heyOn Friday, when Congress leaders, including the Gandhi siblings, were all on TV screens agitating against price rise, unemployment and GST on essential goods, a video blogger posted an interesting meme. It showed a common man, aka Common man, Being beaten up by another wearing a saffron scarf – supposedly Govt. As a bystander, the opposition intervenes, the man beating him pushes him away. “It’s my government that is killing me, who are you? Get out of here.” Then, comes a TV reporter; “As you can see, people are suffering atrocities…. But the opposition party is a mute spectator, not fulfilling its responsibility…”
Congress leaders must have liked this meme. One, it shows that the media is targeting the opposition for the government’s mistakes. More importantly, it is an indirect rebuke. public To be in love with Narendra Modi Sarkar even when he is suffering. This is exactly what is heard in his private conversations with Congress leaders. And it is not just Congress leaders who are disappointed. Even West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Defeated With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at its home turf last year, Modi’s party has the best hope of not getting an absolute majority in 2024.
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Indian opposition is confused
There was a time when a huge increase in the price of a single commodity – onion, led to the fall of governments. The prices of many essential commodities have now reached the ceiling, but there has been no spontaneous demonstration or movement anywhere! Priyanka Gandhi Vadra may have jumped over the barricades, dragged her into the police van and Rahul Gandhi was detained at the police station, but there was no one Common man Taking to the streets to show solidarity.
So, what does the opposition do if people are not impressed even after raising their issues. As one Congress MP told this writer, “You people (media) keep saying that the opposition has no narrative. We can only highlight the failures of the government. Modi did exactly that in 2014. You could say they had the Gujarat model to sell. But Rahul Gandhi cannot sell the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) model which was rejected by the voters. It is easy to say that the opposition has no narrative.”
The MP and his colleagues in the opposition camp do not understand the matter. They are telling people why they should vote for Modi government. But they are not telling them why they should reject Modi and choose Rahul Gandhi or Mamata Banerjee or Arvind Kejriwal. Everything he says or does to attack Modi exposes his own weaknesses. Let’s take a look at the opposition’s line of attack on the Modi government and see where its leaders stand as an alternative to the voters.
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senseless attack on the center
First, the failure to manage the economy. The fact that Covid-19 has given the government a good excuse to erase any questions about the past. As far as the current situation is concerned, pro-establishment experts and anti-establishment experts have their own convenient facts and figures, enough to confuse them. common aOneDMI Even if people are in financial trouble, who will they trust more than Modi to set things right – Gandhi, Banerjee, Kejriwal or K. Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR)? The Congress on Friday launched agitations over inflation and unemployment, but the days are gone when onion prices toppled governments.
Survey after the Hindu-CSDS-Lokniti electionYou During the 2022 assembly elections, it was suggested that inflation and unemployment worried people, but there was no change in their voting behaviour. For example, in Uttar Pradesh, 38 percent of the respondents listed Development Compared to seven percent for unemployment and six percent for inflation, it is the single most important polling issue.
In Uttarakhand, four-fifths of the respondents Told That there had been an increase in unemployment and inflation over the past five years, but in the end it clearly didn’t matter much.
It does not mean that people are not worried about the state of the economy. It’s just that if they are so financially troubled by 2024 that they look for an alternative to Modi, they can only find leaders with a credible track record in economic management.
second charge of The opposition is that Modi/BJP/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) practices communal, Hindu majoritarian politics, and is killing India’s pluralistic ethos. Well, how else are opposition leaders countering majoritarian politics? Rahul Gandhi becomes stringed thread Brahmin. Lessons of Mamata Banerjee Chandi Path And starts paying stipends to the priests. Arvind Kejriwal performs Diwali puja at the replica of the Ayodhya temple in Delhi and ensures that it is telecast live with taxpayers’ money. Most of these opposition leaders fell silent when shots were fired On Asaduddin Owaisi’s vehicle before the UP elections.
The first and last time Rahul Gandhi hosted an Iftar party was in 2018. And the last time he went to Ayodhya was in 2016. Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka is witnessing a spurt in communal violence, in which one Hindu and two Muslims have lost their lives. Police saw it as ‘communal’ and ‘vengeance’ murders Rahul Gandhi, who visited Karnataka last week but stayed away from Dakshina Kannada, opted to send people elsewhere about the need for peace and harmony.
The so-called pioneers of secularism in India – Gandhi, Mamta and KCR,seem confused. They will not go to the Ram temple under construction in Ayodhya. Nor will they visit the under-construction mosque in Dhanipur, 30 km from the temple. Call it the neo-secularism of opposition leaders which is neither pleasing to Hindus nor Muslims.
The third allegation by opposition leaders is that the RSS/BJP is playing havoc with institutions ranging from the Election Commission to the judiciary, educational and cultural institutions, central investigative agencies, etc. Some of them are there for all to see. The problem is that the opposition’s accusations resonate at best with a select group of left-liberal intellectuals. For ordinary voters, they are too complicated and too far to connect with their daily lives.
What difference does it make if a former aide of a Telugu Desam Party leader or a former legal counsel to a powerful BJP minister or someone with an RSS background becomes a judge in the higher judiciary? What do these ordinary voters do about alleged political vendetta through central agencies when they see bundles of high denomination notes recovered on TV screens from aides of former West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee? How do they judge central agencies when Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal alleges that he can implicate his deputy Manish Sisodia in a fake case and then Sisodia demands that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigate a former Lt Governor ?
Opposition leaders are perhaps able to persuade some of their political, ideological fellow travelers into drawing rooms, university campuses, seminars and workshops. But his big talk about capturing institutions simply goes over the heads of those who matter—the voters.
opposition’s fourth The Modi government is accused of distributing the money of the poor among the rich. Well, people getting free ration and/or money in their accounts under different schemes doesn’t matter, seeing how they are voting.
The fifth allegation is that the Modi government has compromised national security. Targeting PM Modi over national security is an ambitious thing for opposition leaders who lament the electoral impact of the surgical strikes and Balakot air strikes. Even though the Modi government is on the back foot over the infiltration of the Chinese army into Indian territory, it has not done any harm to their image. Talk about Chinese infiltration in villages, people tell you how Modi has made China in the shadow of fear. Then they see how Rahul Gandhi supports a book Which says that if there is a war in the near future then China can defeat India in 10 days.
How many Indians who have such an opinion about India’s military might would like to vote for an opposition leader?
Opposition parties need political imagination to corner the Modi government. As expected, his attempt to shorten Modi’s line by cutting it is not working. And he hasn’t shown the willingness or ability to draw the big line. They don’t know what can and cannot work against Modi. So, they keep raising an issue one day and forgetting them the next – from demonetisation to electoral bonds, Pegasus, Chinese crime, Agneepath scheme, corrupt ministers, inflation etc.
What former India envoy Ronen Sen said about opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal is gaining a new meaning—the headless chicken.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)