How do we know that elections are round the corner? When the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri—begins traveling furiously across the country, temple-hopping, inaugurating projects, and notifying laws that have lain dormant for years.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not bothered to go to West Bengal for the past three years; he visited in 2021 for the assembly election, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 77 seats and became the Opposition in the state.
After the election results were out, Modi seemed to forget about West Bengal entirely. Suddenly, with the Lok Sabha elections ahead, Modi has travelled there not once or twice but three times in a fortnight, making promises galore. The grim reality is that 59 lakh NREGA workers in West Bengal haven’t received their wages and 11.36 lakh people don’t have homes because the Modi government has not allocated funds to the state for central schemes. But, oh well, never mind, it’s election season and the Election Mantri will promise all those things that he will never do as the Pradhan Mantri.
Photo ops, price cuts, CAA
In fact, the Pradhan Mantri and the Election Mantri seem like two different entities. For example, the Pradhan Mantri keeps hiking LPG prices while the Election Mantri slashes them by a small amount. Ahead of the upcoming polls, the Election Mantri suddenly slashed LPG or cooking gas prices by Rs 100. For years, when global gas prices moderated, the Modi government did not pass on low costs to the consumer. Instead, it successively hiked prices of cooking gas to shore up government finances, raising LPG prices seven times between 2020-2021. Now, suddenly, down come the LPG prices.
It’s not only LPG. Days before elections, hey presto, prices of petrol and diesel have been lowered by Rs 2. In years when there were no elections, like in 2022, the Modi government kept raising the price of petrol so that it breached Rs 100 per litre mark in April 2022. But the Election Mantri seems to think about consumer woes only during elections.
You know it’s election season when the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri—suddenly starts visiting south Indian states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu and makes speeches on the vibrant culture and achievements of the south.
Now wait a second, where was the Modi government when Tamil Nadu was demanding funds for flood relief? Why has the Modi government not addressed the continuing protests by Kerala and Tamil Nadu on the Centre’s non-allocation of funds? What has the Prime Minister done to reassure Tamil Nadu citizens that Hindi will not be imposed, a worry recently voiced by lyricist Vairamuthu?
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has launched protests, claiming that the Modi government is not only crippling states by withholding funds but also trying to erase their cultural distinctiveness. Why do social media armies of the BJP keep stigmatising Kerala as the home of communists and jihadists? Didn’t Modi himself mock Rahul Gandhi for contesting from Wayanad, where the “minority is the majority”? But in election season, the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri—is seen in myriad photo-ops in Kerala, making speeches about the “warmth of Kerala”. Will the warmth last beyond the elections?
Ahead of the elections, the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri, suddenly notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) passed in 2019. For four years, the Act remained dormant, and the issue of religion-based citizenship, which sparked widespread protests across the country in 2019-2020, was allowed to fester. No attempt was made by the central government to allay fears or start a reconciliation process. Now, aiming to create religious polarisation before the polls and in determined pursuit of seats in West Bengal, where the BJP is banking on the support of communities like Matuas and Rajbanshis who wanted the CAA, bang! CAA is notified. Perhaps elections should take place more often so the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri finally notifies long-pending laws.
You know it’s election season when the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri indulges in varied photo-ops. He was seen at an elephant safari in the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, barely 300 km from Manipur, on 9 March. More than 200 people have died in Manipur in a year of violence, but the state would not perhaps make the picture-perfect photo-op. So, Modi does not visit Manipur and barely ever mentions it. After all, when you’re an Election Mantri, photos must strike awe and admiration, such as during an underwater diving expedition off the coast of the ancient city of Dwarka when Modi was photographed doing yoga in the Arabian Sea.
In the election season, the Election Mantri—sorry, Pradhan Mantri rushed to take credit for the launch of the latest Agni-V missile, even though the project has been in development since the time of Manmohan Singh government.
You know it’s election season when a whisper campaign starts about an exciting public address from Modi, and news channels plunge into breathless 24X7 coverage for hours, only to get, at the end of it, a tweet from the Election Mantri congratulating the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
Also read: Why I quit journalism and joined politics—media is muzzled, opposition isn’t
Governance takes a back seat
This politics of spectacle, or a high-visibility super-active Prime Minister who functions as an Election Minister, is highly dangerous. It separates electioneering from governance and makes administration irrelevant to political pursuits. It doesn’t matter if safety standards in railways are plummeting (a fatal collision in Andhra Pradesh, which killed 14 people, occurred because the drivers were watching cricket on their phones), or how many government posts are vacant, or that a staggering 42 per cent of those aged between 20 and 25 are unemployed, or that Indians are now the third-largest population of illegal migrants to the US, as long as the Election Mantri creates spectacle after spectacle at election time.
Voters are not allowed space to judge a regime’s governance record. Instead, they are bullied into getting mesmerised by underwater dives and elephant safaris, temple visits, and a blitzkrieg of flashy announcements. Then, they are expected to exercise their vote in a bubble of delusional euphoria. Never mind whether the government delivers or not; just gasp in awe at the media razzle-dazzle around the Pradhan Mantri—sorry, election mantri, and cast your votes in a stupor of hypnotised reverence. Indian voters are being reduced to passive spectators. Rational and systematic governance is taking a back seat to a flurry of election-time announcements with no clarity on how they will be implemented after the elections.
In 2022, citizens learned that more than 78 per cent of the funding for the Modi government’s ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ programme was spent on advertising. This is what happens when a Pradhan Mantri works only as an Election Mantri.
The writer is a former journalist and MP-elect (Rajya Sabha), All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)