A a government of sound-bites and masterful speeches: Shahsi Tharoor

The victory of AAP in Delhi has ended the myth of the infallibility of the Prime Minister, noted Shashi Tharoor MP. He also said that PM Modi seems to have become a victim of his own public relations.

The Modi government is, by and large, a government of sound-bites and masterful speeches. He also deplored the growing religious intolerance in the country and the silence of the prime minister on this.

“Much has been made of President Obama’s recent visit to India, but on this question one needs only to quote his speech just before his departure from Delhi. “India will succeed so long as it is not split along the lines of religious faith,” he had said, of course couching all this in warm, courteous language,” he said.

Obama's message was pointed: if India does not resolve the problems that are dividing the country, Mr Modi's proclaimed ambitious development plans will be thwarted. When you need foreign trade and foreign investment, you don’t go around making foreigners, Christians and Muslims, feel unwelcome, but the rhetoric of majoritarian intolerance and bigotry that Mr Modi seems unable or unwilling to stop has precisely that effect. 

It is a message many of us in the Opposition have also been giving Mr Modi. But coming from the US President, whose visit is being hailed by the Government as a diplomatic triumph and whose "bromance" with Mr Modi has seen first names and much friendly banter, it is a pointed reminder of the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the latter’s regime.

Our Prime Minister has had a long track record of advocating Hindu supremacy, and he depends for his political success on the support of people who have variously wanted all non-Hindus to convert "back" to the mother faith or be driven out of the country.

Mr Modi has to realise, even on a basic economic level, that his ministers simply don't understand that they are pushing away foreign investment by campaigns like 'ghar wapasi.'

Or when they competitively decide that Hindu women must produce 4 or 10 or more children, with no consultation, of course, with the women actually concerned! Religious intolerance is not an isolated issue and unless Mr Modi confronts his own colleagues and their divisive agendas, the economic promises he has made to the voters cannot be fulfilled. And if they cannot be fulfilled, well, we in the Congress will be waiting for the next elections! 

One of the most talked about, and I dare say overrated, characteristics of national politics in India today is the glorification of Prime Minister Modi and the cultivation of an aura of invincibility around him.

The victory of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 spun this out of control. But the unprecedented success of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi has finally confirmed what we in the Opposition have been, for some time now, quietly pointing out-- that this picture of an infallible Mr Modi is more myth than substance.

In the recent past the national narrative has been dominated by the BJP and Mr Modi, who have commanded the airwaves and shown a talent for sound-bites and photo-ops, but the gap between rhetoric and results is finally catching up with them. The reality check they have received in Delhi should now alter this, and unless the Prime Minister, who seems to have become a victim of his own PR, shakes off the attendant complacency and begins to deliver, the Modi Wave will be reduced before long to a ripple. The process has already begun. 

Eloquent speeches and liberal announcements are made without any tangible action plans, adequate budgetary funding, or execution capacity. To take an example, I was invited to participate in the Prime Minister’s Swachch Bharat campaign. It was a gracious gesture and I agreed to participate due to the importance of the cause and its non-political nature, though only after expressing a reservation that this should not merely become an exercise for photo-ops and hollow publicity.

My team and I cleaned up an area in my constituency in Thiruvananthapuram, and to demonstrate the need for long-term solutions, we donated a biogas plant to the neighbourhood. We followed it up by sending to the PMO a detailed proposal to revive and rejuvenate a canal and waterway, which would have had a tremendous lasting impact.

To this, however, I have had no response after all these months. So the impression I get is that once the cameras and mikes are off, the Modi government’s drive to actually accomplish their promised development goals becomes seriously subdued, and there is a degree of indifference. Similarly, the Model Village scheme was announced but not one additional paisa has been allocated to make any village a model one.

So we have ambitious announcements followed by glaring gaps in terms of implementation, and liberal pronouncements seemingly unconnected to actual policy.

Meanwhile, greater attention is being devoted by this government and its adherents to the rewriting of textbooks extolling the virtues of ancient science over modern technology, while organisations like the khaki-shorts-wearing RSS, whose views on every subject, be it economics, politics, history, culture, morality, gender, reality, and practically everything else is illiberal, have been running rampant. 

The tensions between the two tendencies - the economic reformism preached at the top and the cultural nativism that animates the majority beneath - have begun to affect the government's agenda.

What makes it worse is that the political majority needed by the Prime Minister to pursue his economic policies relies entirely on the political campaigns and organizational capacity of the very people whose chauvinism is undermining him.

Mr Modi has built his appeal by putting the focus on what the Indian people manifestly need - more development, better governance, wider socio-economic opportunities. But having won an election by attracting voters to these themes, he has given free rein to the most retrograde elements in Indian society, who are busy dividing the country.

Mr Modi cannot be oblivious to this fundamental contradiction, but he can only resolve it by jettisoning the very forces that have helped ensure his electoral victory. His real test, I think, lies in how he will navigate this situation.