Samikhsya Bureau
Once again Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proved that it is only Modi that matters. He has mercilessly ripped apart the remnant pride that the opposition unity has been sporting for last six months by winning a shocking majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party. He deserves compliments and so ,one can’t grudge him his due of pride at this juncture.
Political differences apart, Modi’s victory, in fact, emerges from the footprints of last five years and hopefully head towards writing a new chapter, either good or bad that time will say.
While scripting an item on NDA’s track record down last five years it is difficult to ignore the promises and failures between 2014 and 2019. If we travel down memory lane there have to a few crystallisation down the line and what can’t be lost sight of are the wholesomeness of the picture painted for the people and the fading shades in subsequent times.
What was most restive was the hullabaloo over an overdrive on cow safety that did not not have the moral approval of Modi also. Opening of the floodgates for an unruly cow-safety (gau surakhsa) movement bordering on vengeance was perhaps not the approved agenda of any of the wings setting the parameters for such movements. Rebukes, physical assaults or even killings were few very unpleasant drives necessarily not required to put a community in its place or bolstering the other for a cause.
Hindutva, by virtue is a philosophy, which was seemingly given a metamorphic shape in politics, risking a sectarian division and slogans for Ram Mandir made the divisions more pronounced.
The country has the laws enshrined to take care of such sentiments and not through taking law into hands. Modi, reportedly, did not approve that, yet, such skirmishes dismayed all for some time.
Pledges were forgotten and that the new government under a more powerful Modi must look back. Whether creation of jobs or turning the towns or cities into places without a blade of grass yet we call it ‘smart cities’ and that was indeed a fantastic diversion of attention from core issues.
Crores of rupees were found allocated and the competition that followed to beat each other was sometimes uncalled for and hectic. In cities, even in Bhubaneswar, some such signage mounted on tall black pillars can be found standing amid piles of squalor, ‘Smart City ‘ written on it.
Or introducing high-speed or say, Bullet trains on the sticky tracks of the country remained a lofted dream.
Some of Modi critics rushed to dub the whole thing as hogwash and that was a depressing phase for any political dispensation and so was it for the Modi-led NDA.
People were getting bit tired of such things, footfalls of the general elections were audible, when Pulwama tragedy took place in which 40 jawans were martyred. Soon after came Balakot and there was no stopping to a situation when a wordy battle was waged between the BJP and the opposition. A kind of fierce fight over patriotism and the alleged seditious mindset of opposition trying to sweep the victory under the carpet of routine military exercise.
Undeniably, the dispensation at the Centre was for quite some time found trying to enrapture people to think only about nationalism as a copyright of a particular section and the opposition was seen struggling to make people understand it as a routine adventure against a rogue neighbour. That continued till the time of campaigns and in fact overshot its limit reducing the Election Commission to a lame duck at times.
But some purists find merit in the egregious dialogues by Modi-Shah duo during campaigns and the opposition was not ready to buy such filibustering as a campaign material. Interestingly, the EC failed to find any issue in either of the two.
