As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to market India in forum after forum on foreign shores, people at home have already started wondering whether the feel-good India story he promotes abroad is based on facts. In reality the national economy has taken a beating. India’s Q2 GDP (2015-16) slipped to 7.4 percent as against 8.4 percent in the corresponding quarter, last fiscal. Exports have steadily declined over the past 10 months. Domestic demand has fallen due to lack of government incentive to boost common man’s spending capacity.
Besides, the benefit of international oil price deflation is not visible on the ground. Foreign investors are playing safe by investing in existing entities rather than exploring new opportunities. Both private and public investment has declined drastically, industrial production has dipped and factories are running at 30 percent below capacity. And in his over-enthusiasm to put himself on a high pedestal before a submissive audience of expatriate Indians, Modi has resorted to stunts, most unbefitting and unbecoming of his high office.
No wonder, for the first time ever in independent India’s history the country’s premier is being compared with a “rockstar,” even in official discourse of foreign diplomatic establishment. Does it enhance India’s prestige? Modi bhakts, a band of Modi followers who loves to humiliate critics every now and then, does not believe India’s glorious past is being derided, her spiritual heritage and cultural mores are being denigrated and her prestige lowered before the international community every time Modi appears on stage overseas and consciously presents himself as a teen-idol stage performer.
As usual blind supporters never finds fault in authoritarian leaders, as they are expected to do miracles, even if it means infusing life in dead. However, converting the diasporas — who have already become the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) domestic electoral pawn in absentia — into strategic political asset, for accruing politico-strategic dividend, is surely fraught with grave consequences. According to a reliable government source, national exchequer is being discreetly used to further this cause. “Indian taxpayers’ money is actually going into mobilization of expatriate Indians for Modi’s non-official events, even though organizers are hiding behind the façade of donations and advertisements when they are asked to explain the source of money.”
Modi might have promised to facilitate diaspora investment back home, but surely, this cannot be the inducement for ordinary expatriates to throng his venues and splash out their hard-earned money on typical Modi-events. An intelligence source says that a secret profiling of people attending Modi’s gatherings has shown worrying results. A sizable section of Modi’s expatriate supporters see him not only as the savior of India’s global influence and authority but also as the principal face of Hindu cultural revivalism, which they feel is necessary in today’s context. Is Modi, therefore, stitching together a worldwide Hindu right-wing network to bolster the declared Hindutva agenda of “turning India into a Hindu nation by 2020 and world by 2030,” all in the name of wooing the diaspora population? The big question is does Modi’s benefactors in the global political leadership realize that people with jingoistic mindset can always destabilize the place of their settlement and that the Indian premier is wittingly or unwittingly sowing the seed of right-wing ultra-nationalism within the expatriate community?
A day will come when the same Indian community, held in high esteem globally, will be looked upon as a threat to the society they live in or work. Does it serve India’s interests or that of the host countries, giving Modi the long rope today? There are 30 million Indians living outside their homeland, who contribute an estimated $70 billion to the national economy each year in form of remittances. Modi’s aggressive courtship of expatriates is not merely for the purpose of India’s economic resurgence. It is also about political financing and ideological expansion.
A BJP leader, who handled the party’s fund-raising efforts, confided in this author that millions were remitted to their coffers from abroad under the very nose of Indian tax authorities. “Even wealthy non-Indian individuals contributed handsomely in the hope that Modi will help them exploit India’s abundant asset.”
And then there is the compulsion of domestic politics. Never before has an Indian premier exploited the hospitality of host countries to take potshots at his domestic political rivals. “This is proof enough that Modi does not view himself as a nonpartisan leader of the nation when delivering speeches before a crowd of non-resident Indians,” acknowledged an official member of the Indian premier’s foreign entourage, adding “this trend is ominous.”
Very shrewdly Modi exploits the inner disenchantment of the expatriate community, who have nurtured a feeling of distress deep within as they felt their motherland has simply ignored them for pursuing a career, far away from home. And Modi has successfully convinced the diaspora, with his half-baked truth, that it is his political rivals who made them feel guilty for turning their backs on the home country and that the BJP alone recognizes the achievements of non-resident Indians.
The consequences of Modi targeting people of Indian origin to sub-serve his party’s right-wing politico-religious agenda and the India’s strategic interests are immeasurable, contends the intelligence source, as there is every probability of the unsuspecting diaspora people getting caught in the strategic crossfire in this volatile era. Modi, nevertheless, remains unfazed as he continues to sell flawed dreams overseas.
