3 years of Modi govt: Is admitting disappointment so hard?

Let's say govt creates new bureaucracy for cow protection. Oh wait, no, they're actually doing that

Let me ask a serious question of those who vocally argued for Narendra Modi during his rise to power in 2013-14: What did they think India would be talking about on his third anniversary as prime minister? I’m not sure what they would reply, but I suspect it would be something about new jobs, a freshly dynamic private sector, administrative and economic reform, investment in military reorganisation, a fresh approach to long-standing foreign policy problems. At least, these are the claims the less obviously religiously-inspired followers of Modi made at the time.

What are, instead, the issues of the day on Modi’s third anniversary as PM? Cows; whether army men who tie Indian citizens to the front of jeeps should be rewarded, and if so with what distinction; cows; child abduction rumours and lynchings; why taking away everyone’s cash was a good idea; VIP convoys; and cows. 

Just to be clear: I am not saying, on Modi’s third anniversary, that all those who thought he would be Thatcher or Reagan or Lee Kuan Yew, were deliberately misleading us. Perhaps some were. But others may have been mistaken, genuinely blinded by the venomous public discourse that had poisoned the last years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) into imagining that anything would be better, so Modi deserved support. (I never understood that argument, which seems persuasive only to the unthinking, the privileged, the fanatical or the stupid. If anything would be better than the UPA, then why Modi in particular? Why not anyone else?) 

What I am saying is that those who expected things to be otherwise should stand up and say so. But too few are doing so; instead, for motives that are part emotional, and part coldly rational, they find reasons to defend the decisions of a politician and a party that have constantly disappointed. Thus India has slipped into a truly absurd dynamic, which usually plays out as follows. 

Step 1: The government or a ruling party member says or does something ridiculous. Let’s say the government creates a new bureaucracy for cow protection. Oh wait, no, they’re actually doing that. Let’s say instead that it insists that all Indian embassies abroad have a gaushala on their grounds.

Step 2: Various people who should know better, but who now feel committed to defending their absurd choices since 2013, will search their souls and their life experience for reasons why gaushalas in embassies is a good idea.

Step 3: Op-eds are produced, seminars are organised, and arguments are made along the following lines: first, that exposure to Indian breeds of cattle will cause worldwide understanding of the need to protect the diversity of strains of domesticated animals; second, that India is already associated with cows in many foreigners’ heads, so this is a brilliant use of soft power; third, that everyone applauds when China conducts panda diplomacy, so why do anti-nationals now want to attack Modi’s new cow diplomacy; fourth, that drinking milk produced on-site is good security, the Americans did it in Iraq; and fifth, that soft pseudosecular Westernised Nehruvian deracinated Lutyens elites don’t understand Indian culture, in which all Indian houses that size are to have gaushalas, so embassies can hardly be exempt. If all else fails, the trump card is produced: Modi must have a plan, why are you jumping to conclusions in this manner, perhaps cows in embassies will be seen as a master-stroke in time, why must you always be so negative? At least Modi is doing something. Manmohan Singh didn’t even put a rat in any embassy.

Step 4: One year later, “cow shelters in embassies” are included among the points in newspaper round-ups of the Modi government’s achievements. (Meanwhile, there is no progress on tax administration reform, labour law reform, procurement reform, etc, etc.)

Slowly but unquestionably, this complicity, silence and outright support for the less progressive instincts of our ruling establishment, from those who know better, is causing our slide into being an also-ran country. Once we were close to being able to have the moral high ground on Kashmir; now we are a country that publicly rewards those who committed, on video, a human rights violation, and then sends them on television shows for petty political gain. Once people who came to India asked about how to make money, where to live, how things were changing; now, people ask first about cows and lynch mobs. Once people talked about how India was young enough to have a demographic dividend; after three years of Modi, with no progress on reform, on job creation or on anything but the infrastructure of anger, the same people talk about how India is young enough to have a demographic time bomb.

Yes, this government has transformed India in three years. But not the way you told me it would.

m.s.sharma@gmail.com; Twitter: @mihirssharma