Both caught the attention of masses on same theme with little variation. Indira Gandhi talked of roti as the focal point of remove poverty and NaMo converted it to fight for dignity. Indira Gandhi had to battle against formidable alliance of opposition parties with backing them money bags and sustained media campaign predicting her inevitable debacle. NaMo was unknown factor leading the campaign against formidable forces in power for ten years. But NaMo was able to put aflame imagination of young with his promise of a job to enable them to buy their bread with dignity.
In 1971, it was a fight between nothing offered against charity. Opposition leaders were so confused that they put forward weird theories to explain away their defeat and not victory of Indira Gandhi. In 2014 Narendra Modi converted it into a battle between dignity and charity. He had comprehended the rapid social transformation of Indian society, particularly in lower strata. Swelling number of children in public education system reflected a changed attitude of even poor parents. Instead of dragging their children for child labour, they were escorting them to school gates. Realization of importance of education also brought in family size norms in the last two decades.
The United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress was able to form the government in 2004 as two insignificant elements had shattered the confidence of the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. One was the deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani using the shinning India term to launch the election campaign and second was enthusiasm of party functionary Sudhanshu Mittal to put the appeal for votes in voice of Vajpayee to mobile phone users. Both the mistakes led poor voters to turn to the Congress. Even though the Congress got only eight seats more than the BJP, it came to power with weird power structure that had inbuilt weakness of the government. Sonia Gandhi nominated Man Mohan Singh a lifelong bureaucrat trained in accepting directives of the political master without questioning his or her political wisdom. Arrangement suited to other partners of UPA.
Sonia Gandhi wielded power not with view to provide better political governance but with sole objective of passing power into the hands of her son, Rahul Gandhi. She forced Man Mohan Singh to cave in to every demand that had element of risks to survival of the party in power. She forced him to negotiate with Anna Hazare and carry forward demand of a group shouting from roadsides. She asked him to hold in abeyance the move to open retail trade in India to direct foreign capital participation after Mamta Bannerji, chief minister of Bengal held out threat to withdraw support. She caved in to drastically change rules relating to complaint of a woman that her modesty was offended. Man Mohan Singh was forced even to accept the scheme of food security against his economic judgment spelt a debacle for Indian economy. Image thus created, particularly in second tranche, had inherent invitation to the electoral debacle. It eased the path of NaMo who presented an image of a strong ruler by running the entire battle alone, with sharing public platform or allowing intrusion of others in his campaign.
The coverage of 93 percent villages has been provided with toilet to eliminate practice of open defecation in the theme of government propaganda machine without indicating how many villages are assured of enough water supply to keep them clean or the mechanism for safe disposal of human waste to encourage subsequent users. Open defecation cannot be justified though it is nature imposed necessity. In view of water supply difficulties, people were forced to use far away open space to keep villages free of accumulated waste and pollution sources in close vicinity to village.
It is worthy of note that no palatial monuments, forts or huge temple complexes from past era had provided internally close spaces for essential natural needs. Even the Red Fort or Fatehpur SIkri complexes have earmarked closed space for toilets. Obviously the high dignitaries in the ruling clans used mobile toilets as wealth in Paris or London did till 1854 according to Bill Bryson in book At Home. Keeping the polluting dirt away from human contacts was the primary concern in five thousand year old habit that stands condemned today. Construction of Cabin does not make a toilet unless it has assured water flow and mechanism for disposal of waste material. Villagers would not use new facility due to accumulated dirt and use of open space would expose them to police action. Can this claim be added to the credit side that NaMo government succeeded in breaking the five thousand year old habit with fear of police action? Will rural folks accept the claim of coverage of 93 per cent villages under new scheme? It is a small point but it does affect lives of nearly 70 per cent of population.
Take another claim paraded every week of rapid modernization of Indian Railways in last three years with more Super fast express trains replacing slow passenger trains or replacement of old second class coaches with new AC coaches. It sounds fantastic achievement in tune with most modern European net works. But they do not have as much poor population that needs travel facility and cannot afford fares. Then is this modernization not at the expense of poor travelers?
Yet another claim is NaMo government added 35 new airports to take number to 67 in last three years. It is also circulated as a big achievement like shinning India. Do over enthusiastic supporters realize consequences of this claim pertaining to improving travel and movement facilities for wealthy when their seats in trains are getting slashed every day in process of modrernisation?
INDIA
SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT ISSUES MAY UPSET POLITICAL CALCULATIONS
Vijay Sanghvi - 2018-09-28 13:17
The formation of political mind of Indian voters is complex and intricate. Even issues that appear to be insignificant can play havoc with calculations of all players in the ring. All politicians, their advisers and most political observers suffer a belief that money bags, muscle power, caste consideration or allurement of cheap goods and free services can and do influence even though evidence in five land slide verdict in five of 12 elections since 1971 knocks out the belief. The 1971 election gave ordinary voters the measure of power they have in election to bring about a change. That is the only time they can be kings and they do not waste and exercise their power in favour of who caught their imagination by putting it aflame. Indira Gandhi did it in 1971 and 43 years later, Narendra Modi performed the miracle.