Prime Minister Narendra Modi once ruled all political optics. He could do nothing wrong, which is why he could turn into a Bal Narendra who slew crocodiles, or become an exam warrior who sought to empower Indian students to face Boards and other examinations where the pressure to do well has made many children suicidal. Then, he was the Hindu Hriday Samrat, the fakir, the chaiwalla, the brother of all Muslim women sick of triple talaq, and so on and so forth. But all of a sudden, the farmer stir has given birth to a new crop of pop culture content that isn’t so kind to Modi.
Memes and images are now showing another story. Modi is losing the visuals war, be it cartoons depicting him as sowing a carpet of thorns for farmers, or journalists writing notes on their legs in prison. And when the fourth-most followed person on Twitter, Rihanna, tweets about the Indian government’s ban on the internet in areas where farmers are protesting, you know the world isn’t going to see this in the best light. Top it up with US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris, who is a very esteemed lawyer of the Supreme Court in America, also tweeting in support of the farmers, and you soon realise that PM Modi is getting widespread condemnation internationally.
The farmer protests have set up a new PR challenge for the Modi government.
His carefully constructed image of the chaiwalla-to-Lok Kalyan Marg journey is beginning to crack. Every day as new farmers join the protests, new memes are made and shared — be it the ones of Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah lounging and asking farmers to come talk, but offering them spikes to sit on, visuals of Modi being chased by tractors, #ModiNaukarAmbaniKa memes featuring Modi as the genie to Mukesh Ambani’s Alladin; or Modi watering nails that have been drilled into the roads of the Singhu border.
Also read: ‘Conspiracy to malign Indian tea’ — Modi takes dig at ‘Greta toolkit’ in Assam speech
Bad optics
The problem that is central to the Modi government getting all this flak is that it doesn’t understand how to deal with dissent. And whatever it does to silence dissent can be argued to have been taken from a handbook called ‘How to Not Deal with Dissent’. What ends up happening, as we have seen in many cases, is that people expressing dissent or displeasure against the government often get jailed. Many who have been jailed are journalists and activists.
Things have become so bleak that the United Nations Human Rights office tweeted calling for ‘maximum restraint’ to be shown by both the farmers as well as the Indian government during the ongoing farmers’ protest, asserting that rights to peaceful assembly and expression should be protected both offline and online. This, for a government that has come down heavily on protesters not only now, but also during the anti-CAA protests.
Although, those who are decidedly pro-Modi insist that the farm laws are a huge leap in disrupting the status quo of the centuries-old agricultural practices and is, therefore, not being accepted readily. But the fact is that many farmers are joining this protest, and the number of people standing against these laws is only growing exponentially. To curb violence of the kind that took place on 26 January, the Modi government is barricading national highways in a manner that makes it look iron-fisted and unwilling to listen to the voices of its people. With concrete structures getting built with iron nails in the middle of highways, memes are now dedicated to making fun of the Modi government’s strictness with its own country’s farmers, as opposed to how softly they have dealt with China’s incursions.
Also read: Time for Modi to play the elder statesman and repeal the farm laws
Attempts to discredit farmers
In spite of any blunders on part of any protesting farmer, the protests still enjoy a significant amount of sympathy from common citizens because of how farmers have often ordained an almost deity-like position in Indian society. How does one make them look anti-national? It is impossible.
In fact, using the anti-national and ‘Khalistani’ peg to prove the ‘ulterior motives’ of these farmers’ protests has had a boomerang-effect, since the protests are now driven by jats and not Sikhs. The stir in Uttar Pradesh is highlighting the administration’s heavy-handedness against those who speak against it, or Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath.
By stating that ‘Adani and Ambani’ are hand-in-glove with the government for bringing in corporate interests through these laws, the farmers are building a narrative that is hitting home with the Indian poor who are tired of being taken advantage of by the rich. It was this very sentiment, created by Modi’s chaiwalla, or ‘non-corrupt’ and ‘non-capitalistic fakir’ image, that had propelled the PM into the hearts and minds of the poor as their saviour. Demonetisation furthered that feeling of Modi being against the big businessmen and their pet politicians who hoarded swathes of black money.
But if Narendra Modi, at this point, doesn’t realise that the very things that made him popular are now being undone by policies that seem to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, he’s going to face a hard time. The visuals war is clearly not in favour of Modi right now, and the world is watching.
The author is a political observer and writer. Views are personal.
Typical muslim view. The author does not realize that farmer groups have shot themselves in the foot by teaming up with Khalistani elements from abroad and other anti national people in order to get funds. Good for them as long as the money is flowing but they have unwittingly strengthened his position. The whole country is cursing them and farmers cannot be above the country.
Ha ha, don’t want to waste time on commenting.
Shekhar and his team likes to loose and apologies when they get it wrong.
yes unfavourable international commentary. Which is why it was important for Trump to win. Unfortunately he did not, therefore so much scrutiny.
The author continently side steps what according to her is the best case scenario for the farmers.
If the govt accepts all demands by the protestors, the best case scenario for them would be sustained poverty. Manufacturing and services sector will keep on growing much faster and these farmers will remain dependent on govt subsidy in form of MSP. By simple arithmatic the govt cannot pay more than the tax it collects from other two sectors. Hence agri sector always lags behind.
The phenomenon she mentions of rich getting richer happens because of agri sector’s resistance to reforms. One can survive but never prosper on subsidy. Middle class and the upper income classes will keep on moving ahead and in a generation current average holding of 2-4 bigha will be cut down in half for the farmers as next generation grows up.
Is this the future she envisages for the Farmers?
Jihadist posing as journalist ideology must be understood. They are interested in a “SECULAR CONSTITUTION ” till their project of increasing POPULATION at a fast rate to overwhelm HINDUS who are more interested in modern scienctific education is achieved.
Later a pakistan type religious nation where HINDUS will be dealt with like in pakistan is their plan.
Controlling population of all Indians irrespective of religion or caste must be implemented to save INDIA.
Meena Harris in her own self-description on all social media calls herself an entrepreneur and highlights her business ventures more than her credentials as a lawyer. This author says Meena Harris is an esteemed lawyer of the US Supreme Court. The Print should enable some fact checking on the claims made by its opinion writers.
Left to our luddite liberals and selective secularists, Shri Narendra Modi’s image has been going down since 2002, which picked up speed since 2014. However as per Mood of the Nation survey by India Today group, published last month, Shri Narendra Modi has a 74% approval rating. So Begum Zainab Sikandar you can hope all you want and you can write whatever you want, but it is the people of the country who will decide what they want. Please get used to it. It is called democracy.
People who are on streets didn’t vote for Modi and Modi still doesn’t need their votes in 2024.
Well this is a fair criticism when you say that the PM doesn’t know how to handle dissent. His policies have solid reasoning, but there is a poor delivery of this reasoning. E.g. the farmers worry that the new laws would allow corporations to exploit them, something that has been unconstitutional since the Constitution was adopted. The PM has a problem of countering opposing statements. They take too long to counter opposing statements, as they use social media and the internet and send documents explaining their reasoning. These take time to make and send, by that time the statements spiral out of control. What we need is some form of communiqué between the PM and opposing statements that can be countered immediately. The PM needs to create a position of ‘Raisena hills press secretary’ and hire a press secretary. This position will counter opposing statements immediately, as they don’t need to go through the lengthy and time-consuming process of organizing, decorating and releasing documents explaining their reasoning.