Another general election has kicked off in India and the big question that comes to every mind is how the common man will be benefited from this celebration of democracy. Spread over nine phases, the 2014 voting process is the longest that the country has ever gone through.
Approximately 814 million voters, who will decide the nation’s 16th government, are in a fix themselves. For a vast majority, who are supposed to be the real kingmaker, democracy has degenerated into a playground for elites. Indeed, Indian democracy today is best described as the rule of the easily manipulated electorate.
And egocentric politicians like Narendra Modi, takes the lead in manipulating mass opinion on behalf of the rich and powerful. For Modi, election is the perfect occasion for entertaining the public with grand rhetoric. His campaign, funded by selected elites spread across the globe, is an artful illusion created to hoodwink the unsuspecting masses. The tall promises are nothing but a mirage that will vanish once the election is out of the way.
How can one forget the shattered dreams of young Indians who were promised a bright future by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prior to the 1999 polls? Instead, all that the country got was high dose of unemployment and reckless downsizing of 66,000 employees per year in government organizations. Employment in the organized sector fell substantially and the rate of unemployment crossed 7.5 percent mark. Jobless workers, having voted for the BJP enthusiastically, ended up fending for themselves, even struggling to sustain children’s education. Moreover, number of registered unemployed jobseekers reached 40 million, which included persons with postgraduate and technical qualifications. Worst still, the BJP- led NDA government proposed a restructuring of employees’ social benefit schemes on the pretext of rationalyzing expenditure even as the cost of living became skyrocketed. And now, BJP’s poster boy Narendra Modi has promised to introduce a labor policy in India that will lead to a game of musical chairs among the unemployed. But can such neoliberal solution reduce unemployment in reality?
The answer is a big no. Even neoliberal hawks are coming around to the view that such a system has abetted exploitation and spread inequalities. And such inequalities have the potential to destroy the equilibrium in society, leading to large-scale chaos and insecurity. Members of the young generation who are today blinded by the so-called Modi magic are actually under a hypnotic spell. So spellbound are a section of Indians that they do not even have the capacity to recognize that the high budget Modi-propaganda is an unsubtle attempt of mind-control fueled by corporate money. And there is sheer profit motive behind spending heavily on Narendra Modi. Thanks to Modi, money and politics has become intimately entwined more than ever before in a nation where there is a yawning disparity between the haves and the have-nots.
Today, the relationship between money-brokers and politicians has been strengthened due to corporatization of electoral campaign. And Modi’s unnecessarily extravagant campaign is responsible for this decisive shift. He has virtually forced his opponents to match him in money power because in this age of powerful mass media, high-tech campaigning is extraordinarily expensive. Alarmingly, the corporate sector wields a far more decisive influence on Modi’s poll campaign than any other political personality and the Indian media is coerced into adopting a pro-Modi editorial line in violation of media ethics. Perhaps, the credit should go to Modi’s magical ability to reduce everything into a profit and loss agenda that politicians in India — a country of 269.3 million poor — is expected to spend a whopping $ 4.9 billion during the electoral contest, over one-third of which is unaccounted. And Modi leads the list of beneficiaries whatever his public posture on black money.
Unfortunately, not many in India are able to see through the dangers that are associated with this blatant corporatization of electoral politics. Propaganda and not hard facts are molding public perception today. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is a glaring example. Thanks to Modi’s corporate sponsors, Kumar, projected as Bihar’s development hero by one and all, has become a fall guy overnight. Modi’s desperation to attain power at any price will only give extraneous players a big say in policymaking. Such a unique relationship between an elected political executive and the business lobby has hardly existed in India ever since her independence. But the BJP is hell bent on introducing a “one-individual-centric” system where policies that matters to the common Indian will have little relevance. Modi’s “I-am-the-candidate-everywhere” attitude is reflective of such a trend. Modi indeed has no answers to specific questions about the much-trumpeted Gujarat model of governance, about corporatization of his electoral campaign and whether the cost of the support he receives from selected business houses far outweigh his commitment to the poor.
However, the most serious crisis that Indian democracy will face from Modi, if he ever becomes the prime minister, is an overtly intrusive surveillance system on citizens particularly Muslims. A Modi apologist founded and run media has already initiated the spadework by floating a story of the Al-Qaeda gaining traction in India due to support from educated minorities and social workers. Since, Modi has started showing his true colors by ensuring that the BJP fields no Muslim candidate from Uttar Pradesh — from where he is contesting apart from Gujarat — can Indian Muslims be any better than the Rohingyas under him now that his party has pledged in its manifesto to pursue the Hindutva agenda blatantly?
- Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.
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