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Price of the Modi Years QUOTES

Price of the Modi Years QUOTES

1 " In the face of the calamity, the Modi government froze.
In the seven months from March to September 2020, Modi made 82
public appearances—physical as well as virtual. In the next four
months, he made 111 such appearances. From February to 25 April
2021, he clocked 92 public appearances. From 25 April, after he
called off the Kumbh and his Bengal rallies, Modi disappeared. He
made no public appearance for 20 days.147 The prime minister of
India fled the field when his people needed the government most.
Through all of April and much of May, upper class Indians
flooded Twitter with calls for help to find hospital beds, oxygen
cylinders, drugs like Remdesivir and ventilators.148 The Union did
not think to set up a helpline to guide those who needed this help.
Into this space strode the youth Congress leader B.V. Srinivas
(@srinivasiyc) who, with a team of volunteers, began to help people
reaching out for aid on Twitter. He was so effective in the absence of
the State and any government presence that even the embassies of
New Zealand and the Philippines contacted him for help when
staffers fell ill with Covid.149 Focussed on the government’s image,
Jaishankar tweeted: ‘This was an unsolicited supply as they had no
Covid cases. Clearly for cheap publicity by you know who. Giving
away cylinders like this when there are people in desperate need of
oxygen is simply appalling.’ The New Zealand embassy staffer who had received oxygen
from Srinivas on 2 May died 18 days later. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

2 " The other problem regarding lack of preparation was insufficient
transport capacity. Liquid medical oxygen is transported in
specialised containers that can handle its supercooled cryogenic
form. When the second wave hit, India had a total of 1,224 tankers
able to ferry liquid oxygen, with a total capacity of 16,700 tons.40
Each tanker had a capacity of 15 tons and a turnaround time—i.e.,
being filled, transported, unloaded and then returning to be filled
again—of about six days. This was inevitable because some states,
like Delhi, did not produce any oxygen. And so the total amount that
could be delivered on average daily was not the production capacity
of 9,000 tons but 2,700 tons—less than half of what just Delhi,
Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra alone required. The result
could only be a gross shortfall of what was needed across the
country. And when that happened, Indians began to die from a lack
of oxygen. The first deaths from a lack of oxygen had actually come
during the first wave. In May 2020, it was already known that a
surging wave caused deaths because normally functioning hospitals
could rapidly run short of oxygen, a problem that had killed several
patients in Mumbai that month.41
Aditi Priya, a research associate at Krea University, compiled
the instances of oxygen deaths in the second wave that were
reported in the media. The Modi government itself produced no
document on the shortage or what it had wrought. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

3 " BRAND VERSUS PRODUCT


The Modi brand was built on the promise of delivery. The 2014 campaign was promoted under the theme ‘Achche din aane
wale hain’ (good days are on the way). It assumed that Modi would
bring change. It was not an empty promise: it came from his
certitude and his reductive understanding of the problems that India
and its government grapple with.
The Modi view of the world is also the view of the middle
classes, generally speaking. It can be understood thus: the system is
bad, but it cannot be fixed because politicians are corrupt. India’s
poverty and inefficiency was the product, therefore, of bad
politicians.
The view also is that India’s potential has been kept suppressed
and the people, especially the middle class, have suffered for this.
The nation had not become developed though it was full of people
who were talented. The politicians had let the rest of us down.
The system had failed because of the party which had created it
and run it. The Congress stood for corruption and socialism and
dynasty (this last bit is less damaging than is assumed, in a society
where such things as a ‘good family’, meaning virtue spread through
genes, are believed to be true). The Gandhis were nepotistic, and
people like Rahul Gandhi are not equipped or qualified in any way to
lead India to its deserved greatness.
A good man, an honest man, a strong man who means well is
the thing needed to fix this system because the system is the
problem and needs to be fixed. Once that is done, this great society
will be able to take its destined place in the world. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

4 " The creed of Hindutva that shapes Modi’s worldview says
nothing original or new regarding modern government, if it says
anything about this at all. It expresses a burning desire to make
Bharat Mata great but articulates no pathway of leading her there.
Modi wanted to shake up the system but didn’t know what to
add to or remove from it. He was not conservative in the sense that
he respected and continued with and built on the traditions of
government. He was radical, intent on fundamental change. But his
radicalism came without a central thesis and with no guiding text. It
was introduction of chaos to no particular end. The result,
unsurprisingly, was more chaos. His ‘disruptions’, a word beloved of
the tech set but loaded with grave consequences for the weak and
the poor, were unattached to any core ideology.
Disruption to what end? Disruption of whose lives? This was not
important. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

5 " The Union government from 2014 began systematic harassment and persecution of civil society. This harmed civil society but it also hurt India. NGOs provide the third largest workforce in the United States and more than 10 per cent of all
Americans work in an NGO.1 In 24 American states out of 50, NGOs
actually employ more workers than all the branches of manufacturing
combined. It is similar in the United Kingdom. In Europe, 13 per cent
of all jobs are in the NGO sector.2
To put this figure in perspective, consider that less than 10 per
cent of all jobs in India are in the formal sector. Surely this was then
a sector to be boosted and not obstructed, but obstruct is what Modi
did. Through his years, the attack on civil society continued as the
first two parts of this chapter will show. The third chronicles the
heroic and sustained resistance from marginalised communites:
Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis and farmers, which forced the government
ultimately to retreat on vital issues. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

6 " Index: The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index9
Monitors: Civil liberties, pluralism, political culture and
participation, electoral process
Method: Global ranking
India 2014 ranking: 27
India 2020 ranking: 53
Result: India fell 26 places.
Reasons cited: Classifying India as a ‘flawed democracy’, the
report says ‘democratic norms have been under pressure since
2015. India’s score fell from a peak of 7.92 in 2014 to 6.61 in 2020’.
This was the ‘result of democratic backsliding under the leadership
of Narendra Modi’ and the ‘increasing influence of religion under
Modi, whose policies have fomented anti-Muslim feeling and
religious strife, has damaged the political fabric of the country’. Modi
had ‘introduced a religious element to the conceptualisation of Indian
citizenship, a step that many critics see as undermining the secular
basis of the Indian state’. In 2019, India was ranked 51st in the
Democracy Index, when the report said, ‘The primary cause of the
democratic regression was an erosion of civil liberties in the country.’
It fell two places again in 2020. ‘By contrast,’ The Economist
Intelligence Unit noted, ‘the scores for some of India’s regional
neighbours, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan and Pakistan, improved
marginally. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

7 " There is nothing in the manifestos of the Jana Sangh that has
consistency or anything discernible as an economic ideology or any
ideas about how Hindutva would influence the State. The manifestos
are a collection of rambling and inchoate pronouncements.
The Jana Sangh stood for mechanisation of agriculture and
then immediately opposed it in 1954 (because the use of tractors
would mean bullocks would get slaughtered). It wanted industry to
calibrate its use of automation not based on efficiency but how many
more individuals it could hire. It did not explain why a businessman
should or would want to add cost rather than reduce it. In 1971 it
said it wanted no automation in any industry except defence and
aerospace.
In 1954, and again in 1971, it sought to cap the monthly
incomes of all Indians at Rs 2,000 and wanted the State to
appropriate everything earned above that sum.
It wanted residential bungalows to be limited to a size of 1,000
square yards.3 In 1957, it spoke of ‘revolutionary changes’ it would
bring without saying what these were, and in the very next manifesto
dropped the reference without explanation. All this is, of course,
because they were responding to Congress manifestos of the time
and had nothing real to offer of their own. Nor did they think they
needed to: with a national voteshare that till 1989 was in the single
digits, the party knew it would not be in power, would not need to
implement a policy and, therefore, was free to say whatever came to
mind.
The Jana Sangh did not have any particular strategic view of
the world and India’s place in it besides saying that India should be
friends with all who were friendly and tough on those who were not.
India should seek a place in the Security Council but there was no
reference to why or what India’s role would be, or how its influence
and strategic options would increase if it got this position. It offered
no path for getting to the Security Council. Entitlement would
apparently get India there. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

8 " Active demonization of the protest movement had already
begun while it was still limited to Punjab. At the end of November,
when the farmers’ march was finally stopped on the borders of Delhi,
the rhetoric against them was ratcheted up. The BJP general
secretary in Uttarakhand on 29 November 2020 called the protestors
pro-Pakistan, pro-Khalistan and anti-national. Gujarat’s deputy chief
minister called the farmers anti-national elements, terrorists,
Khalistanis, Communists and pro-China people having pizza and
pakodi. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Chouhan wrote an
article blaming the protests on vested interests. Law and justice
minister Ravishankar Prasad associated them with the mythical
‘tukde-tukde’ gang.
The BJP vice president in Himachal Pradesh called the protests
the work of anti-nationals and middlemen. The same day, the
party’s spokesman in the state called the protestors miscreants who
were the same people behind Shaheen Bagh. On 17 December, the
BJP chief minister in Tripura, Biplab Deb, said Maoists were behind
the protests, while Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath
claimed Opposition parties were using farmers to fuel unrest in the
country because they were unhappy about the construction of a Ram
temple in Ayodhya. He also blamed communism and those who
wanted to promote disorder and didn’t want to see India prosper.
BJP national spokesman Sambit Patra called the farmers extremists
in the garb of food-providers, another spokesman called them terrorists, and BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya called them anarchists
and insurrectionists.
On 17 January 2021, a BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh said the
protests were backed by anti-national powers.
A BJP MLA from Gujarat wrote to Amit Shah asking him to hang
or shoot the protestors. Even in March 2021, the slander of calling
the thousands of protestors fake farmers and terrorists continued.
The New York Times reported that this demonisation cleaved to
a pattern from Modi’s playbook: first the accusations of foreign
infiltration, then police complaints against protest leaders, then the
arrests of protesters and journalists, then the blocking of internet
access in places where demonstrators gathered. All this was akin to
India’s actions in Kashmir, and against the protestors of Shaheen
Bagh and elsewhere "

― , Price of the Modi Years

9 " Ganges, the Carrier of Corpses


Don’t worry, be happy, in one voice speak the corpses
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, we see bodies flow in the Ganges
O King, the woods are ashes,
No spots remain at crematoria,
O King, there are no carers,
Nor any pall-bearers,
No mourners left
And we are bereft
With our wordless dirges of dysphoria
Libitina enters every home where she dances and then
prances,
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, our bodies flow in the Ganges
O King, the melting chimney quivers, the virus has us shaken
O King, our bangles shatter, our heaving chest lies broken
The city burns as he fiddles, Billa-Ranga thrust their lances,
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, I see bodies flow in the Ganges
O King, your attire sparkles as you shine and glow and blaze
O King, this entire city has at last seen your real face
Show your guts, no ifs and buts,
Come out and shout and say it loud,
“The naked King is lame and weak”
Show me you are no longer meek,
Flames rise high and reach the sky, the furious city rages;
O King, in your Ram-Rajya, do you see bodies flow in the Ganges?. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

10 " The Economist stated that ‘most alarmingly, in India some of the rich have become super-rich by using their heft to crush smaller competitors and thus corner multiple chunks of the economy. The tilt in fortunes has rewarded not so much technical innovation or productivity growth or the opening of new markets as the wielding of political influence and privileged access to capital to capture and protect existing markets’. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

11 " Index: CIVICUS Monitor’s National Civic Space Ratings11
Monitors: Freedoms of association, peaceful assembly,
expression
Method: Rating—Open, Narrowed, Obstructed, Repressed,
Closed
India 2017 rating: ‘Obstructed’
India 2021 rating: ‘Repressed’
Result: India fell one grade.
Reasons cited: ‘The deterioration of India’s civic space is
alarming—particularly its assault on freedom of expression using an
array of restrictive laws—and its attempts to impede human rights
groups. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

12 " Index: Pew Religious Restrictions12
Monitors: Levels of social hostility and religious restrictions
Method: Rating
India 2014 rating
Social hostility: 9.0
Religious restrictions: 5.0
India 2020 rating
Social hostility: 9.6
Religious restrictions: 5.9
Result: India fell by 0.6 in social hostility and by 0.9 points in
religious restrictions.

Reasons cited: India was in the top 10 in each of the following
categories:
Countries with high levels of social hostilities related to
religious norms
Countries with high levels of inter-religious tension and
violence
Countries with high levels of religious violence by organised
groups
Countries with high levels of individual and social group
harassment
‘Among twenty-five most populous countries, Egypt, India,
Russia, Pakistan and Indonesia had the highest overall levels of both
government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion. "

― , Price of the Modi Years

13 " The government had no response to this finding, just as it had none when India fell in GDP per capita behind Bangladesh. In 2014, India’s per capita GDP ($1573) was about 50 per cent ahead of Bangladesh’s ($1118).179 At the end of the financial year 2020–21, Bangladesh was at $2227 and India at $1947.180 In the Modi years, Bangladesh has quietly doubled its income while India has produced much bluster without performance. "

― , Price of the Modi Years