Since it has been five years now, everyone is quite aware that our Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reluctant about talking his government’s achievements in all of his political rallies, media interaction, public speech or in parliamentary meetings. He has established himself as a brand in these last five years. He has advertised himself in such a way that it has become very hard for the people to remove his image, however, a parliamentary query has revealed that the Modi government has spent around Rs 4,880 crore of taxpayer money on advertising its achievements. As the elections are going on in the country, it is evident that the historic opportunity has been wasted by the BJP government which won the 2014 elections historically by side-lining national as well as regional parties.
There are many factors which talk length about the BJP governance in the last five years. It has cultivated hate and there has been a sharp increase in the targeted attacks on Muslims and Dalits. More heartening is that the state government openly endorsed such attacks and attackers. BJP ministers welcome murderers and rapists with garlands. The government supported all those people who were against particular sections of society. The government has indirectly given them the law to take action against anyone they want to.
Thousands of cases of lynching, shooting, burning, and killing Muslims and Dalits have been registered in the last five years and every time a crime was done by the BJP workers Prime Minister Narendra Modi was silent and at the same time he was vocal about putting his condolences and condemning the attack, deaths, natural disaster in countries other than India. By using the Ram Janmabhumi and Babri Masjid dispute during his 2014 election rallies – Modi has been successful in gaining the highest mandate form the people and he understands it very well that how to play with the religious sentiments of the Hindus. However, in this game of politics BJP has divided the country into religious lines. It has created hatred in its supporters towards Muslims which is destroying the fabric of our democracy.
Freedom of speech has been almost stopped forcefully by the government and also there has been enslavement of a certain section of media which simply choke on any criticism no matter how innocuous the Prime Minister and the BJP president are. Media channels, newspapers, and journalists who were not pliant were blocked and stopped from printing, broadcasting, and sharing their views of the government on social media, the premises of media houses were raided, journalists were fired from their job, some journalist got death warnings, some rape warnings, some murder warnings and some, in reality, were murdered which include Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, Gauri Lankesh, MM Kalburgi, and many more.
Demonetisation is another stroke for the Indians which top the list of BJP’s sheer failure and the widespread havoc it created across the nation that it inflicted on the national economy. The disastrous demonetisation is being taught as precautionary subjects in business universities overseas. It failed on every aspect that the BJP stated during taking this decision like combatting terror funding, fake notes business, and black money. The demonetisation killed hundreds of people, broke marriages, shut downed hospitals, schools, and markets, brought unemployment, crisis, suffering and promoted bribery. Above all, as claimed by senior political analysts it was one of the biggest scams of the Modi-led BJP government.
BJP has weakened the government institutions. The parliament is an inconvenience to this government which prefers to rule the flat and ordinances. The Prime Minister rarely attended the parliament and whenever attended rather than discussing the legislative agenda or to answer the questions raised in the House, he always talked about his government, his achievements and the failures of the opposition. It introduced a draconian Aadhaar card and completely failed to deny the citizen a fundamental right to privacy. This government argued in the Supreme Court against the citizen having a fundamental right to privacy. It also argued for surveillance and labelled privacy as an elitist concern and failed to answer why it ordered the mandatory to link Aadhaar card to all services from school admission to railway tickets to banking.
Eventually, the Supreme Court had to step in and solved the issue. Rafale deal is another big scam in itself. The prime minister and his secret terms and conditions of a deal to acquire fewer jets for three times price, without following the stipulated procurement procedure is nothing but stupidity and cunningness. However, when faced with questions, the Prime Minister attacked the opposition and said that the opposition can query about the technicalities of the jet, not the price – it’s a matter of national security. Since the Rafale deal happened – Congress president Rahul Gandhi has continuously been attacking and alleging Narendra Modi and Anil Ambani for committing scam in the deal. However, as believed by the opposition leaders when the search was about to expose the documents related to the dealing of the jet got stolen from the Defence Ministry.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of AFTERNOON VOICE and AFTERNOON VOICE does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
We are all immersed in the world of IPL at a time the cricketing world is preparing for the World Cup. The stakes are high in IPL and players prefer IPL rather than playing an International event. With the result, the standard of the game going down considerably and confidence is shattered in repeated failures. The major players including captain Virat Kohli are facing a ticklish situation. His team Bangalore Royal Challengers lost all the 6 games on the trot and struggle for survival. Openers Dhawan and Rohit Sharma are repeated failures with the bat. Thus, the captain’s confidence is going down and the openers are not just a lamb to the slaughter facing the white ball.
Playing the nationalism card once again, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress party of the partition of India. Addressing a rally on the last day of poll campaigning in Latur, PM Modi appealed directly to the “first-time voters” to dedicate their first vote to those who carried out an air strike in Balakot. He said, “You are 18-year old now and you must give your vote for the country, for a strong government, to make the country stronger.” There are 1.5 crore first-time voters in the country this time, which is considered as a decisive role in winning any election. While the Prime Minister of India tries to woo the “first-time voters”, at the same time, he attempted to convince those who voted him to the power in 2014, to trust him. On many occasions, he appeared to beg for more time to fulfill expectations of the common man. A seasoned politician Narendra Modi never entrapped in disputes over unfulfilled promises. Instead of this, he opened new fronts and made new promises.