By Sushil Kutty
Mr. Incidental Prime Minister
your record in fulfilling 2014 general election promises stinks to high heaven.
The Rs 15 lakh in every man’s bank account is a pipe-dream Pied Piper sold. All
the people got was Jan Dhan bank slips showing little or no money. You made all
the promises and then when you got what you wanted – BJP rule and the PM chair
– you went off on tangents, doing Tughlak-things – demonetization and the
midnight tryst-with-GST.
Little did electorate know
they were being set up, the 31% who voted for Achche Din and Ab Ki Baar Modi
Sarkar! They might as well have watched ‘Bluff Master’ on You-Tube than try to
connect with reality. You kissed Parliament floor, no less. Beat even Lalu
Prasad in histrionics. The single tear and bhakts in drawing rooms were left in
tears! What do they know of acting, suckered innocents?
Elections are when political
parties and PM-designates take the electorate for a ride with rallies. And
you’ve been on a ‘Mitron-trip’ from before 2013, promising the moon. Whoever
thought it would be thin moon and dark moon? The ‘Achche Din/Ab Ki Baar Modi
Sarkar’ has been the slickest publicity blitz in independent India, Chai Pe
Charcha adding to the intoxicating concoction. People fell for it like a child
for lollipop.
And that’s what they got –
lollipops. The speech-delivery Andaaz, post the 2014 elections, did not change.
The same ‘Mitron’ and the conspiratorial intimate tone, as if every man and
woman at the rally was close confidante, the words spoken only for him and her!
‘Go home, there’s a double LPG gas cylinder waiting, just delivered.” The
scheme named Ujwala with the message Kar Bhala Toh hoga Bhala! Acronyms fell
off your lips like start-ups that failed to start-up.
For the first year after May
2014, it was like ‘God, what a great man. See him in Dubai and Madison Gardens,
wow!’ Then, when Achche Din seemed as if delayed by smog and fog, the ramparts
of the Red Fort turned pulpit, and the ‘Great Hope’ went nationalist, full
gear. ‘We’ll get back POK and we’ll deliver the Baloch freedom from the common
enemy; we will have the terrorist running for cover. Listen to our speeches at
the UNGA. The address in the United States Congress, the standing ovation!’
And week after week
Man-Ki-Baat, straight from the heart via AIR, mostly hot air that cooled in an
hour. The Mars mission and 104 satellites blasted out into space. ‘Great
achievement, but brother, where is my dal-roti and paani and fertilizer? You
see the body hanging from the tree next to the lone tree in Famine Farm? That
is election promise made to sunken-cheek farmer who voted you to power. You
turned out more uncertain than the Monsoon.’
Not that there was shortage of
money. The Statue of Unity and other extravaganza that left gaps in the
treasury. Half the time, we did not know where the money was going, taxpayer
money. Unaccounted, where it was spent on what. There is nothing to show except
a bullet train! And the enemy-killed soldiers. Coffins carried on shoulders
weighed down by Doval’s cold-start-talk and Mere Bhains Ko Danda Kyun Mara
exchanges with Pak-politicians.
In between running up bills on
foreign tours, G20 and WTO and Davos, the hugs with Trump and Xi and Macron and
Crown Prince Zayed, well-heeled NRIs, hung on to your every word, not knowing
everything remains much the same in Desh they left behind – Pardesi Kya Jaane,
Modi Yeh Jaane. Yoga and Yogi! Just when Allahabad became Prayagraj and
Faizabad got christened Sri Ayodhya – Lucknow mercifully spared – Ross,
Havelock and Neil islands in Andaman get renamed. What about North Sentinel,
aren’t they citizens?
Forget that, after voters in
5-States delivered the sucker punch, lessons still aren’t learned. The cow
politics doesn’t head home as the cows do. In Bulandshahar and Alwar, the cow
vigilantes continue to moo and kill. Meanwhile, as earth completes its round of
the sun hear this faint voice: ‘Mr Pumped-Up Prime Minister, can we make
daylight in 2019? We’re, FYI, coalminers trapped in a rat-hole from 2018.”
Happy Naya Saal Mr Great Hope!(IPA
Service)
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