Why so serious?

Victors have rarely, if ever, been this gloomy

Image courtesy this handle

THE images above are from the high tea PM-designate Narendra Modi hosted for the soon-to-be members of his Cabinet. Modi is speaking; his Cabinet colleagues are, well… An alien without access to context would likely misread this as mourners at a wake, or as a bunch of folks handed the poisoned chalice and told to drink up, stat!

To understand politics, I watch (and read) Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. Here, a clip from the first chapter: Jim Hacker is at home, anxiously waiting to know whether he is going to get a Cabinet berth. Calls keep coming in, and none of them are the call he is waiting for. Worse, most of them are calls telling him what ministries his peers have got:

Hacker: “Bill’s got Europe. Poor old Europe – Bill can’t speak French or German. He hardly even speaks English, as a matter of fact. Martin’s got the Foreign Office, as expected. Jack’s got Health, and Fred’s got Energy.”

Mrs Hacker: “Has anyone got brains?”

Hacker: “You mean Education?”

The first session of the 18^th Lok Sabha is scheduled to begin on or around 15 June. As of 10 June, we don’t know who is getting what ministry, and word in BJP circles is that many of the newly sworn-in ministers don’t know either – backstage negotiations are still ongoing.

Some of the inductees are believed to be unhappy about their assigned portfolios and/or minor positions while several of those within the party who didn’t get berths are disgruntled at being denied the perks and privileges of office.

Meanwhile in this Cabinet of Curiosities, none more curious — for now — than Suresh Gopi, the lone BJP MP from Kerala, who was given an MoS position and who, a day later, has informed the BJP leadership that he wants to be relieved of his position at the earliest. (Here, he says clearly that he did not ask for a Cabinet berth, and that he has to do films.)

Risibly, his reasoning is that he wants to “serve the people” as an MP. For the real reason, look at his filmography with special attention to what is lined up for 2024. In an update, he says sans ambiguity that he did not ask for a Cabinet seat, that he does not want one, and that he has to do movies — emphasis his).

And then there are the allies. Praful Patel of the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP, newly washed clean of his sins, is upset at what he sees as a demotion to Minister of State status and has refused the offer; he told the media that he has informed the BJP “dealership” and they have promised to set things right in a week.

Update, 5.15 PM: MP Shrirang Barne of the Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena has protested the offer of a single MoS post for the party, which has seven MPs, as against Cabinet posts for the JD(S) which has just two MPs. As I write this, Eknath Shinde is in a meeting with his party MLAs.

Elsewhere, word is that Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP still insists on the post of Speaker of the Lok Sabha. The BJP in initial bargaining offered to give the post to Daggubati Purandeswari, MP from Rajamundry and daughter of TDP founder the late NT Rama Rao.

The BJP’s reasoning was that Purandeswari is from AP and therefore her appointment is a political win for the state; further, her father founded the party Naidu now heads. The TDP chief for his part is, as of now, adamant that the post should go to someone from within his party (Purandeswari is the chief of the BJP’s Andhra Pradesh unit).

These are just some of the backstage issues the BJP leadership is dealing with, and the clock is ticking.

Meanwhile, to return to those glum faces, a large part of the reason is that while the BJP gives a positive spin on the electoral outcome, internally there is considerable worry over what they see as the decline in support across pretty much all sections of the people — and this concern has a cutting edge because in about five months, elections are due in Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. (In J&K, even as the newly elected MPs and a star-spangled guest list assembled on the Rashtrapati Bhavan lawns for the swearing-in, terrorists opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims, resulting in nine deaths and injuries to 33 others — a violent negation of the BJP trope that the abrogation of Article 370 had brought peace to the Valley).

If the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election has one over-arching message it is this: mandir-masjid-mangalsutra-mujra is not going to win you votes. The government has to address the very real concerns of the electorate: farmer distress, youth unrest over botched exams and rising unemployment, middle class unrest over rising prices et al. And they have to do it quick – the countdown to October when the four states go to polls has begun.

It is therefore no coincidence that the first file signed, earlier today, by Modi in his new term is an authorisation for the release of the 17th instalment of dues to farmers under the Kisan Nidhi scheme.

Very impressive it all sounds, too: “9.3 crore farmers will benefit to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore”. What those big numbers hide is that as per the scheme, each individual farmer gets Rs 6000 per year, in three lots of just Rs 2000 each. This release is the latest instalment, and the right way to look at it is that farmers facing multiple stresses including mounting debt will get Rs 2000 apiece.

(In passing, we won’t know how the new Cabinet will govern — but we can already be sure of this: an ANI videographer or three will be on hand to record the PM’s every move and relay it to the public in glorious colour. Thus, this.)

All of this reminds me of the opening riff of an old Varun Grover stand-up set on Indian elections:

Kaam pe vote dena hai? Woh kaise?

The NDA government’s problem is on the same lines: We actually have to work for the people? Under a PM whose knowledge of the economy is limited to “India is the largest…greatest…fastest-growing… oh look, Kashi-Mathura baaki hai”? And with the crippling talent deficit the party suffers from, thanks to its “strategy” of picking loyalty to the leader over talent?

Kaam pe vote maangna hai, Ram pe nahin? Woh kaise?

Think of that problem, and the glum faces in the image above begins to make sense.

I was planning to write on the challenges facing Modi 3.0, but Ruchi Gupta made most of the key points in this analysis in the Indian Express. The key graf:

The real change may come from the shattering of Modi’s aura of invincibility. Large sections of the media, bureaucracy, other state institutions and the corporate class had seemingly internalised that the BJP will remain in power forever. This had led to an open disregard for holding the middle-ground at considerable cost to Indian democracy and their own personal integrity. This section may calibrate its behaviour especially if the BJP’s performance in upcoming state elections is poor.

Read the whole piece, it is a balanced take on what to expect, avoiding both liberal optimism and right wing gloom.

In passing, while on the media among others recalibrating their behaviour, it has already begun. On his Twitter stream, love/vote/thook jihad proponent Sudhir Chaudhary has been posting comments critical of the BJP’s inability to understand the woes of the common man. And India Today’s Aroon Purie, who just a couple of months ago bathed Modi in the warmth of his unstinted sycophancy (watch from 0:59 where he introduces the PM), has now penned a signed editorial negating both the “Modi magic” and politics of aggressive hindutva. The myth of TINA has been broken, Purie says in an editorial that appears to have been written after prolonged immersion in an ice bath of reality.

Meanwhile, the Opposition is understood to be working on a comprehensive agenda for the coming weeks, including but not confined to the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha. Key areas:

• A comprehensive challenge to the three bills — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Bill and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill of 2023 — that the Modi 2.0 government had bulldozed through Parliament as replacement for the existing Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act.

• A meticulously compiled dossier relating to the many acts of omission and commission by the Election Commission of India, in order to ask for a review, by a Constitution bench, of the Supreme Court’s judgments both on the EVMs and on the method of selection of the Election Commissioners. (In this connection, a Quint story points, among other things, to the ECI’s trashing of 5,54,598 votes polled by EVMs in 362 constituencies across states, and of a surplus of 35,093 EVM votes recorded in 176 constituencies. As the data in the Excel sheet shared in this post shows, as many as 21 constituencies were won and lost by margins under 10,000 votes.)

• A legislative agenda designed to turn the screws on the BJP over hot button issues such as the Agnipath/Agniveer scam, the recent exit polls scam impacting the stock market, the serial leaks of exam papers affecting the lives and careers of crores of young men and women and the recent controversy over the NEET results that brought students out onto the streets and has now landed up in the Supreme Court.

All told, interesting times ahead for all of us.

I’ll leave you with two pieces you should read:

1. This corruscatingly brilliant piece by Mitali Saran on the election results, that blends insight with humour, interlaced with metaphors that I absorbed with wish-I-had-written-that sighs of envy. As for instance:

The improbable hero of the day was Uttar Pradesh, the BJP’s happy place. Having thus far blocked the path to change at the Centre, like an impassive ox in the middle of the road, UP now stood up and tossed Modi on its horns. The PM’s victory margin in Varanasi was a shaky 1.5 lakh votes. Smriti Irani was booted from Amethi.

2. This edition of my friend Mohit Satyanand’s newsletter that looks at the results through the lens of the politicisation of religion. (BTW, subscribe — Mohit’s weekly updates are gold). I don’t for a moment believe that Sri Ram personally intervened to punish those who misused his name for their own narrow ends, but I do believe that a substantial slice of voters saw through Modi’s charade for what it truly was, and registered their disapproval in unequivocal terms.

Take care, have a good week.