership, the NDA will win more than 200 seats of the 243-strong assembly in 2025."
The RJD also suffered an embarrassing defeat in Ramgarh, where Prashant Kishor’s prediction of the party “finishing third or fourth” came true. The forecast had caused Sudhakar Singh, son of state RJD president Jagadanand Singh, the MP from Buxar who had won the assembly seat in 2020, to threaten that Jan Suraaj cadres in the constituency will be “beaten up with sticks”.
Singh’s younger brother Ajit finished a distant third after BJP winner Ashok Kumar Singh, a former MLA, and Satish Kumar Singh Yadav who fought on a ticket of the BSP, which has little foothold in Bihar.
Jan Suraaj, though, was hardly a factor in Ramgarh, where its candidate Sushil Kumar Singh polled less than four per cent votes.
The BJP also pulled off a stunning victory in Tarari, which falls under the Arrah Lok Sabha seat, currently represented by CPI(ML)’s Sudama Prasad, who had won the assembly segment for two consecutive terms.
CPI(ML) candidate Raju Yadav lost, by a margin of a little over 10,000 votes, to BJP debutant Vishal Prashant, better known as the son of local strongman Sunil Pandey, who was formerly with the JD(U) and had joined the saffron party a few months ago.
Jan Suraaj had initially announced that it was fielding a former Vice Chief of the Army in Tarari but later disclosed that he could not contest because of technical reasons. Its candidate Kiran Singh got less than four per cent votes.
The most respectable performance from Jan Suraaj came in the reserved Imamganj seat where its candidate Jitendra Paswan stood third, polling well over 20 per cent votes.
The seat, however, went to Deepa Kumari, daughter-in-law of Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who defeated RJD’s Raushan Kumar by a slender margin of less than 6,000 votes.
Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha, vacated Imamganj earlier this year upon getting elected to Lok Sabha from Gaya.
With the exception of Ashok Singh in Ramgarh, the winners in all the seats shall be making their debut in the state assembly.
