It’s time to face the facts. Since the Karnataka election debacle, not much has gone really well for the Narendra Modi government. Despite its ‘influence’ on mainstream media through which it not only get its point across but also ensures suppression of any opposing view, the government has been unable to prevent a certain impression from taking hold of the public imagination.
The impression is this: the Modi government is not all-powerful and invincible, after all. It can lose elections. It makes mistakes. It has to change course. It can succumb to pressure. And it is as much at the mercy of unexpected events as any other government.
Is this a big deal? Normally, no. We don’t expect omnipotence from most governments. But for this government,yes, it is a big deal. Until recently, most of us were convinced that the Modi government would continue forever, riding out every crisis with a firm grasp on the levers of power while its incompetent rivals struggled helplessly.
Over the last month or so, I think that has begun to change. As a new event or crisis has buffeted the government every single week, Prime Minister Modi has begun to look all too human.
You could argue (as the BJP now does) that the Karnataka result was inevitable because of anti-incumbency. But that is not how the BJP itself saw it during the campaign. It genuinely believed it was winning. It felt that if it asked the people of Karnataka to forget about the failures of the Basavaraj Bommai government and to vote for the ‘Modi magic’ again as the Prime Minister barnstormed the state, that would be enough.
It didn’t work and now questions are being asked about the party’s fabled electoral machine. Yes, the BJP is much better placed in Madhya Pradesh than the Congress, but is the assembly election a done deal? What about Rajasthan? It all seems less clear now than it did a few months ago.
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Crises pile on
Over the last month, the crises have piled up. The Balasore train accident in Odisha was a national tragedy and should remain above party politics. But because PM Modihas gone to great lengths to identify himself with the turning-around of the Indian Railways, a disaster of this magnitude damages the legend of his super-competence.
It is the same with the leak of data from the CoWIN app. The government’s official position (as far as I can tell) appears to be that this is not a real data breach and the data that is being leaked was obtained in a previous breach — an explanation that is hardly reassuring.
The leak matters, not just because people don’t like their personal details being leaked but because the Modi government has told us again and again how nothing will ever leak from the CoWIN platform; that the government is so technically savvy that we need not worry about its ability to store our data safely.
And then there is the political management that suddenly doesn’t seem to be going so well for the BJP. After months of ignoring the wrestlers protesting against sexual harassment, watching them getting assaulted by the Delhi police, getting them abused on social media, and then having them thrown out from the location where they were protesting, the Modi government was forced to do what it hates to do: backtrack.
Home Minister Amit Shah met the wrestlers, the outlines of a settlement were negotiated, and Sports Minister Anurag Thakur later assured the wrestlers that the accused Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh would not be allowed to occupy any official position in the Wrestling Federation of India. More action has been promised and will, I believe, follow.
Even more significant may be the mess in Manipur. When Northeastern politicians rushed to join the BJP or ally with it, the government declared that the BJP had now won the Northeast and become the pre-eminent party in the region.
In that case, ask the government’s critics, why did Amit Shah take a month to visit Manipur, which is still burning? There’s a BJP government in the state and its failure to stop the violence makes a mockery of the BJP’s claim that it can guarantee smooth and peaceful governance wherever it is in power.
And as if all this is not enough, there is now the claim by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, that during the farmers’ agitation, the Modi government had asked Twitter to silence critical voices. Failure to do so would result in raids on Twitter employees. Dorsey claimed that Twitter was warned of various negative consequences.
The claim has an intuitive appeal for those who believed that Twitter was not giving enough space to anti-government voices and restricting the dissemination of their tweets. Besides, there is that old saw: who benefits? Dorsey has sold Twitter. He has nothing to gain by lying about his experiences in India. The government, on the other hand, is obliged to dismiss these claims.
Though each individual reverse may not amount to much, the fact that they have followed each other in quick succession must cause PM Modi some concern.
Also Read: This is the difference between TV news and newspapers’ coverage of Jack Dorsey vs Modi govt
BJP’s USPs
The BJP has two unique selling propositions. First, ‘Vote for Narendra Modi; he is super-competent and a great leader’. This USP has come under something of a cloud recently.
That leaves the BJP with its second USP: ‘We will build a Hindu India!’
It is beginning to look as though the BJP may have no choice but to go into the 2024 Lok Sabha election with that slogan. The ritualistic nature of the Sengol celebrations at the opening of the new Parliament building—unprecedented in modern India—suggest that the government has already begun going down that road. The opening of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya will be the next great religious spectacle.
Will Hindutva be enough for Modi to maintain his record of landslides? Judging by the events of the past two months: it had better be. Because if the government does not get a handle on the narrative soon, that may be all that’s left.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)