Beyond mirrors and the smoke screen of Cow politics

In the last six months the political drama in India has been taken up a few notches.

To an external observer the right wing government seems to be altering the secular nature of India, and the masses seem to like it .

Be it the defence of the holy cow, the widespread lynchings, or the promises of the temple being built in place of the Babri mosque.

The crescendo is getting louder and louder even popular steps taken on humanitarian grounds like the action declaring triple talaq (this is an age old Muslim tradition of divorce) illegal or the action to find a solution for the forever festering problem of Kashmir by revoking of the article 35A

which renders article 370 of the constitution toothless, giving all Indians equal rights to live, trade, buy and participate in Kashmir (which is the only Muslim majority state in India) are being misunderstood as steps taken against a particular minority.

It’s important to point out that steps on triple talaq and Kashmir are widely supported by even the most liberal Indian.

All this maybe confusing the external observer after all Indians have always known to be guided by its secular constitution. So what’s changing?

The last decade saw tremendous progress in the Indian economy. The ball set rolling by the Congress party nearly two decades ago gained momentum, and India started to feature in the top 10 economies in the world.

In fact in 2018 India almost made it to the position of the 5th largest economy in the world as it recorded tremendous progress in IT, manufacturing, service.

This coupled with a large base of educated human capital augured well . India was always insulated from the world.The large population ensured that the demand and consumption kept growing at a healthy rate .

Advertisement

The year 2014 was in many ways a watershed one for India. The charismatic Chief Minister , Modi , of a highly economically successful state, Gujarat , was the face of the opposition BJP. A weakened Congress and lack of unity in the other parties saw the BJP sweep the polls and step into the ruling corridors.

This was followed by frenzied activity, aimed at proving everything India achieved in 60-70 years (primarily by the Congress) was inadequate and not up to par.

Modi, set a target of building a new India. A new India where on the emotional front, there would be a uniform civil code, in other words no appeasement of the minority (the Congress party is guilty of handing out benefits to minority communities for votes), reclaiming the past glory of India and erasing the geographic memories of the Muslim/British invasion/rule.

Soon they were re-naming most places with Indian names, erasing memories of the past, everything that a red blooded Indian would want.

On the economic side, Mr Modi promised the same miracles that he had successfully executed Gujarat, an economically powerful India that competes with a giant like China.

This dream was an instant hit, as Mr Modi seemed to have found the magic wand to do whatever he needed to do.

Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage, said Zig Ziglar, and that in my view is what happened to Modi’s plans.

In his first term he hastily executed two major reforms: De-monetization, in which a large part of the high denomination currency was declared useless and new currency was introduced; and GST (goods and services tax) a common uniform tax levied by the center and not individual states on trade of material.

Both these reforms were very ambitious and in my view should have never been executed together for following reasons.

De-monetizaton: This was implemented overnight throwing the nation into chaos. Nearly 65% of Indians live in rural India and operate small businesses which are dependent on cash transactions, they do not use e-money or credit cards, the de-monetization led to a sharp fall in the cash money available/accessible in the market and this arguably led to the complete disruption of the economy at grassroots.

Advertisement

GST: While the idea of a single tax was around for quite sometime, the details and nitty gritty on tax slabs, recovery and refund procedures were not laid out.

The current government fell into the trap of having to hastily execute the reforms ostensibly to gain political advantage at the forth-coming elections.

This led to a half-baked scheme being dished out in a hurry, leading to the collapse of ongoing transactions, while the industry and consumers got into a wait and watch scenario, making production and consumption to fell further.

Despite this, Modi’s credibility as a clean (non corrupt) leader saw him win another term, that too with a majority mandate. As we speak of a majority mandate it’s important for one to understand what is majority in India.

Out of the 900 million eligible voters, 67% voted in the summer of 2019 , making it approximately 570 million votes out of which the BJP garnered 37.4% votes and the NDA (BJP +partners) 45% votes. So, the BJP, Modi’s party , garnered 214 million votes.

This record performance urged Modi to present the country with another economic dream . He wanted to make India a 5 trillion dollar economy by 2024 which would safely cement the country ‘s position as one of the leading economic powers in the world.

To grow from a $2.8 trillion economy to a $5 trillion needs an ambitious (approximated) 12% YoY growth, which was to come from tax collections pegged at super ambitious numbers and economic activity.

As of now , it is evident that neither is the tax collection close to the plan, nor is the fiscal deficit hitting the projected numbers .

This hard reality is not easily digestible by over 200 million committed voters and , as politicians know, that such times call for a distraction.

India’s history has long been dotted with invaders – Mongols, Mughals, British, French, Portuguese – who looted the country’s resources and imposed the foreign cultures and religions on the locals by means of violence, rape or murder.

Advertisement

This is an indelible fact of the Indian history and while many have moved on, others still hold deep rooted grudge against the invaders.

Following independence, the ruling congress recognized this minority vote bank and ensured they build various benefits within the structure to help guard this vote bank, although most of the main stream did not accept this development.

To add fuel to the fire, Pakistan made multiple attempts to infringe on India’s sovereignty which failed miserably.

Modi, without doubt , despite of being one of the best options India has as its leader, is also an astute politician, and there is a possibility that he is aware of this deep rooted anger and resentment, and fully recognizes that all one needs to do is to scratch the surface to expose the resentment.

Now maybe you have started seeing beyond the smoke screen seen in India today, these are purely diversionary tactics often executed by leaders across the world.

As it’s evident that the economic parameters on which Modi achieved most of his political success may not be a possibility, the ruling party has switched to diversionary tactics.

But when there is need for such tactics to be successful then the success is achieved through whatever means possible.

Finally, who doesn’t want unlimited power at his/her disposal? Unlike some countries, in India Modi has no limitations on trying for a third term in power.

And if the smoke screen helps in ensuring this third term is safe, then we may just see more smoke screens crop up in a vicious cycle of political subterfuge.

In conclusion I strongly believe all that INDIA and Mr Modi needs is a few economic successes, and that should set the country and its people back to an express lane to economic recovery which will render all the smoke screens unnecessary.

Mr. Desai, former Chief Operating Officer of Daily Trust Nigeria, wrote from India.es