At home, in the world

Speaking at Davos this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made promises, expressed concerns and painted India in colours that I wish were as bright as he made them out to be.

Three things stood out as he concluded his 50-minute-long address at the opening session of the World Economic Forum in the Alpine town: a poem on freedom that he quoted; the assurance he gave to potential investors from across the world; and the concerns he expressed about terrorism.

I marvelled at the confidence and conviction with which he spoke in front of nearly 70 heads of state and over 2,000 global business leaders, when back home things screamed for him and his party to walk the talk.

Invoking one of Rabindranath Tagore’s most popular poems, “Where the Mind is Without Fear”, Modi extended an invitation to the world: “Come, let's together build a heaven of freedom where there is cooperation and coordination, not divide and fracture.” Back home, the only mind that appeared to be without fear was that of the mindless Karni Sena, another so-called fringe group responsible for terrorising actors, cinema hall and multiplex owners, and even children returning from school — all in the name of a film.

While this group went on the rampage across four states, all governed by the Prime Minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), these supposedly powerful state governments pleaded helplessness in the Supreme Court. The party that harbours the ambitions and aspirations to lead India’s march to becoming a superpower in effect said that it was powerless to ensure law and order if the film was screened in states it ruled.

PM Narendra Modi at WEF 2018 in Davos | Photo: PTI

Two of these, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, will hold elections this year. And the BJP, which is facing anti-incumbency and rural distress in both these states, would rather appease a caste and a community than risk electoral repercussions.

So, as India got ready to celebrate its 69th Republic Day, witnessed by 10 ASEAN leaders, not far away from the capital a mob protesting the film hurled stones at a school bus carrying children. Now if the states governed by his own party cannot ensure the peaceful release of even a film, then it’s remarkable that the Prime Minister should talk about building “a heaven of freedom”.

It’s also remarkable that he should talk about rolling out the red carpet for anyone wanting to invest in India. While he has promised that the red tape India is associated with will go, that’s not all that the red carpet should lead to. If at the end of that red carpet is an unpredictable environment, which rampaging mobs can exploit at will, then the promise of “ease of doing business” rings hollow. A government that chooses to be a fence-sitter rather than a decisive authority in matters of security and law and order cannot promise a safe business environment. A red carpet with holes is only uninviting.

The third thing that the Prime Minister stressed was the “serious” challenges and “grave concerns” facing the world. Here, he singled out terrorism as one of the biggest challenges. “Terrorism is dangerous. Worse is when people say there is a difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terror,” he said.

Now, who is a terrorist and what qualifies as terrorism? According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a terrorist is “a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”. In the broadest sense, terrorism is understood as “the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror, or fear, to achieve a financial, political, religious or ideological aim”.

How many such acts of terror we have witnessed in the past few years in the name of ideology — whether it is attacks and lynchings in the name of the cow, clashes over caste dominance and oppression, or threats and violence over a community’s pride (of which a fictional film is the most recent target).

The world has its eyes on India. In an interview to a news channel in Davos, Christine Lagarde, chief of the International Monetary Fund, said the Indian economy is the fastest growing among large, emerging economies. Our finance minister has projected that in 25 years, India may even be among the world’s top three economies.

 But while we keep our eye on the GDP, we cannot take it off other critical parameters — security, law and order, inclusiveness, freedom to be, to name just a few. Surely the Prime Minister must know this.

veenu.sandhu@bsmail.in