By Nilotpal Basu
In the last few weeks, it has become patently clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now permanently afflicted by a reality inversion syndrome. For him, the GenZ movement and the distinct anti-people direction of his governance is coming into direct conflict with the grave reality that has overtaken the people. The sure giveaway has been his repeated nocturnal reels and video messages which he is designing to address the yawning gap between not just his style of governance, but essentially the nature of confrontation that has characterised the developments of the last few weeks.
In his attempt to address this communication gap, he continues to indulge in the same kind of perception that is based on an inversion of the reality. Even after the vicious and grotesquely violent methods that has been deployed to meet the deep and wide opposition of young boys and girls, with an amorphous composition described as the GenZ. He has insisted on the same patriarchal patronising tone by expressing his apologies for the young protesters. He was particularly upset over the language used by the young women protesters. Interestingly, some of the young people have retorted with a sarcastic quip, ‘Uncle it’s late, please go to sleep’!
This is not about the age gap, the many generations that divide him and the protesters. It is more about basic vision. The young people have raised the fundamental question of accountability in democracies. He is unable to fathom that the basic demand of the protests was not just about forcing the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan. It was more about a redemption of the conspicuous absence of accountability flowing from the complete inability and failure of the government to understand the very fact of the shattering of their dreams, not to speak of redressing the deficit.
Modi puts the cart before the horse. Instead of addressing more basic things, he wants to postpone the confrontation by allowing himself to live in the illusion that he is still calling the shots and is prepared to accept apologies from the protestors for their responses, which he conveniently thinks is the fundamental issue that needs to be underlined. This is a complete inversion of the reality. It is Modi who owes an apology to the young people!
With the piles of real evidence, now it is more than clear that what the Delhi Police and other agencies under the union government committed was grotesque. The graphic details are now out. For the first time, pellet guns have been fired outside the Kashmir Valley to handle protests. The use of nailed sticks. And most cynical of it all, using a truck in their custody to store up stones that would be used to provoke violence and shift the blame on the young protesters. This is coming out not just in the cyber space, but very much in the hearings of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India. The top law officers of the government are caught with their pants down and top Delhi Police officials are found to be without any plausible explanation.
Who should apologise? The young students or Amit Shah and Narendra Modi, with the enshrined principle of collective accountability of the cabinet and the government? The answer is inescapable. Perhaps the absence of the Prime Minister and the Home Minister from the Parliament in the past almost two weeks is more eloquent.
Even after going through the hypocrisy of readiness to accept apology, the hounds of the BJP-IT Cell and the Hindutva Brigade continue to harass, intimidate and terrorise young protesters. In one of the most explicit examples, a 15-year-old girl residing in Noida was coerced to tender an apology. However, undeterred, the intimidation and harassment continued, forcing the girl and her mother to move out of their residence.
The government’s duplicity on the question of women’s rights is also becoming clearer after the huge fake complaint that the opposition was up in arms against the government’s attempt to pursue women’s reservation. A very broad based platform of women’s organisations has undertaken a continuous dharna to immediately implement the women’s reservation, delinking it from the census and delimitation exercises. But alas! The drama in Parliament was not aimed at ensuring women’s reservation, but to stealthily introduce delimitation to chase the delusion that a mere rearrangement of Parliament and Assembly seats could secure permanency to the BJP-RSS stranglehold on the representative democracy that we are.
The other aspect of pursuing this not so implicit objective has been through the obnoxious pursuit of ‘Operation Lotus’. What this means in actual terms, is a transaction of elected opposition representatives. These are also delusions of the same misplaced assessment about the inertness of people’s opinion and their articulation. The outcome of the latest bye-elections appears to be some very preliminary indication of what the mood of the people is.
Apart from what is happening inside the Parliament and around the question of electoral integrity, fundamental questions of people’s livelihoods continue to become shriller. The substitution of MGNREGA and the demand driven 100 days’ work with VB-GRAMG is aggravating rural distress and unemployment. The unity of the workers, peasants and agricultural workers is expanding to articulate such popular discontent. The workers have their own share of woes resulting from brazen pampering of corporate cronies, with the complete withdrawal in sectors like MSME, to further accentuate the crises of unemployment and underemployment. The Labour Codes are therefore seen as a source of repression, not expansion of their rights.
Consequently, organisations of the basic classes are on the warpath. On August 10, a very broad-based call has been given by these organisations from their well-attended national convention. The fact is that Modi and his acolytes, by delegitimising parliamentary accountability and electoral integrity have actually legitimised the streets and the struggles. The struggles are very much on and the people will force the Prime Minister to apologise. (IPA Service)
