Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s freewheeling interview to the ANI two days back left no one in doubt about the clarity with which the government is functioning and the clarity of thoughts the prime minister and his party have on various issues facing the country, including ideological. A few issues raised are significant and would find easy traction with youths: Dynasty, attack on phony socialism, and defence of economic freedom.
Critics, cynics and opponents of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who thrive by trying to create a wedge in the party on ideological grounds would be utterly disappointed. They would be at a loss to explain their own ideological inconsistencies on the issues raised. Will anti-BJPism, their new ideology, sustain their relevance in modern India?The opposition is still guided by traditional parameters where the right of a son was recognised as God-ordained. Modi launched the most stringent attack on dynasty politics and this shows why he has emerged as an icon of the youths. Take any party other than the Left which is on the verge of extinction, the story is the same.
The Congress has sidelined any leader who could be a threat to the dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru. The first was Subhas Chandra Bose who had a more legitimate claim to be called the first Prime Minister of India. Lal Bahadur Shashtri was sidelined and erased by his mysterious death in Tashkent. The Kamraj Plan was used by Nehru to sideline important Congress leaders and establish his hegemony. When S Nijalingappa expelled Indira Gandhi from the party in 1969, she split the party and formed her own party. The problem is the dynasty does not accept challenges and takes the party as its instrument to keep the family in power. Family interest, therefore, comes first.
This is quite contrary to the BJP where the party is an instrument to transform society to a better situation where everyone has a chance to work as per his or her calling. No individual leader can take his position for granted and none can think of manipulating events to ensure that one family stays in control. Nobody knows who will be the next president of the BJP.
If one sees India’s political horizon, one would not get impressed. And it is in this context that Modi’s words find a lot of traction. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is controlled by the family of Lalu Prasad Yadav; the Janata Dal (Secular) is run by HD Deve Gowda’s family; the Samajwadi Party is run by Mulayam Singh Yadav; the two parties of Jammu and Kashmir — the Peoples’ Democratic Party and the National Conference are run respectively by the Muftis and the Abdullahs — the two families of the State; Punjab has the family of Parkash Singh Badal running the Shiromani Akali Dal; in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena is run by the Thackeray family and the Nationalist Congress Party by the family of Sharad Pawar. In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has been able to establish a dynasty; in Telangana, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is run by one family and in Tamil Nadu, the DMK is controlled by the family of M Karunanidhi.
The prime minister also demonstrated his ideological opposition to leaders of these parties calling themselves socialists. He spoke of Ram Manohar Lohia who advocated and worked for social justice but he never allowed family to get into politics. The Samajwadi Party is one such which claims to work for the ideals of Lohia, but there is hardly anyone in the family of Mulayam Singh Yadav not represented in political posts from Panchayat to Parliament. The family controls the party and gives tickets to family members and gets votes in the name of social justice. Modi was clear when he praised the socialism represented by Lohia, George Fernandes and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who have kept family away from influencing or controlling politics.
If socialism is about giving social justice and helping the poor and the needy, the Modi government has surpassed all by giving people what is due to them. Whether it is gas connections to poor families, toilets to the people, bank accounts to one and all, better health facilities to poor and better education and roads to all, this government has superb achievements. When 80 crore people are provided free ration for two complete years, it shows the government’s commitment to the poor and the needy.
In this backdrop it is important to recall what Prime Minister Modi said early this week. Inaugurating an event in Lucknow, he said that three crore urban poor families have become ‘lakhpatis’ due to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana housing scheme. “Under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, about 3 crore houses have been built in the country, you can guess the cost of them. These people have become lakhpatis”, Modi said.The other issue on which one gets remarkable clarity is the government’s economic policy. The BJP has always spoken of integral humanism where the poor is taken care of but the individual is given full liberty to build capability and shine as per his vocation. But to take care of the poor and to develop faster, the government needs money. It can be either borrowed or earned through taxes. If one borrows but does not have the capacity to repay the country would get into a debt trap.