Promises made by BJP to come to power in 2014, such as, 20 million (2 crore) jobs every year, Rs.15, 00,000 in every bank account, a US $5 trillion economy by 2024, doubling of farming income by 2022, cooperative federalism, a Congress-free (mukt) Bharat, evaporated in thin year in the last nine years of RSS Pariwar union government. People scurrying around looking for fulfillment of such promises, found so far were a big jumla. On the contrary, RSS Pariwar has been trying its best to gain power by raising people’s expectations sky high on emotive issues intoxicating their minds on Hindutva opium of religious polarization, communalism, divisive politics, minority lynching, bashings, Dalit, tribal bashings, attacking their livelihood, majoritarian politics, patriarchal suppression of women, gaining power somehow by false promises, regaining power, not addressing the main problems facing the people, unemployment, inflation, education and their basic problems of health and livelihood, above all, diverting people’s attention on a sustained basis through mainstream captive media.
During the period, democracy has been relegated or retreated to the electoral facade with the Prime Minister (PM) having centralized all executive power in him. He is everywhere and he is nowhere. On major issues facing the nation, PM maintains silence showing his complicity, creates some emotive or the other issues just to divert public attention. He is deified and insulated from public scrutiny. Questioning the government has been weaponised and anybody trying to raise his/her voice is incarcerated under dreaded antinational non-bailable crimes. People are suppressed for raising their voice. Council of Ministers is structurally there but for all practical purposes made irrelevant. There is no collective responsibility. Ministers and RSS Pariwar’s legislators are there to sing paean to the fascist. Parliament has been made irrelevant. Opposition parties are not allowed to raise their voice on major issues facing the nation. Yet the deity that the PM is has been projected inviolable/infallible. He has not held press conference in the last nine years as all the PMs before him since the Independence used to hold periodic press conferences besides holding impromptu media meet.
PM believes that he who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future. So slices of Indian history, literature and science have disappeared in the education curricula of schools in the NCERT textbooks from RSS perspective, while eliminating all facts. Accordingly, the Mughals have disappeared from history as have documented facts of anti-pathy of the RSS to Mahatma Gandhi, the banning of RSS, the 2002 Gujarat carnage, the industrial revolution, the Emergency, the Naxalite movement, references to the caste system and untouchablity. Portions in past literature works, critical of socio-politico-economic affairs, even now relevant to the present RSS’ communal, divisive and majoritarian politics, have been expurgated. Science too has not been spared. Darwin’s theory of evolution has been sucked into oblivion, as have issues of environment including global warming. Mythological past has been glorified.
About 13,00,000 high net worth individuals left the country as never before during the period, taking their wealth with them without any explanation from the union government. Besides, around 6,50,000 hectares of forestlands dematerialized, so much for environmental protection. Also millions of voters presumably construed as anti-BJP voters were removed from the voter’s lists and the Election Commission of India did not address the woes of the voters. Little information that used to come from the stygian portals of big power projects has since disappeared. Union government has now ordered that the web portal PARIVESH which used to post such information, shall no longer provide all information as it is confidential data and can now be accessed through RTI applications, which, as we know by now, are thrown into dustbins as soon as they are filed. In a nutshell, ideas, history and facts disappeared during the last nine years.
People of Karnataka reaffirmed their abiding faith in the very idea of India of Justice, Equality, Liberty and Fraternity as postulated by the Constitution in the May 10 2023 Elections to the State Assembly by rejecting massively the PM representing the RSS Pariwar feeding the people empty slogans of communal, Hindutva, religious and majoritarian polarization prompting the people to see through the PM and his bag of tricks. Karnataka was the fourth state of Hindutva laboratory after Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. During the election campaign, PM’s too much Hindu, Hindu noise equating the militant Hindutva Bajrang Dal with Bajrang Bali, to a caricature of a global leader (Viswa Guru) when he shouted repeatedly Jai Bajrang Bali and the Election Commission did not take any action for seeking votes for communalism, divisiveness and polarizing Hindutva majoritarian politics. People also witnessed PM’s fake nationalism revealing how elaborate his government has been in its cowardice towards China’s aggressive encroachment of Indian Territory. The poor Ram Bhakts are groaning under the inequities built into the crony capitalism of Gujarat model lest one business house from Gujarat should not be growing to a phenomally meteoric rise to second richest position from as low as 609 position among the worldwide richest as per the Forbs list without the support of the RSS Pariwar government. Government is not allowing a JPC to probe the matter and depending on its captive machinery of SEBI to get to the truth. If only SEBI had done its job, matter would not have come to the biggest fraud of the republican India.
During the period, middle class find themselves helpless in the face of growing police raj, which in several cases has degenerated into extortion racket, pointer being Aryan Khan case. There has been a systematic infiltration of RSS cadre into the four pillars of republican India, legislature, executive (government), judiciary and the media. There have been two tranches of lateral recruitment for central civil services including the All India Services, IAS etc. ostensibly to infuse fresh talents on mere interview basis on the premise that such recruits are highly qualified notwithstanding the toughest all India competitive exams for recruitment in the civil services, objective being penetration of RSS in civil services. The third tranche of lateral entry in civil services on mere interview basis is currently underway There has been systematic destruction of democratic institutions and the pluralistic harmony of the country.
More money vanished in funds like electoral bonds giving one-upmanship to RSS Pariwar with money and muscle power, the PM CARES fund and Non Performing Assets (NPAs) and no one has a clue about what happened to them. All information about them has gone into the black hole of the RTI Act from which light stopped emanating. The Election Commission too collapsed as it lost hundred percent its public credibility with level playing fields for all parties equally in conducting free and fair poll. Criminals and mass murderers also disappeared along with the very idea of justice. Hashimpura massacre of 79 Muslims in Meerut district in 1987 by the police is a case in point. After 36 years and 900 hearings, all 39 police accused were acquitted in May 2023. In another mysterious disappearance of criminals in the murder of 11 Muslims in Naroda Gam, Gujarat, in February 2002, a judge acquitted all murderers on April 2023. So who killed them, remains unanswered. So much for justice.
Country’s foreign policy has taken a big hit. Indian diplomats are now raising Hindutva’s issues across the world. The current rotational G20 presidency of India is not a major accomplishment. In fact, India was scheduled to get rotational G20 presidency in 2022 itself. PM rescheduled it for 2023 to project himself as a Viswa Guru (world leader) coinciding with elections in nine states in 2023 as run up to General Elections 2024. Showcasing PM’s large hoardings at various G20 grouping meetings serves the BJP’s electoral agenda at the cost of the Exchequer. Country’s foreign policy has now been compromised. It has become reactive to adverse reports from foreign governments or foreign media. Its defence of country’s democracy and rule of law is hollow as people know that democracy, though structurally exists, is almost non functional and redundant. Discord between rhetoric and reality is most evident in the PM’s blog, “India is microcosm of the world with an immense diversity of languages, religions, customs and beliefs”, which, in fact, are unprecedented attack under his government. Poor diplomats are made to defend PM’s rhetoric. It is appalling that our foreign policy has failed on deliverables that other countries are doing.
As for the normalcy in Jammu & Kashmir, the UN Rapporteur on Minority Issues Fernand de Varennes in a statement on May 15, 2023 demolishing the claim of normalcy said, “the Government of India is seeking to normalize what some have described as a military occupation by instumentalising a G20 meeting and portray an international seal of approval”. He said, “massive human rights violations have been reported in J & K since the Union Territory came under direct rule of the Centre in August 2019. These included torture, extrajudicial killings, denial of political participation rights of Kashmiri Muslims and minorities”. There are “dramatic demographic changes in J & K to overwhelm native Kashmiris in their own land. The G20 is unwittingly providing a veneer of support to a façade of normalcy at a time when massive human rights violations, illegal and arbitrary arrests, political persecutions, restrictions, and even suppression of free media and human rights defenders continue to escalate”
Coming to the minorities, RSS mentor M.S. Golwalkar had said before the Independence and Partition, “Minorities may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights”. It is this communal design that RSS Pariwar has been trying to build vociferously in the country. Golwalkar’s statements are gospel for the RSS to be followed by Andh Bhakts. As a result, minorities are living in fear and insecurity. Scholarships for minorities at all stages of education have been withdrawn and they are dropping out of and are reluctant to pursue higher education for fear of harm to their lives and limbs. There has been intensified all round aggression against minorities with deep discriminations.
Country’s economy has been mismanaged to the utmost disadvantages of the poor and excessive enrichment of the rich as can be seen in the meteoric rise of select business houses from Gujarat. Poor has been taxed adversely increasing the number of poor massively in last nine years. About 81 crore poor are surviving on dole of five kilo gram cereal each on monthly basis lest they should be dying of starvation. Country has gone down on all human development indexes including press freedom compared to our neighbors. Unemployment is the highest ever.
Government also failed to account itself to the people for its unprecedently glaring ill conceived three black farm bills (Acts) withdrawn after year long nation wide agitations by farmers and over 700 deaths, demonetization resulting in more than 170 people having died while standing in queue for 2000-4000 bucks, pandemic deaths of migrant workers, innumerable uncared for deaths of people about 47-53 lakhs credible figures from the Lancet and other reliable research sources, which is the democratic norms. According to a latest NSSO report, 39 crore 15-29 years old people are not getting any skill training, not even getting educated and are redundant. They are liable to be misused, may take to crime or even join, who knows, Andh Bhakts of RSS Pariwar. All the foregoing indicate nine years of PM Raj have miserably failed to satisfy even his Hindutva constituents, much less the people!