NRC: Trump effect among educated Bengalis?

So this NRC thing has me so excited that I can’t stop blogging about it even in my sleep deprived state.

Yesterday when I first wrote about NRC, I was convinced that, politically speaking, the BJP would reap rich harvests in both Assam and Bengal.

Why Assam? Well that’s obvious. The Congress in Assam is in state of open revolt against their leadership in Delhi. Tarun Gogoi has stated clearly on Twitter that he considers NRC to be “his idea.” Congress leaders in Assam are going around with begging bowl asking Assamese people to give them some of the credit they are showering on Sonowal. The image of “Jatio bir” Sarbananda Sonowal has never been higher. That goes without saying.

But there’s Bengal. My calculation was that Mamata’s move to invite 40 lakh Bangladeshi illegals (mostly Muslim) to Bengal would invite massive backlash from Hindu Bengalis.

That was yesterday. After interacting with fellow Bengalis on Facebook, I am stunned to report that this does not seem to be the case.

You can accuse Mamata of many things but you cant accuse her of not being a mass leader. Perhaps she has picked up on something BJP missed when she cast it as a case of “40 lakh Bengalis” facing injustice.

Honestly, I am still having difficulty believing that ordinary Bengalis would love to have more Bangladeshi illegals in their midst. Optimistically speaking, my theory is that this strange sympathy is limited to my small cohort of Bengali Facebook friends, many of whom consider themselves to be “world citizens” of some sort (there is no bigger crap than that!) Many of them live abroad anyway and while that’s totally fine, this idea of “world citizen” pissed me off no end. You don’t have to be a caricature and sing Vande Mataram five times a day … it’s fine to know and care about what’s happening everywhere in the world. But yeah… if I hear another “world citizen” Bengali saying that Trump is not their president, I am going to puke. Seriously.

How can Trump be your president, idiots? Your president is Ramnath Kovind.

So I am going to state my theory. My FB friends list is no representative sample, but then most “journalism” happens in India when rich journos talk to their taxi drivers and maids at election time. So why should I be shy that my sample is not representative?

You see the “world citizen” Bengalis hear this whole NRC issue and refuse to see it through Indian eyes. How could they? Aren’t they responsible for the whole world? What will happen to mankind (or ‘peoplekind’) if world citizen Bengalis are not there to maintain its conscience? The weight of humanity is on their shoulders.

So they hear illegal immigration and they don’t think about the violent Partition of India. About the millions who were massacred. About our land that we lost forever. About the pressure that these millions of illegal Bangladeshis put on our already overstrained system. No sir, they don’t.

They think about Trump and his policies with respect to illegal immigration. And world citizen Bengalis would rather give up their right arm than be seen doing to illegal Bangladeshis what Donald “not their president” Trump is doing to illegal immigrants in America.

Brace yourselves, folks. The left is going to use every single appeal to irrationality to justify keeping Bangladeshi infiltrators in India. They have done it to Trump. Now they are using the same playbook against Modi.

What did Trump do anyway? He ordered that illegal immigrants would be prosecuted as per US law that has been standing for decades. Because illegal immigrants would often bring minor children and you can’t prosecute children, it meant that the kids would have to be separated from their parents. That was the trigger for the left to start saying that Trump is “putting kids in cages.”

Arguably, under every legal system in the world, children become unfortunate victims of crimes committed by their parents. The moral burden of that is on the parents and not on the state.

But that did not matter to the left. They used the emotional card to devastating effect.

The left is getting ready for a rerun of this in India.

And world citizen Bengalis don’t want India to become “Trump like.” Even if it means giving India away.

My fear is that this is not going to stay confined to elite Bengalis. The virus will be spread to elites in every community. You know the type. They are small in number but very influential in setting the tone for debate in our country.

They are just going to take the children from Bangladesh and make videos that will be shared widely on Facebook.  Few issues are as tailor made for hashtag activism as this one. The PR offensive practically writes itself.

What will the Hindu right do to counteract this propaganda? We better start preparing now.

We have to defend Assam and Bengal

I am still on my way to Brazil, but when I opened Twitter and discovered that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) had been published and 40 lakh illegals identified, I knew I just had to say something.

First of all, the most important thing. This 40 lakh figure in itself is a massive understatement. Simply as a matter of policy, it spares all illegals who came to India between 1950 and 1971. It should be noted that this is not a consequence of Indian law, but an outcome of the “Assam Accord” signed by Rajiv Gandhi.

So, let us hold off the big celebrations. The publication of NRC is not kicking out any illegal in itself. In fact, every one of these excluded people will be entitled to “due process” before deportation. So, it is by no means certain that we will get to kick out 40 lakh illegals. On the other hand, what is certain is that after the publication of NRC, all illegals who came to India between 1950 and 1971 (and their descendants) are now safe from the law.

In my eyes, in your eyes and in the eyes of the law they are still illegals. Except that the state has vowed not to punish them. Started with a shameful surrender by Rajiv Gandhi in the Assam Accord and now cemented forever by the publication of the NRC.

Nevertheless, something is better than nothing. That is what Hindus have essentially been reduced to; people who have to live by the maxim that ‘beggars cannot be choosers.’

So if we are getting 40 lakh illegals kicked out, that’s at least a step in the positive direction. The battle for saving Assam has entered the decisive stage. Remember that in 1962, Nehru declared the loss of Assam on Radio even before the Army had backed out. The Dynasty for some reason has always had a fetish for gifting Assam to the enemy.

Today it is not just the survival of Assam that is threatened but also that of Bengal.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that her state is ready to provide shelter to people not recognised as citizens in Assam's National Register of Citizens.
(@iindrojit )#NRCAssamhttps://t.co/TA1Mqdl24D

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) July 30, 2018

Today its Assam and Bengal. Next it will be Bihar and Jharkhand and Odisha … and more and more will be taken away leaving nothing of India.

The global liberal press has picked up the story like lightning. The BBC generally finds fault with everything India does, but today I guess they are openly taking a stand that Hindus have no right to exist.

In fact, I encourage the BBC to come clean on this issue. State your editorial line once and for all and say that you dont believe Hindus have a right to exist. End the charade.

Are they nuts? There was a partition that happened in 1947. Hindus were kicked out en masse from Pakistan. Now the BBC is complaining that Pakistani Muslims are not being given the right to freely walk across and occupy any Indian territory they choose to?

In the coming days, brace for more such coverage as the international press covers this story. From the New York Times and Indian sepoys at the Washington Post.

But this time, if we allow ourselves to be misled by such coverage, it’s all over for us.

Lonely planet

I know this blog is all about politics. And really, I guess I am all about politics. But on a breezy Sunday morning, suddenly I felt the urge to talk a little about things that give me a sense of wonder. I’m gonna do that today. Maybe this will be the most boring post I have ever written. After all, we all like to believe that our life was unique and wonderful. But it generally isn’t. So this is really just standard late 80s – and 90s kids’ fare. And some reminiscing.

It’s a slow point in the news cycle anyway.

When I was a kid, school would start 8 AM. Since we lived very close to my school, I could be at home until almost 7:45 AM and then just walk a few meters across the street. This gave me time to watch almost everyday: at 7 AM on the Discovery Channel, the series Lonely Planet. And this image, which became iconic to me.

Even now, I can feel the rising thrill of the music that used to accompany this.

And then the presenter Ian Wright would belt out a few basic details about the place he was exploring and then finally, raising his voice to a high note, he would announce the name of the country. It could be Venezuela! It could be Nepal!

When you are a child, you have crazy dreams. I had so many of them that I could hardly count. One of them was to become an explorer and travel to every country in the world.

Of course, that dream didn’t quite shape out the way I wanted it to be, much like most other dreams. But I am lucky enough to have a job that let me travel to several parts of the world. Oftentimes, I will tag along some ‘crazy’ countries to my itinerary for short 1-2 day trips while away somewhere. Europe, with its flourishing low cost airline industry, with tickets as low as 20-30 Euros, is tailor made for such craziness. For instance, on a regulation visit to Germany for a few months, I would fly for a weekend in Croatia or Macedonia (and then take the bus to Kosovo). At Skopje airport, security stopped me for a very long time, demanding to know what an Indian could possibly be doing in Macedonia LOL!

That’s not quite a Columbus style adventure life that I wanted, but you do what you can.

Travel has always brought out two very conflicting emotions in me. One is the obvious sense of wonder. The other one is actually a very deep longing for the familiar and the homely. A longing for a ‘safe space’ (shame on me for using such a liberal term!)

You know what I like to do just before I travel? I like to roll up in bed and go to youtube and watch Satyajit Ray’s 1974 film Sonar Kella. It’s a classic that every Bengali man, woman and child has seen several times over, so much so that we remember every scene, every dialogue and every turn of phrase. It’s the ultimate adventure story : the detective ‘Feluda’ and the little Kolkata boy Mukul who can remember his past birth in a Rajput fort in Rajasthan. Mukul’s flashes of memory from his previous life tell of ‘Sonar Kella’ … a fort made of gold. This catches the attention of two criminals who think that Mukul can lead them to buried treasure. Ultimately, the ‘golden fort’ turns out to be the main fort in Jaisalmer, which is built out of the yellow colored stone that is abundant in the area.

There’s another reason I am telling you this today. Satyajit Ray’s idea of Sonar Kella was obviously inspired by stories of ‘El Dorado,’ or the golden city, believed to lie somewhere in South America, in the thick forests of the Amazon.

And today I am setting off for just that: South America, crossing the Equator for the first time in my life. Okay, it’s not quite the Amazon adventure: I am just taking a flight to Brazil and will be back in a few days. I guess modern life is just boring. But, like I said, you do what you can.

PS: I am taking three long haul international flights, back to back. So, there will be no blog tomorrow. I will try my best to blog on July 31 if I am not too tired. But I am surely going to be writing on Aug 1. Politics moves fast. Let’s just hope nothing too big happens in next 2 days. 

 

Maratha then Dalit then Maratha : Cong continues attempts to burn Maharashtra

Devendra Fadnavis is arguably handling the toughest Chief Ministerial position in the BJP. Here is a quick run down of everything that he has aligned against him:

(1) He is running the first ever BJP govt in Maharashtra.

(2) BJP has traditionally been No. 4 party in the state.

(3) No clear majority in Maharashtra Assembly.

(4) Dependent on “ally” like Shiv Sena which is worse than an enemy.

(5) Congress traditionally strongest in Maharashtra, held CM post from independence to 2014 except 1995-99.

(6) Job thrust upon him by Gopinath Munde’s untimely death.

(7) Not fully in control of state BJP: Gadkari faction is non-cooperative, Pankaja Munde looking for him to get trapped.

(8) Tough caste calculus : Brahmin CM in a state which has only 3% Brahmins.

That Fadnavis has still kept his nose above water and managed to do fairly well both in governance as well as in terms of elections is admirable. During urban polls last year, he managed to take control of 8 out of 10 municipalities on offer. In many of these cities, BJP was going straight from ZERO to power.

The BJP’s performance in local body polls at village levels, panchayat levels and Zila Parishad levels has also been astoundingly good. Again, in lots of places, BJP has gone straight from ZERO to power.

No wonder then that Congress is leaving no stone unturned to uproot Fadnavis. They began with the Maratha Morchas back in 2016 … and massive mobilizations they were. While ostensibly for reservation, these were really anti-reservation protests (much like Patidar protests in Gujarat). What they were really protesting was quotas for SC/ST communities.

The Congress loved this. No matter which side Fadnavis took: Dalit or Maratha, the BJP stood to lose. And back then, with UP elections approaching, the Congress was rearing to say that BJP is “anti-Dalit.”

But that didn’t work. By staying calm and pandering to the ego of the Maratha Morchas, Fadnavis defused the protests.

So the Congress decided to take another track. This in Jan 2018 at Koregaon in Pune. This time Congress was batting for Dalits against Marathas. So the protesters backed by Congress, Naxals and intellectuals spilled out on the streets, doing massive violence. The aim was to get the police to shoot so that there would be dead bodies. India’s entire intellectual ecosystem was waiting for dead bodies so that the feast of vultures could begin.

Again, Fadnavis acted with total restraint and the protests fizzled out.

For Congress, backing Marathas against Dalits didn’t work. Then, they backed the Dalits against the Marathas and lost again. Now, the Congress is back with the Marathas against the Dalits, hoping to get third time lucky.

This is how the Queen plays cynical politics, making one group of Hindus fight another, so that she and her son and their entire family can take turns ruling the country.

But as always, the Maratha protests have been defused again. Will Congress keep on with this or will it do another flip flop and this time try to bring out Dalits on the streets against Marathas? Nobody knows what is the thinking in the Break India camp.

If there is one clear victim here, it is governance. How is Fadnavis successfully defusing protests? By ensuring that the government does nothing when violence happens. This is a price we Hindus are paying for our own foolishness.

In Gujarat, the government tried to do something when Patidar protests turned violent. The result? The BJP got nightmares in Gujarat. No wonder the Maharashtra CM has learned a lesson from this. If agitators are getting violent, let them. Do not try to protect public property. If protesters are blocking a highway and inconveniencing everybody else, let them. If the public does not care about its own property, if the public does not reward good governance at the voting booth, why should the CM put his political career on the line? It is not fair to expect him to do that. This is on us.

No, “US official” did not say that China has resumed its activities in Doklam

For a while now, certain sections of the media have been publishing a number of half-truths seeking to the undermine the Indian Government’s successful resolution of the Doklam problem from last year. The latest in this series is this highly misleading headline that has been published by outlets such as Times of India, Economic Times and Hindustan Times.

Wrong, wrong and wrong! At least if you take the term “US official”, as I think most people will, to mean “US govt official.”

On reading the actual article, it becomes clear that no such thing happened. While the article starts off with the explosive assertion that a “top US official” has said that China has resumed its activities in Doklam, no reference to an actual quote is provided until we are seven paragraphs into the article. It’s almost like the writer of the story didn’t want the reader to find out where the quote is actually from.

So, seven paragraphs into the article, we finally get the direct quote:

““Although both countries back down, China has quietly resumed its activities in Doklam and neither Bhutan nor India has sought to dissuade it. China’s activities in the Himalayas remind me of its south China Sea policies. How should our failure to respond to the militarisation of the South China Sea inform the international response to these Himalayan border disputes?” Wagner asked.”

Who’s this Wagner? Turns out that she is no US government official, she is just a Congresswoman (equivalent to one of our MPs). This is just part of a question this Congresswoman posed to the US government.

So what is the official reply from actual US government officials to the Congresswoman’s question? Here it is:

““I would assess that India is vigorously defending its northern borders and this is a subject of concern to India,” Alice G Wells, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing while responding to a question on China’s increased road building activities along the Indian border.”

So the US State Department is of the official view that India is “vigorously defending” its northern borders. This is very different from what the article asserted in its first sentence when it said that ” ‘China has quietly resumed its activities in the Doklam area and neither Bhutan nor India has sought to dissuade it, a top US official has said. ‘ ”

The entire premise of the misleading headline that has appeared in all these well known newspapers was the question from a Congresswoman and *not* the reply from the United States Government.

Just like MPs in India, questions from members of members of the US Congress are just that: questions. And the US has its fair share of misinformed (and sometimes hilariously so) politicians who ask all sorts of questions. To give you a taste of how much of a circus these Congressional hearings can be (and for some comic relief), here is a “question” asked in one such hearing:

That’s Congressman Hank Johnson expressing his fear that if the US military sends too many troops to the tiny island of Guam, the island might actually “tip over and capsize.”

No, seriously. He even made a motion with his hands showing how the island might tip over. You can watch the full video here.

I challenge you not to laugh at this question. To his great credit, the military official managed to keep a straight face as he replied, “We don’t anticipate that.”

Yes, that is how downright silly these questions asked at Congressional hearings can be. To think that the Indian press would seize on a random question from a random Congresswoman and make a headline out of that. On a subject as serious as Doklam!

Imagine if every wild assertion of every Indian MP were quoted in the foreign press as “Indian official says …”

Misleading? You bet!

 

So a pro-terrorist guy has won elections in Pak, what’s new?

First of all, I have never seen Pakistan ‘elections’  covered with such fervor in India. I say ‘elections’ because we all know that there is no such thing as a real election in Pakistan. The people of peace are still a few centuries away from the level of civilization needed for that.

But as of now, they say that Imran Khan is winning. Unless the Pakistani deep state suddenly changes its mind (and they well might), it seems he will be Prime Minister. Until the mullahs and the Army decide to hang him out to dry, possibly literally.

Yesterday and today I saw some commentators in Indian media, many of whom I respect, say that Imran Khan and his PTI may be the “worst”  from an Indian point of view. In support of this, they claim that Imran Khan has an understanding with the Taliban, with the despots in the Pakistani Army and has made fundamentalist Islam (blasphemy laws / brutal oppression of women) a cornerstone of his campaign.

While I respect these views and admit that they are coming from a good place, I must say that I hardly share their concerns about Imran Khan being the “worst.”  Tell me who is not the “worst.”

So Imran Khan is friends with the Taliban and is sponsored by the Pakistani Army. Which political party in Pakistan isn’t? They may have teeny tiny factional fights now and then, but they are tentacles of the same poisonous jellyfish.

Remember how Nawaz Sharif stabbed Atal ji in the back and we lost 500 valiant soldiers? Incidentally, today is Kargil Vijay Diwas as well.

What about the Bhutto clan? Aren’t they the people who founded the Taliban itself?

They are saying that the Army might have rigged elections. Umm, okay. Does that mean Pakistan had free and fair elections before?

It is Pakistan and its people that are rigged. No matter how you roll the dice, how many times you roll the dice and whether you use loaded dice, you are always gonna end up with terrorists and losers.

So, why worry if it Imran Khan or one of the Sharifs or one of the Bhuttos?

I guess my lack of concern comes from a total contempt towards all sections of the Pakistani people and all components of the Pakistani state. I regard them as irredeemable. Tell me which group in Pakistan is not a cancer to the world?

Of course when I say “all” I don’t mean every single person. There are Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs, for whom I have every sympathy. There is the occasional genius like Nobel winning physicist Abdus Salam. He suggested that Pakistan (and the Muslim world in general) take a few steps out of backwardness … and that’s why the Pakistanis went and desecrated even his grave. How could they possibly have done otherwise?

So, yeah, “all” except a handful of Pakistanis are irredeemable. In terms that liberals would recognize, let me just say that I would put 95% of Pakistanis into the proverbial “basket of deplorables.”

So my suggestion is that enjoy the show in Pakistan with a little popcorn and some butter on the side. Don’t take it too seriously. Let talking heads on TV analyse it this way or that. Just remember that no matter who wields power over there, Pakistan is always going to be a nuclear rogue state and a disgrace to the world.

‘North Korean channel’ to ‘Hindu Pak’: Insults used by seculars put focus on their own crimes

“Hindu Pakistan,” Shashi Tharoor quips. Even before the controversy over that one subsides, he follows it up with cries of “Hindu Taliban.”

Let’s leave aside for the moment the politics behind Tharoor’s newly ‘Janeudhari’ Party disavowing his comments. Expressions such as “Hindu Taliban” and “Hindu Pakistan” had been doing the rounds among ‘secular’ voices on social media long before Tharoor used them. Instead, I want to point out just how astonishingly self-defeating those insults are.

So they want to speak ill of the Hindu right. And they do so by speaking of “Hindu Pakistan.”

So Pakistan is a bad thing, eh? You mean, several million Muslims split from their fellow Indians, founded an independent nation at the same exact time as we did and it didn’t go well? You mean the place became such a cesspool of violence and terrorism that Pakistan’s name is to be used today as an insult in itself? How come? Whatever happened to Islam being a religion of peace?

Much the same can be said for the term “Hindu Taliban.” Where’s the peace?

Now, every political party uses exaggeration and rhetoric to discredit its opponents. But why are opponents of the Hindu right having to borrow names of violent Islamist and Leftist organizations to coin insults against the RSS/BJP?

Why the need to talk about “Hindu Taliban” at all? Is it because they are failing to find something in the millennia old history of Indian Hindus that can serve as a metaphor for absolute evil?

Here’s another pejorative they use: “India’s North Korean channels.” The expression is used on social media to mock certain news channels that are accused of having a pro-Modi editorial stance.

Okay, but why “North Korean channel”? I know, because North Korea has a Communist government, because of which the media there is only ever allowed to talk about how great the ruling Communists are!

So basically the left is accusing the Hindu right of forcing sections of media to become as bad as leftist media under leftist regimes?

As I said earlier, that is astonishingly self-defeating coming from opponents of the Hindu right. And hilarious to boot.

I thought the Mahagathbandhan of Leftists and Islamists was trying to put the focus on alleged excesses of the Hindu right with their name calling. Instead, all I can see is them drawing attention to their own crimes.

There’s more. What term do Modi’s detractors use when they accuse him of stifling free expression of artists, journalists, writers, students and filmmakers?

You guessed it! They call it “undeclared Emergency.”

Facepalm! They did it again!

The problem that Modi’s detractors are facing is obvious. Whether they dig into history or into current affairs, everything that they could use as a metaphor for evil just so happens to have been perpetrated by their allies the Islamists, their allies the Leftists or self-proclaimed Bharat Ratna Indira Gandhi.

And that is why the imagination of liberals is failing them when it comes to coining insults against the Hindu right. Even that of the aristocratic Tharoor, with the entire farrago of the last five hundred years of the English language at his disposal. No matter how much they try, their insults end up looking like this:

<Qualifier> + <Something bad that Congress, Leftists or Islamists did>

The Hindu right, on the other hand, faces no such problem in designing its own rhetoric. Consider the term “Urban Naxal”  that the Hindu right has begun using recently to attack its opponents. The metaphor for evil used here is that of “Naxals,” i.e., violent leftists who have murdered hundreds of innocent people.

So, what’s left of the insults that enemies of the Hindu right like to use? There’s always “Fascist.” From JNU professors to Congressi intellectuals, they love to refer to the RSS as ‘fascist.’ Ah! The word fascism comes from the Italian word ‘fascio,’ meaning a ‘bundle of sticks.’ It became an established political philosophy under Mussolini, who was endorsed by the Pope himself in return for giving the Catholic Church authority over Vatican City and a big wad of cash. There is enough in those last two sentences to make sections of India’s secular establishment highly uncomfortable.

Finally, there’s “Bhakt.” I guess they would call me one. I’ll give them this much: that one does not make any reference to any great evil perpetrated by Congress, Islamists or Communists. If there is any historical reference there, it is to the Bhakti movement which emphasized love and compassion towards all living things and sometimes advocated extreme forms of non-violence. You can go ahead and call me a Bhakt, I don’t mind.

Of course, the honest thing here for opponents of the Hindu right to do would be to give up. To admit that there is no civilization that has been historically more tolerant and peaceful than that of the Hindus of India. To stop presenting Islam as a religion of peace,  to stop presenting Communism as a form of social justice and to stop presenting India’s biggest zamindars as allies of the poor and downtrodden. But that would take more honesty than they will ever have.

Why did Wire journalist Arfa Khanum want an Australian thrown into Indian jail?

Commensurate with India’s growing power and significance in the world, political developments in India are closely watched not only inside the country but also abroad.  And so it was that the debate, theatrics and the antics of Indian Parliamentarians during the recent No Confidence Motion attracted comments from people all over the globe.

Including from Imam Tawhidi, an Australian Imam who owns the Twitter handle @Imamofpeace.

You could agree with him or not. You could choose to simply move on.

But not if you are a Wire reporter who cannot tolerate a word of criticism against The Great Naamdar of the Gandhi Dynasty. How dare someone show disrespect to Rahul Gandhi? He MUST be thrown in jail! The Wire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani couldn’t bear this.

That’s all it takes folks. That’s all it takes to strip away the carefully conjured mask of tolerance created by Islamists on the left. One word against Rahul Gandhi and the facade falls away completely.

I should mention here that Imam Tawhidi gets tons of hate from the ‘secular’ left because of his outspoken stance against Islamic fundamentalism. And now someone wants him to be charged for ‘interfering’ in internal affairs of India. All because he called Rahul Gandhi a ‘joke.’

Charged? For what? Is Wire’s Arfa Khanum living in the 7th century or what?

That’s not how we do it in this century any more, Arfa. You’re thinking about the wrong point in time.

Just think about your social media feed for a moment. Think about the thousands of caustic comments, cartoons and memes on President Trump, on Obama and other politicians in countries across the globe. Imagine if everyone who called Trump a ‘joke’ were charged by the US government of interfering in their internal affairs.

The Wire itself is deeply plugged into this new media universe and thrives in it’s culture of irreverence.

But all it takes is one tweet calling their dear leader Rahul Gandhi a ‘joke’ and Wire reporters go reeling backwards from the 21st century to the 7th century. Back to their real philosophical roots.

This must be a symptom of the ‘moolbhoot soch‘ (ideological roots) and ‘chatpatahat‘ (uneasiness) that Modi touched on in his farewell to Hamid Ansari.

Incidentally, the same Arfa Khanum used to be at Rajya Sabha TV back in the day when Hamid Ansari was running it.

Right now, with a BJP government in power, we can feel the chatpatahat in the mind of Wire reporters as they have to adopt a 21st century mindset towards dissent and free speech. They can’t wait for Rahul Gandhi to become PM so that they can return to their ideological roots in the 7th century.

Most important monsoon of our lifetimes is going well

Some time ago, I had written a very excited post about a bumper monsoon this year. Then, after a very strong start, the monsoon quietened down for a couple of weeks and so did my spirits. Although I trust the IMD and its predictions very much (This is actually one highly competent government agency that does not get much credit), we all know that weather predictions can fail. Unless the rain is actually on the ground and is soaking into the soil, we cannot say for sure.

Truth be told, about two weeks ago, I had a gnawing feeling of nervousness regarding the monsoon. After a rapid charge over Southern and Central India, it seemed that the monsoon had all but stopped. To make things worse, there were niggling reports in the media about how the crucial low pressure areas over Bay of Bengal were still awaited. And I knew that there is supposed to be the whole El Nino thing by September this year.

Let’s be real: if rains had failed this year, no one could have stopped Congress from roaring into power in 2019.

Luckily the law of averages has smiled on us. After back to back failed monsoons in 2014 and 2015, the IMD prediction for 2018 stands vindicated as usual.

Oh what a feast for the eyes. Look at the whole of Maharashtra soaked in plentiful rain. In Marathwada and Madhya Maharashtra, the rainfall excess is as much as 20-31%. The rainfall excess is a staggering 41% in Vidarbha and an eye popping 51% in Konkan and Goa.

Gone with this monsoon are the hopes of all the ‘farmer leaders’ of Maharashtra. You vultures are not getting dead bodies this year.

And look at Gujarat, a chronically arid region, which was also opened up a healthy rainfall excess of 2-9%. Gone with it are hopes of Congress of clawing back some seats in rural Gujarat.

Then, there is Madhya Pradesh, which goes to elections later this year. Western MP is bathed all in blue, with a rainfall excess of 20%. Eastern MP has a small deficit of 5%, but that’s well within the ‘green’ zone. Not only is it raining cats and dogs in Madhya Pradesh, the opposition Congress are fighting among themselves like cats and dogs. A huge sigh of relief for Shivraj Singh Chouhan. If Madhya Pradesh had fallen, 2019 was as good as over.

I was really anxious about Chhattisgarh, considering that all reports indicate that BJP is going down in Rajasthan. Two weeks ago, I remember them with a small deficit of around 6%, but now the region has opened up a clear 1% excess, establishing them in the green zone. Wonderful news.

In fact, Rajasthan has seen a huge rainfall surplus of 14-17%. While it will clearly not turn around the result of the election, it might help BJP cross the 70 seat mark. Especially if the PM capitalizes on his dizzying popularity in urban areas.

So far so good. Everything seems to be bearing out the IMD’s prediction that the monsoon will advance slowly but bountifully this year. The Ganga-Brahmaputra belt from Uttar Pradesh in the West to Assam in the East is still awaiting the big rains.

But fear not. The depression has arrived, exactly where we needed it to be. Through Northern Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

That line you see is a long track of liberal tears traveling towards Uttar Pradesh.

Let’s hope this year we are blessed with a bounty of rainfall and liberal teardrops. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that liberal tears have the special property of not being salty at all. In fact, there is nothing as sweet as them.

PM has taken Uttar Pradesh into his own hands : will it work?

Ever since Amit Shah arrived in Uttar Pradesh around the Fall of 2013, the state has turned into the biggest enigma of Indian politics. The stunning thing is that the electorate isn’t moving, its politics seems to have become frozen in 2014.

40% for Modi, 50% for SP+BSP+Cong and 10% for ‘others’.

This is what happened in 2014; this is exactly what was repeated in 2017.

A Jan ki Baat survey, recently published on Mynation.com, showed that the ‘favorability’ of the Mahagathbandhan was exactly 50% in Uttar Pradesh, i.e., the combined vote share of SP, BSP and Cong.

This means that by far, Modi is the most popular man in Uttar Pradesh and the BJP is by far the most popular party. This is also stunning: not one voter seems to have had second thoughts since 2014 on any side of the aisle. Modi hasn’t lost a single voter since 2014 and neither have people on the other side.

The problem is now that Akhilesh and Mayawati have combined their votes, the BJP has to deal with the fact that not a single voter has been gained since 2014. Let alone the 5% shift required to breach the gap.

Mindful of this, the Prime Minister has started touring Uttar Pradesh with a zeal similar to 2013. This is his 3rd visit in 30 days: began with Noida in the West, then to lay the foundation for Purvanchal Expressway in the East and now to Shahjahanpur in Central UP. The crowds are there, you can see the enthusiasm unabated. It’s like 2013-14 all over again. Look in the eyes of the cheering crowds: Modi might be even more popular in Uttar Pradesh than in Gujarat.

But these are the converted : the ones who already supported Modi in 2014. Where are we going to find 5% more voters who will turn to BJP?

I don’t know and frankly I think the answer is ‘no’. In Bihar, the BJP could not overcome the arithmetic lead of 5-6%. A gap of 10% seems out of reach.

But then UP and Bihar are different. In 2013, the BJP vote share climbed from 15% to 42% in a matter of months, a rise of 27%. The only comparable jump in BJP vote shares would have been in Tripura, where it rose by some 40%. Just imagine the sheer size and scale of Uttar Pradesh and you see what a miracle Amit Shah pulled off.

There are reasons why this could only have happened in Uttar Pradesh. First, the state has a traditional Ram Leher vote. It had been lying dormant for 15 years, put off by the apathy and lackluster performance of the state BJP. Second the state is much more urbanized when compared to Bihar. In Bihar, it is Mandal politics that runs in the veins, while in Uttar Pradesh it is Hindutva politics that has deep roots among the electorate.

With Bihar securely in the bag, it is all about Uttar Pradesh now. The first, low hanging fruit for the BJP is the voter turnout. Every pro-BJP voter has to be tapped and brought out to the voting booths. This is where the PM has to remind his supporters that the 20% will not be lazy on voting day. If you are favorable towards BJP and you don’t go out to vote, it will be on your conscience when the 20% get to trample you for the next 5 years.

Yeah, fear must be made a factor. It has to be.

The other side isn’t even deploying a single worker on the ground. They have long stopped doing rallies or public meetings. They are sitting comfortably in AC rooms and admiring the tap fittings they stole from their government bungalows. They are relaxing, secure in the knowledge that the arithmetic of alliance will do all their work for them.

This is where the naamdar vs kaamdar angle must be brought in. There is now enough evidence that ‘naamdar’ is the new jibe that will replace ‘Shehzada’ from 2014.

Everybody can see Akhilesh’s strategy of playing it cozy now that he has an alliance locked up. Same with Rahul Gandhi who insists these days that Modi won’t even win Varanasi. While their confidence is not misplaced, their arrogance has to be exposed before the people.

Only Modi comes to the people. The others seal alliances in AC rooms.

The third major weapon is to saturate the state of Uttar Pradesh with welfare schemes. On this, the PM has spared no effort. I am no fan of big government socialist welfare schemes. But I am a really big fan of political survival. The BJP can get around to the work of changing the 70 year old mai-baap Nehruvian mindset of the people some other time. Not in the election year.

The next weapon is to aggressively monetize Yogi’s ‘tough on crime’ image. Everybody remembers the goonda raj of the Akhilesh years. After Yogi arrived, criminals in the state began to fear for their lives for the first time in years.

The final and perhaps most crucial step is to search for the ‘national vote’ in Uttar Pradesh. This is a very interesting phenomenon that seems to exist only in this state. While most states have a ‘regional votebank,’ the state of Uttar Pradesh seems to have a special ‘national votebank.’  This is because the average person in UP is aware of the pre-eminent position of the state in national political consciousness. People of Uttar Pradesh are very secure about their place in the country. They are proud of it. There’s no regional sentiment to tap into. That’s why ‘UP ke ladke’ was such a flop.

Who could have thought that Congress would have got 22 seats from Uttar Pradesh in 2009? Zero organization. Zero cadres. But there was a nationwide pro-Congress mood and the voter went with it, leaving behind caste considerations. Of course, the BJP tapped into a similar national votebank five years later, winning a staggering 73/80!

The UP voter has to be reminded that he/she is the ultimate arbiter of who is going to rule the country. They are not voting for an MP or for a party. They vote for Prime Ministers. It is the UP voter who ushered in Modi sarkar with its 282 seat majority. The UP voter can replace it in 2019 with a tottering government, where parties cooperate on the seat sharing and compete on the looting.

More than anything else, it is karma vs laziness in 2019 in Uttar Pradesh.