NOVANEWS
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It has been two years since Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister unleashing a trajectory of governance that is proving to be nothing short of a political calamity for our society and polity. Never before has India seen a government so callous and indifferent to the plight of the people. Even as large parts of the country are reeling under severe drought and famine-like conditions, and dozens of farmers continue to be driven daily to suicides under a crushing burden of debt and insecurity, the government nonchalantly congratulates itself for promising to double farm income by 2022. The CM of Maharashtra, the worst drought-affected state, is least concerned about this alarming agrarian distress, he is busy issuing deportation threats to whoever does not chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and his cabinet colleague makes her tour of drought-affected areas memorable by taking selfies on her smartphone! The PM is of course busy touring foreign lands, addressing election rallies, occasionally taking time off to deliver his radio gospels or appreciate his own wax statue in a Madame Tussauds museum.
It is a government which came to power with only 31% of the polled vote, but almost from day one it has been in a state of permanent war with large sections of the citizenry including many who had voted it to power. Its land acquisition ordinance has been rejected by all, but it continues to promote large-scale diversion and acquisition of agricultural land in flagrant violation of the mandates of the 2013 Act for compensation and rehabilitation.
To push its ‘Make in India’ agenda it is desperately trying to subvert every law and institution of the land – labour rights, environmental safeguards, natural resources, the entire framework of democracy are all being mortgaged to lure foreign investment. Dissenting students in premier educational institutions are being branded ‘casteist’ and ‘anti-national’ and subjected to systematic political persecution. RSS cadres have been planted in influential positions across the institutional spectrum and in key Constitutional posts, and President’s Rule is being imposed to destabilize elected non-BJP governments while in BJP-ruled states governance has become a metaphor for state-sponsored anarchy, terror and relentless communal polarisation.
Accompanying this war on the people and their constitutional rights and liberties, is the Sangh brigade’s sinister invasion of history. Modi came to power with the slogan of ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ – in the guise of this slogan he not only spearheaded a campaign to oust the discredited Manmohan Singh dispensation at the Centre and other tainted Congress-led regimes in the states, but also sought to produce a narrative that would trash the Congress teleologically and construct a non-existent past for the BJP. Patel was the first Congress leader to be hijacked in the process, and during his first year in power Modi also tried his level best to appropriate Gandhi through his much hyped ‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign. With the declassification of Netaji files and the celebration of Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary, now the Sangh-BJP establishment is out to claim the legacies of Subhas Bose and Ambedkar. Sangh ideologues would like us to believe that Ambedkar’s call for ‘annihilation of castes’ was meant to unify Hindus as a community, the RSS mouthpiece ‘Organiser’ describing Ambedkar as a ‘great unifier’. No wonder Rohith Vemula and his comrades have been dubbed ‘anti-national’ and activists and intellectuals spreading the ideas of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar have been attacked virulently by Sanghi goons.
