HYPE, HYPE, HYPOCRISY!

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

EVEN if there were, in the past, some instances of the misuse of government controlled media in our country, what we witness today has simply surpassed all such instances. The fact is that the Vajpayee government seems to be bent upon abusing its control over the AIR and Doordarshan quite unashamedly. So much so that the ‘India Shining’ ads are still continuing despite the Election Commission’s comment that since the Lok Sabha has been dissolved and fresh elections are a certainty, these ads should be stopped forthwith. It is true that, technically speaking, the government can pursue its ad campaign till the fresh elections are officially notified, but it is also true that what is being violated is the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitution and the relevant electoral laws framed under the constitution.

Moreover, not to talk of government ministries, many official corporations and public sector enterprises are being arm-twisted to make them contribute to this campaign. As noted economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera point out in a recent article, “All the major ministries are contributing their zakat and pliantly beating Vajpayee’s dholak. The nexus with the business world is fairly transparent, too. Most of the ads prepare the public for huge sops to the private sector under the guise of ‘employment generation’ and related goals….. For those who have failed to see the writing on the wall, the recent propaganda campaign is quite an eye-opener.”

And then there remains the fact that, through these campaigns including full-page advertisements in newspapers, billions of rupees of the Indian people’s hard-earned money are being thrown down the drain --- for the sake of partisan interests of a single party!

MISERABLE FAILURE

BROADLY speaking, there are two aspects of this propaganda blitz of astronomical proportions. On the one hand, it seeks to project the so-called achievements of the government in the last five years. The campaign also covers the sops recently doled out to various sections by a regime that realises, in the dark corners of its heart, that it really stands on a shaky ground. This aspect has already been adequately dealt with in these columns from time to time. Suffice it to say that we are not alone to point out the fallacies and deceptions that the ‘India Shining’ claims involve. Almost every day and in almost every paper, there are appearing articles, reports and analyses that debunk these claims and make clear how groundless the so-called achievements are. At the same time, these write-ups also point out that India shining actually means that only a handful of the well-to-do are shining while others are simply accursed to continue living in poverty and squalor.

Not going into any more details, we will confine to just a single quotation here. A recent article in The Times of India (February 16), says: “By the government’s own admission, some 25 per cent of the country’s population live below the absolute poverty line. Real poverty --- in the sense of material, medical, educational and employment deprivation --- afflicts, by conservative estimate, another 25 per cent of the people….. there has been virtually no growth in rural employment in recent years.” And mark it, the author is no anti-government crusader. Nor can any such thing be said about the paper in which this article has appeared. 

This, then, is the situation at ground level. If poverty and unemployment are two of the real indicators of a country’s economic health, it is obvious that, despite its tall claims, this government has miserably failed to address these burning issues and thereby mitigate the sufferings of the people.

To repeat, we are not saying all this; it is noted economists and other experts who have pointed out, and are pointing out, all these facts --- exposing in the process the bombastic claims of the government. Can the BJP leaders dare to dismiss their contentions? We would like to see anyone of them doing so, if he has the courage to do so!  

 CORNERING THE CREDIT

A SECOND aspect of the ongoing propaganda blitz, and not unrelated to the first one, is that excessive stress is being laid on building the prime minister’s image personally. The claim is: under his stewardship the country has progressed as never before. A few sycophants even went to the extent of comparing him to Nehru. Needless to say, all this is sheer humbug.  

Just a few very simple facts are enough to debunk all such claims about Vajpayee’s stewardship. Even today, as many as an estimated 30 million of our compatriots go to bed without two square meals a day, and some 5,000 children are dying everyday due to malnutrition related diseases. Per capita availability of food has fallen in the last five years, and many died of starvation while godowns were full of grains. More than one and a half thousand peasants have committed suicide in the last five years.

As for employment generation, the reality became clear when, recently, some 75 lakh people applied for just 38,000 railway jobs in Class III and IV categories. And then the story was repeated when, as The Indian Express reported on February 13, there were 15,200 applications for a paltry 750 low level posts in police department in Mumbai. Moreover, in both these cases, many applicants were found overqualified for the posts advertised, which shows the desperation and grief that is churning our youth today.

None must think that the instances quoted above are isolated cases. No, they are very much part of a regular feature of our society where youth are willing to contribute to the country’s development and prosperity but are at a loss to understand how to do it.  

Road construction! The reality became clear when Satyendra Dubey, an upright and dedicated engineer under the National Highway Corporation, was gunned down in broad daylight. It then became clear that a large chunk of the money being spent on this account is going to the coffers of mafia groups, against whom the said engineer had sent an SOS to the prime minister’s office (PMO). But, despite the unfortunate fellow’s explicit request for anonymity, his name was deviously publicised by the mandarins of the PMO itself. The prime minister is yet to own his responsibility in this case. But are the people of this country going to spare him and not bring his government to account for Dubey’s murder?

Such, in brief, has been the real record of the prime minister’s stewardship.

Then, there also remains a simple question. Whatever paltry development has taken place in the last five years, could it have taken place if a whole series of infrastructure, created in the preceding 51 years, had not been there behind it? Rather the fact is that much more could have been achieved on the basis of the developments that had taken place in the 51 years preceding Vajpayee. But the regime is not bothered about this elementary fact. Instead, in its over-eagerness to corner the credit for itself, it evidently prefers to overlook the truth. 

UNDERSTANDABLE DESPERATION

HOWEVER, even though this exercise of building the prime minister’s image lacks substance, the compulsions of the BJP and its NDA hankers-on are perfectly understandable. The fact is that, bereft of any solid achievement to project, they think it is only Vajpayee’s charm that can help them cross the electoral Vaitarnee. Truly, they are in a very sorry plight.

The tragedy is further compounded by the fact that Vajpayee was indeed their biggest vote catcher but whatever charm he had had is fast wearing out. The simple truth is that the NDA government came to power on a more or less negative vote, and is currently afraid of the possibility of negative voting against itself. That is why they are out to utilise every fair or foul, mostly foul, means to come back to power. The exercise to build Vajpayee’s image is motivated by this very desperation.

That they are desperate is also evident from very simple facts. As an example, unlike last time, they have so far refrained from projecting Vajpayee as a freedom fighter. They projected him as such last time, and got a drubbing of their lifetime. In 1999, very soon it came out that Vajpayee was no freedom fighter but the opposite of it --- that in 1942, when he was interrogated by the British police, he had betrayed his own friends and doled out their names to the police. Those thus arrested because of Vajpayee’s treachery included his own friend Leeladhar Vajpayee alias Kakua, whose charges Shrimaan Atal Behari Vajpayee has so far been unable to refute. Moreover, when incarcerated, this man could not bear the travail of jail life for even a few days and came out after tendering an apology. The only thing the BJP has so far done in this regard is to keep silent over their leader’s role in 1942.

But is there anything surprising in it? The BJP was born in 1980 and its predecessor, the Jan Sangh, was formed in 1951. But as for their remote control, the RSS, can they cite a single case in which an RSS leader took part in our struggle for independence? We challenge them to come out with one such name, if they have. If anything, they sided with the British and their sycophant princes, as was clear from their role in the princely state of Kashmir in 1947-48. There, these self-declared nationalists sided with the Maharaja when he was resisting accession to India and were busy killing those who were fighting for Kashmir’s merger with a secular India, as an overwhelming majority of the Kashmiri people were demanding.  

This fact of the RSS’ non-participation in our independence struggle also provides the background material for an explanation of their present day communal drive. As we know, it was that struggle that bound the Indian people together, strengthened our national unity, and gave flesh and blood to our idea of a secular India. So much so that even the communal catastrophe of 1947 could not break our people’s resolve to mould the nation on secular lines, and this fact was amply reflected in our constitution. 

Thus, if the communal fascist RSS and its political mask, the BJP, are inimical to our secular ethos and pluralistic culture, this is understandable as this party’s leaders never went through the rigours of our freedom struggle.

HYPOCRISY GALORE

THIS is something that also gets reflected in the behaviour pattern of BJP leaders, Vajpayee including. If Vajpayee said that he is a swayamsevak first and a prime minister later, that is something understandable. If a member of an organisation swears by its ideology and programme, he is perfectly within his right. But till the time he is the prime minister, the constitution makes him duty bound to protect our people’s interests, the nation’s unity, our communal harmony and the secular and federal character of our polity. But it is precisely here that he has been doing just the opposite. If a fanatical mob burns a Christian priest and his minor sons alive, Vajpayee pontificates on the need of a national debate on conversions! Is this the way to protect our communal harmony? Thousands of Muslims are killed in cold blood in Gujarat and our prime minister lauds the achievements of Narendra Modi during his swearing-in ceremony. Is this the way to strengthen out national unity? From Goa, he issues a blanket statement that Muslims are, by their very character, averse to peacefully living with other communities. Is this the way to safeguard the secular character of our polity?

Truly, the hypocrisy of our ‘moderate’ prime minister knows no bounds!

And this hypocrisy is not characteristic of Vajpayee alone; it characterises the whole Sangh Parivar. Its stalwarts in parliament swear by a secular constitution and go on doing the exact opposite.

The latest example of this hypocrisy is the way they have sought to resurrect the temple issue again. Only three months back, after they won the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, they were shouting hoarse from rooftops that these elections were fought on the development plank, adding that the BJP would stick to this platform in the coming days. Then, one wonders why they suddenly raised the temple issue again. Was it so that they realised that their development slogan was not likely to click?

Incidentally, as a tailpiece, this also brings to mind the hypocrisy practised by one who was once a BJP stalwart, then became a former BJP stalwart, and is now a BJP stalwart again. We mean Shrimaan Kalyan Singh here. It was during his chief ministership in Uttar Pradesh that the Babri Masjid was demolished with all the tacit cooperation from his government. At that time, he not only used to swear by the temple issue but took pride in the fact that the said mosque had been demolished. However, after he was expelled from the BJP because of Vajpayee’s craftiness, his refrain was that the mosque was demolished because of a conspiracy hatched by top BJP leaders and that he was kept in dark about it, implying that he was innocent par excellence in this regard. And now that he has again rejoined the BJP and made its election in-charge in the state, he has again started swearing that temple would be his first priority. But there is nothing surprising in it. For, can a follower be any different from his leader?

It is thus evident that the RSS, the BJP and other outfits of the Parivar have been playing and will go on playing a devious game, even if this poses a serious threat to our national unity, secular polity and pluralistic culture. This is rather their stock in trade; rather one will be surprised if a fascistic outfit does not play any such game. The thing is that whether the people will enable such a sinister game to succeed. It is all probable that in the coming days the politically mature and patriotic people of this great country will show the BJP where its real place is --- on the margins of the political spectrum.