With leftist historians on your side, you can stay neutral in any war

There is a war happening in Europe. How can India stay neutral? Or as woke liberals, freshly graduating from Instagram, would ask: how can India in good conscience, stay neutral? The more experienced liberals, with their think tank affiliations, would agree. India must stand up for democracy and freedom. With an added flourish, they claim that there is even a practical dimension to this. In order to be counted as a great power, India must start behaving like one. And that means India cannot sit on the sidelines when there is a major conflict happening.

If nothing else, they say that India must have a sense of history. Will history forgive us unless we choose correctly between Russia and Ukraine?

What if I told you that all of this is bullsh*t? You don’t need to pick sides in a war to have moral authority in the world. You can be a great power and still be neutral in a great war. All you need is a firm grasp on historians, journalists and intellectuals. If you have them on your side, history will be kind to you.

Let me show you how, from the greatest war of all time. The two sentence summary of World War 2 goes something like this. There was Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy on one side, known as the Axis powers. There was the Communist USSR, the United States and the British Empire on the other, known as the Allies. This might give you the impression that the three big Allied Powers joined forces and defeated the combined might of the three big Axis powers.

The reality however is much more curious. Not everyone on the “same side” was fighting at the same time. And some of them even switched sides midway!

Here is the real timeline of the war:

Aug 23, 1939: Communist USSR and Nazi Germany sign an alliance to conquer the countries of Europe

Sep 1, 1939: Nazi Germany invades Poland

Sep 3, 1939: Britain and France declare war on Germany

Sep 17, 1939: Communist USSR invades Poland

Sep 1939 – Jun 1940: Nazi Germany occupies half of Poland, as well as Western Europe, including France. Communist USSR occupies the other half of Poland, as well as Eastern Europe, including Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland.

Jun 1940 : Italy declares war on France, shortly before France is occupied by Nazi Germany

June 22, 1941 : Hitler breaks his alliance with Communists, invades the USSR

Dec 7, 1941 : Japan invades the US at Pearl Harbor

Dec 11, 1941: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.

Okay, so it all seems sorted by end of 1941 at least, right? The Communists may have started the war as allies of Nazis, but they have had to change sides now. From this point onward, surely we can go with the simplistic description:

(Germany + Italy + Japan) vs (United States + Britain + USSR)

Wait! Not so fast. Something is “missing” in that list. The Communist USSR and Japan are in opposite camps. But when did the Communists declare war on Japan, or vice versa?

The mind blowing reality is that they did not. Yes, all through World War 2, the Communist USSR remained steadfastly neutral with respect to Japan.

So the US was at war with both Japan and Germany. The USSR was at war with Germany, but not with Japan! And bear in mind that the USSR was fighting its war with Germany almost completely with aid from the United States. This aid included everything, from butter to tanks, planes and trucks. Even the shoes for Red Army soldiers came all the way from the US. This aid was technically a loan, but nothing was ever paid back, which means it was 100 percent free.

And yet, despite everything that the Communists got from the United States during World War 2, not one Red Army soldier raised a hand in support of America in the fight against Japan. How is that for hypocrisy?

What was the rationale of the Communists? Well, remember mid 1941, when Nazis and Communists were still allies. In April 1941, Stalin signed a “non-aggression pact” with Imperial Japan, similar to the one he had signed with Hitler. Stalin was now looking to do to Asia what he had already done to Europe. He had occupied Europe with Hitler as his ally. Now he was going to take over Asia with Imperial Japan as his ally.

Sure, Stalin’s plans were upended when Hitler betrayed him, but that did not make him change his mind about Asia. The Soviet-Japanese pact was to last four years from the date it was signed. And Stalin made sure that the commitment was kept. So Japan could go fighting the Americans. Stalin would fight Germany with American aid. But Stalin would not raise a finger to help America against Japan.

And let me remind you what the map looks like.

See how close Japan is to the Russian coastline? But don’t expect the Communists to help you out against Japan, even if you are helping them against Germany. It is a strict one way street. In fact, American pilots on bombing missions over Japan who landed in Soviet territory by mistake were always arrested.

So, did history judge the Communists harshly for their behavior in World War 2? Did history judge the Communists for starting the war as Nazi collaborators, then freeloading on American aid, without doing anything against Japan in return?

Of course not. Because the Communists know what really matters. They got the historians on their side.

In order to be a great power, did the Communists have to take sides in World War 2. Again, of course not. Because the Communists have the historians on their side.

Will India be judged harshly by history for not taking the side of Ukraine in the current war? Of course we will. We are lacking liberal privilege.

Why the West is pretending to need India for the war in Ukraine

“What is India doing for European security?”

This is the exact question that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was asked point blank at the Munich Security Conference last week. One can think of any number of responses, none of them as civil as what the minister chose to give. Most of all, seriously? After 70 years of arming and supporting Pakistan, the West really wants to ask this question? You just looked the other way on China and Covid. You looked away as Chinese troops brutally attacked India in the middle of a pandemic. And you just left a huge cache of weapons, even attack helicopters and transports for the Taliban in Afghanistan. The smaller of those weapons have already made it into the hands of terrorists in Kashmir.

And now you dare ask what we are doing for your security?

But the West is not kidding. Over the last one month, the West has hit us with almost everything they have, demanding that we join their war. Governments, think tanks, foreign policy experts, newspaper columnists, even sundry comedians and internet influencers. They are pleading, they are threatening, they are hysterical. Come on, India. You must condemn Russia, or else.

The other day, ambassadors of all EU countries met in Delhi in a show of solidarity for Ukraine. That is their business, of course, but why Delhi? Was no other capital city on earth available to them? It was yet another tactic to put pressure on India.

So far, our government has refused to buckle under pressure. And, by most accounts, the vast majority of Indians are with the government on this one. Should we spoil relations with a long time ally and number one weapons supplier to make the New York Times happy? No way.

But it does not end there. We have to dig deeper behind the motivations of the West. Why this extreme focus on India all of a sudden? What big difference would it make to the Western effort if India were to condemn Russia? I have to be skeptical here. We all know that India has been climbing the global power ladder for a while now. Did we become a superpower already without actually realizing?

Suppose for a moment that India agrees to make Washington happy. Or as think tank experts like to call it, decides to stand up for “democracy and freedom.” Suppose that our External Affairs Ministry released the most blistering statement condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. What happens next? Will the Russians retreat immediately, terrified of the fearsome power of the Indian Army? Will Russia and China, fearing sanctions from India, fold like wet tissue? Will they start celebrating with Indian flags on the streets of Kyiv? I doubt this.

Then why is the West so desperate to have us on their side? Here is one possibility. They are not seeking our help. They are just trying to demonize us.

They understand India’s interests and compulsions perfectly. They know that New Delhi will not toe their line, and India will not condemn Russia. That is why they have drawn a moral line in the sand and are shouting from the rooftops that India is on the wrong side of it. Who hates freedom? India. Who supports aggression? India. Who is hypocritical and against a rule based international order? India.

And here is the real subtext of what they are saying. Which is the country that does not deserve any support from the world? India.

My mistake. It is not subtext at all. In fact, they say it quite openly. Indians are hypocrites. Because India won’t go against Russia over Ukraine, the Indians deserve nothing from the world in their struggle against China.

Again, they are not seeking our help. They are manufacturing an excuse for themselves to stay out in case of Chinese aggression against India.

If something were to happen between China and India tomorrow, the West would like to stay out. Of course they would. While placing sanctions on Russia, they couldn’t even bring themselves to give up the chance to sell expensive watches and jackets to Russian oligarchs. You think they would be willing to give up trillions of dollars of trade, and their entire supply chains, to make a point against China and in support of India? Ha!

But nevertheless, it would be a bad look for the West. The supposedly democratic West siding with the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship against a democratic India.

How to get out of this tangle? The answer is obvious. Demonize India on all fronts. Go label the Indian government as genocidal and Nazi. They do this behind the facade of “experts” and “civil society organizations,” of course. So they get Freedom House and Swedish V-Dem or whatever to declare that India is not even a democracy any more. When war breaks out in Eastern Europe, they get the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to tell the world that Indians hate freedom.

China likes this, of course. They understand that India derives tremendous moral authority from the fact that we are a democracy. There are only two ways for China to blunt this advantage. One, China could transform itself into a democracy, which the Communist Party obviously doesn’t want. The only other option is to vilify India internationally, so that India is also seen as an authoritarian, and genocidal state.

Which is exactly what the global media, the experts, the think tanks have all been saying for eight years now. The West needs this narrative against India. China needs this narrative against India. And both are presumably willing to pay. What a wonderful coincidence that “experts” worldwide have come to exactly this conclusion: India is evil.

That is how Delhi Police using water cannons became an international human rights violation. Water cannons which are used around the world, in France, in Germany, in Italy or in Switzerland, run no such risks. We just saw Canada declare a national emergency, seize private property and suspend civil rights to clear out one bridge after a two week protest. But nothing can compare to the horrors of Modi’s “undeclared emergency.”

Or think about it this way. If the West really needed us so desperately, do you think they would have spent the last eight years demonizing us? They were happy to back even Saddam Hussein, the military dictators in Pakistan, and even Osama bin Laden personally, when they thought these guys could help them. But India of 2022 is such a cruel and unjust place that the columnists at the Washington Post have to scream out their conscience?

As President Biden would say; come on, man….

How dynastic succession shows Nehruvian “Idea of India” is not real

A lightly edited version of this column appeared on News18 here

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have invented a perpetual motion machine. In other words, a machine that produces its own energy as it runs. Exactly what we need at a time of high oil and gas prices worldwide, I know.

Having made this path-breaking invention, it is understandable that you would like to make some money off it. For that, let us say you decide to file for a patent with the US Patent Office. Once you own the rights to your idea, you can start selling it.

But wait! The patent office will most likely ask you to submit a “working model” of your invention. In fact, because your discovery appears to violate the laws of physics, they will almost certainly ask you for one. And that is where you will trip up. It doesn’t matter how many compromised “experts” you have lined up to support your claim. Your fraud will be exposed.

In recent times, there has been a tug of war over the term “idea of India.” Apparently, the Nehruvians had this big idea of how to run India as a modern, secular and pluralistic democracy. We are supposed to have licensed it from them. And now that an inexorably non-Nehruvian party is in power, the “idea of India” is in danger.

Let us ask a more fundamental question. Was there a Nehruvian idea of India to begin with? Or was it like the perpetual motion machine, which is not real.

This is where the question of dynastic succession in Indian political parties becomes so relevant. If there was a Nehruvian idea of India, it must be able to produce its own ideological successors. In other words, younger leadership within each such party would absorb the ideology, then interpret it in their own way. A battle of ideas would follow, along with the usual power games of course. The winner would rise to the top and the process would repeat. This is what living, breathing ideology looks like.

But is that happening? Most certainly not. All the political parties that claim to believe in the old idea of India have proven to be ideologically sterile. Instead, the only way these parties survive is through dynastic succession. And whenever there is no obvious candidate for dynastic succession, the party gradually withers away on the ground.

How did the Indian political landscape become so full of family based parties? There were brilliant political entrepreneurs who either broke away from old parties or started their own, such as the Janata Dal, or the Bahujan Samaj Party. But these parties and their remnants are now struggling to survive. The only ones that have survived the test of time are the dynastic ones, such as Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, or the Nationalist Congress Party.

Once you start looking, you see this phenomenon everywhere. In Bihar, the JDU is now a shadow of its former self, with only about half the seats that the BJP has. To his credit, Nitish Kumar kept his family out of politics, and now the JDU is without a political successor. The RJD on the other hand, appears to have a bright future under Tejaswhi Yadav. In Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav has taken over the reins of the SP and is running a vigorous campaign. The BSP on the other hand, is fading from the ground, from the media as well as public imagination. The other day, as results from Tamil Nadu local body polls showed, the AIADMK is receding, with even BJP making inroads in its place. The DMK legacy on the other hand, is safe with M K Stalin.

Once you see it this way, you begin to appreciate the importance of why West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appears to be preparing her party for dynastic succession. Unless she chooses a family member right now and begins the process of transition herself, the TMC might not have a future. Even with the Communists in Kerala, where Pinarayi Vijayan has given his son-in-law a prominent cabinet berth, despite the latter being a first time MLA. You might have noticed that Shailaja “Teacher,” who had been hailed by the media during her term as health minister, was dropped. Perhaps Pinarayi Vijayan realizes that without some form of dynastic succession, even the Communists in Kerala might end up like the Communists from West Bengal.

So the parties which claim to uphold the old idea of India either exhaust themselves with one generation or transition into family based parties. The BJP on the other hand, which positions itself as rejecting Nehruvian ideas, has no such problem. The party acknowledges its origins in the ideas of Savarkar, Golwalkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. This was followed by the era of Atal and Advani, and now the era of Modi. You will always find a lively discussion among BJP supporters about who will carry forward the mantle of the party once PM Modi decides to retire. It is a favorite subject among them that generates a lot of curiosity, spirited debates and even heat. The key is that everyone knows that the party will continue to thrive; there will be a successor in due course, and that PM Modi’s family is not even in the running.

These are all signs that the BJP has its own ideology. We know that this ideology is living and breathing, because it produces ideological successors and evolves with each generation. The Nehruvian idea on the other hand, if it exists, has to be carried forward by a fourth or fifth generation dynastic successor. How so? And in that case, should we not ask if there was a Nehruvian idea of India to begin with?

There is an often-repeated assertion that this Nehruvian idea made India into a modern democracy. But this hypothesis should be challenged. How could Nehru have sowed the seeds of democracy in India when he failed to sow them within his own party? After Nehru’s death, there was a ripple of a power struggle within his party, but it quickly collapsed into a family based enterprise. Even six decades later, his party has not come out of that spiral.

Seventy years after it was first claimed, the Nehruvian idea of India has failed to submit a “working model.” The alleged ideology cannot be passed from the minds of one generation to the minds of another. It can only be inherited, in classic medieval fashion. If there is no dynastic successor, it collapses. Like the idea of a perpetual motion machine, was this idea ever real? 

Indian democracy, on the other hand, did not collapse. When Indira Gandhi made a move to curtail it during the Emergency, the Indian people responded in dramatic style. The defeat of the Congress party in 1977 elections may be the only example of an impoverished third world country in that era that rejected authoritarian government. So where did the ideals of democracy really come from? Did it come from Nehru and his Congress, or from the Indian people?

We are left with some obvious conclusions. First, there was probably no particularly high and mighty Nehruvian ideal that deserves to be called “idea of India.” And challenging Nehruvian ideas is not the same as challenging our national ethos, least of all the ideas of democracy, tolerance and social justice. Those ideas belong to the Indian people and they always have. India that is Bharat belongs to its people. Their fundamental beliefs make up the idea of India. It is time to give our people the credit they deserve.

Going against Indian interests will come at a price

A lightly edited version of this column, written jointly with Monica Verma, appeared in The Statesman here.

A few days ago, when the Pakistan unit of the Hyundai Motor Company made a social media post on the so-called Kashmir Solidarity Day, they would never have suspected what they were bargaining for. Soon afterwards, New Delhi summoned the South Korean ambassador to register a protest. The South Korean Foreign Minister, who understood the interests involved, called up his Indian counterpart and promptly regretted what had happened. 

A somewhat similar situation had developed in late 2019, when the Malaysian government was seen as critical of India’s decision to scrap Article 370. It just so happened that Malaysia’s economy is heavily dependent on palm oil exports, and India was the largest buyer. The message from New Delhi was clear. If you go against Indian interests, you will have to pay a price.

Despite all the claims by liberal institutionalists that interdependency is increasing in the world, power still remains the most significant currency in realpolitik. Within the tangible aspects of power, economic power is the most important component. It is a country’s economic weight that lifts up its political stature and helps it decide its fate in geopolitical contests. It was the economic rise of Britain that powered its geopolitical ascendance during the heyday of the British empire. It was the economic progress of the United States that helped it secure a position as the global hegemon. And it was indeed a lack of economic growth that brought the USSR to the verge of disintegration and ended the cold war in the most unusual way. 

Economic power, which is calculated in terms of total GDP of a country, is significant because it decides how much funds a country can allocate to its military security. For all the claims about morals, ideals, peace agreement etc., sovereignty and territorial integrity of a state is under-written by a huge expenditure on its military security. Due to the anarchic nature of the international system, countries are always chasing more power and within that economic power more specifically to make themselves safe and secure. 

Closer home, the recent events with regard to social media handles of top Multinational companies celebrating so-called “Kashmir Solidarity Day” in Pakistan illustrate the importance of economic weight. The backlash against Pakistani Handles of these MNCs began slowly but it caught fire in no time. Indian social media users started trending #Boycott trends for brands such as Hyundai, Pizza Hut, Kia Motors, KFC. This led these brands to immediately issue apologies via their Indian handles and reaffirm their commitment to India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. So, was it the power of social media alone that these big brands took a swift action or there is more?

To put things in perspective, India’s economic growth and the resultant increase in the size of its market has made it an attractive destination for all the big brands alike. Since its entry in India in 1996, Hyundai has become the second largest auto player with a 16% market share and a sale of 6.35 lakh units in 2021. In comparison, Pakistan buys just 8k odd units of Hyundai cars due to its precarious economic situation. Similarly, Pizza Hut has massive expansion plans in India riding the wave of a young demography across tier-2 and tier-3 cities of India. While it has 500 stores across India, in Pakistan it just has under 100 stores. 

Brands taking political positions is always bad economics but with India’s consistent economic rise, taking any political position against India is going to harm the brands even more. Western markets are protectionist, China’s growth story is fading, hope for the global capital is now India and they can’t afford to lose the opportunity over such cheap tricks. It is with this confidence that the Indian diplomatic dispensation also swung into action and summoned Hyundai’s parent country South Korea’s envoy to register protest. Going forward, India’s economic growth would lead to more such confident moves and hopefully India will settle its geopolitical contests favorably.

It is through this lens that the government’s push towards an Atmanirbhar Bharat must be seen. Unlike in the old days, it does not mean India withdrawing from the world economy. Nor does it mean Indians resigning themselves to technological backwardness, chronic shortages and goods of inferior quality. The Production Linked Initiative (PLI) scheme now covers everything from smartphones to air conditioners and semiconductor chips. The idea is to raise Indian domestic manufacturing to the level where it becomes integral to global supply chains. Unless we learn to dominate these supply-chains and make them work for us, we are not really in control of our borders, our sovereignty or our destiny. The pandemic has taught us exactly that.

As India resumes its journey towards becoming a 5 trillion-dollar economy, we have to understand the evolving nature of power. It is now multidimensional, and conventional military power is just one component. There is economic power, which is determined by market size and our position in the global supply chain. It allows us to influence the behavior of governments in distant foreign lands. There are also threats. How is it that foreign lobbying groups are able to incubate protests on Indian streets? This is done through the civil society network, handing out awards, junkets, fellowships and other forms of patronage. 

We do not need to be defensive. Instead, we must learn how to use each of these levers of power to push Indian interests worldwide.

Notes on Punjab elections, and UP of course

I will be honest with you. In this round of elections, I made an “executive decision” to think seriously only about Uttar Pradesh. The reason is simple. This far into the Modi years, isolated state elections don’t matter. There was a time when we would obsess over every little municipal poll in every corner of the country. The media would lead us along. They would dub everything as “test for Modi,” remember?

Those days are long gone. The only thing that matters at this point is who will win 2024. And it is really a binary, I would say. If BJP wins Uttar Pradesh, they basically have 2024 wrapped up. Because, if you lock up the 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh, you simply can’t stop Modi in 2024. It will lead to further mental disintegration in the Congress. The smaller parties will begin to look at 2024 not as an election for change. They will see it as an election of transition, sort of the formal end of the Congress party. In that sense, some smaller forces may even secretly prefer that Modi win in 2024 and finish off the Congress. That would allow the regional parties to crawl out of their single state bases and gobble up Congress votes across the country.

But then the Punjab elections got super interesting. It is now sort of impossible to look away.

Who do I think is winning? AAP of course. It’s because I see every single party, Congress or BJP, focusing all their attacks on AAP. This is how you know who is the frontrunner.

But the problem is that I have been here before. Five years ago, I also thought AAP is winning Punjab. Perhaps AAP is just very good at making people think they are going to win. That is a real asset for a political party, actually.

But you cannot discuss Punjab without touching the third rail of Punjab politics, which is the Khalistan angle. In the last 48 hours, AAP has faced a volley of attacks over its Khalistan connections, which are all true of course. In fact, I remember Gul Panag, then an AAP member, confirmed most of this stuff already five years ago. I am surprised that anyone is even surprised.

Normally, last minute political attacks on the frontrunner don’t work, at least in India. From what I have seen, they in fact tend to reinforce the aura of the winner. I remember when BJP was mounting attack after attack on Kejriwal the day before polling in Delhi in 2015. That’s when a hardcore BJP supporting friend from Delhi called me up and told me: AAP must be winning. Why else would everyone go after Kejriwal like this?

So if it was any other state, I would say AAP has this thing locked up. The only wiggle is that this is Punjab. And everyone there shudders at the thought of the 1980s coming back. I somehow still think that it was this Khalistan tag that lost the election for AAP in 2017.

You have to note here the spiritedness with which BJP has fought this election in Punjab. Three months ago, the farmer protests had made the BJP brand toxic in the state. To their credit, they did everything they could. They brought in Captain Amarinder Singh and his newly floated outfit. At last, nobody can accuse the BJP of not having a credible Sikh face. Or a statewide leader. And I was immensely pleased when the BJP was able to work out the position of “senior partner” in the alliance, contesting more seats than Amarinder’s Punjab Lok Congress (PLC). Long time readers of this blog will remember that I have always found the BJP playing with too weak a hand while doing alliance deals. Say in Bihar or Maharashtra.

There is only so much you can do in three months. But the BJP left no stone unturned. From Prime Minister to party worker, they did everything possible. For BJP, this should be a campaign to remember. This could be the rebirth of BJP in Punjab. But the key is to keep the fighting spirit alive even after March 10.

There is another reason the BJP campaign in Punjab makes me smile. Because each rally that the BJP, especially PM Modi, does in Punjab is one less rally he could have done in Uttar Pradesh. What does that say? It shows that BJP is supremely confident about Uttar Pradesh.

Just think of it this way. What does a push by PM Modi in Punjab bring? In best case, let us say it adds 5 seats to the party’s tally. If you want to let your imagination run wild, let us say 10 extra seats! But then what? Would 10 extra seats bring BJP to power, or close to power in Punjab? And even if it does, so what? Is the payoff anywhere near to make up for a possible defeat in Uttar Pradesh?

No way. So each time PM Modi spends a day doing rallies in Punjab, or meeting with Sikh leaders, he is diverting time he could have spent in Uttar Pradesh. Considering his stature in UP, a Modi rally can change the mood there in a day. The PM knows this. So he knows he is quite comfortable in Uttar Pradesh; so much so that he can spare his energies in Punjab. And for the moment, that is really what I care about.

I remember 2017. I remember the strain on PM Modi as he defended his home turf in Gujarat. As of now, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat are both his home states. If BJP was facing a difficult election in Uttar Pradesh, the strain would show. Another thing I have noticed in recent days is that PM Modi has given increasingly ringing endorsements to Yogi Adityanath in his speeches. So the feedback in the BJP camp must be unambiguous. Yogi is a positive for the BJP in these elections, and no big strategic change needs to be considered, for now.

If the feedback in the BJP camp was negative, I bet we would have seen two obvious changes. One, the PM would have jumped into the Uttar Pradesh, to save the state at any cost. Second, we would have seen the BJP dithering on Yogi’s face. Neither has happened.

Things have flowed in the opposite direction. The PM has given a lot of time to Punjab instead, and Yogi has been given more and more control of the BJP campaign.

One last thing. Realistically speaking, who do I prefer in Punjab: Cong or AAP? I would say AAP. Because for 2024, weakening Congress is the only thing that matters.

Rahul Gandhi’s Declining Congress is Playing with Secessionist Political Rhetoric

A lightly edited version of this article appeared on News18 here

“You will never in your life rule over these other people,” thundered Rahul Gandhi in Parliament the other day, with characteristic ineloquence. First of all, who are those “other people?” They appear to be Indians residing in the state of Tamil Nadu. And who is “you?” By all accounts, he was talking about the legitimately elected Government of India.

The apologists for Rahul Gandhi, who must have a full time job on their hands, would argue that this is not how he meant it. When he spoke about a Union of States, he was merely highlighting the federal nature of our country. It is in the constitution after all.

Before Rahul Gandhi assumes the mantle of teacher, perhaps he should read the relevant article in full. India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. I repeat; India, that is Bharat. In other words, the constitution does not bring India into being. It is an attempt by a group of men and women, with noble intentions, to give an ancient nation its current form. In his Discovery of India, Nehru records his sense of wonder at how common folks everywhere seemed to have an easy understanding of how we are one people.

“I tried to make them think of India as a whole, and even to some little extent of this wide world of which we were a part. … The task was not easy; yet it was not so difficult as I had imagined, for our ancient epics and myths and legends, which they knew so well, had made them familiar with the conception of their country, and some there were always who had traveled far and wide to the great places of pilgrimage situated at the four corners of India.”

But that was Nehru’s Congress. When people welcomed him with slogans of “Bharat Mata ki jai,” he would ask them about their concept of the mother. Today’s Congress would probably ask whether it is meant to invoke Hindu religious imagery, making the slogan sectarian. Or ask why the slogan is in Hindi. Is that an affront to those other people?

But the Congress of old, just like the Congress of today, was a product of circumstances. Back then, the Congress had political stakes among every group of people in every part of India. A sense of national unity suited them. That can hardly be said for the Congress today. And so you find Rahul Gandhi’s Congress playing with the fire of secessionist rhetoric, thinly disguised as support for federalism. 

In his reply to the Motion of Thanks in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also referenced Tamil Nadu, but stressed the words of Tamil poet Subramania Bharati on the oneness of India. When it comes to making space for the multiple identities of groups of people within our country, there is a high road and there is a low road. Which one should we take?

A common language?

Because Rahul Gandhi is so interested in Tamil Nadu, let us talk about language first. In India, there is a common myth that Hindi is our national language. Despite our courts saying clearly that there is no such thing as a national language, the myth endures. Each time an ignorant politician utters this myth, or even a common person makes this mistake on social media, people from “non-Hindi states” bristle. And for some reason, it is supposed to be the BJP’s fault. 

But where does this myth come from? Where would people get this crazy idea that Hindi is our national language? Perhaps it is because the original Indian constitution of 1950 did in fact provide for Hindi to become the one and only official language of the Union government. Further, the constitution gave the government fifteen years to fully transition from the use of English to that of Hindi. It may thus be argued that the only Prime Minister who ever tried to impose Hindi upon all of India, including Tamil Nadu, was Jawaharlal Nehru.

However, as the deadline of January 26, 1965 approached, Nehru began to lose nerve, especially because of massive anti-Hindi demonstrations in Tamil Nadu. In May of 1963, Parliament finally passed the Official Languages Act, which allowed the use of English to continue, in addition to Hindi. 

But the damage had already been done. The seed of mistrust had been sown. Tamil Nadu has not seen a Congress Chief Minister since 1969, making it the first state in India to become Congress mukt. 

For what it’s worth, Nehru was even opposed to the idea of linguistic provinces, believing that they were a threat to the unity of India. This is why he resisted splitting Bombay State into Maharashtra and Gujarat, as well as the reorganization of Hyderabad state, Mysore, Travancore and Madras state into the modern Andhra Pradesh (till 2014), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In this respect, the views of V K Krishna Menon, the man closest to Nehru, are the most grating of all (as described by A G Noorani in a commentary on Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru):

“As a sectarian sub-nationalism of fascist orientation was developing in the Tamil country, he argued, a separate Tamil province would be very anti-national, while the Kerala State would doubtless go Communist after the next general elections with disastrous domestic and international consequences.”

Congress has always centralized power while it still could

In 1974, Congress leader D K Barooah sealed his position in history when he announced curtly that “India is Indira; Indira is India.” He was named party president by Indira Gandhi soon after. Over time, the image of D K Barooah as a sycophant has come to be accepted by people of this country. And along with it, the impression that the Emergency is the only time the Congress party tried to take power away from the people.

This is far from true. Less than six months after being promulgated on January 26, 1950, the Indian constitution was amended. The aim was to shut down two magazines, one linked to the Sangh and the other to Communists. When the government had tried to censor them before, the magazines had fought back and won their rights in court, citing freedom of expression. That’s when the government amended the constitution and brought in ‘reasonable restrictions.’ At the time, the Congress was in charge of the Union Government, and literally every state government in the country. They still would not take chances with unfettered freedom of expression. 

The first time the Congress ever lost an election in India was in 1957 in Kerala. Soon after, the elected state government was dismissed. The pattern continued over the next several decades, with the Congress dismissing dozens of opposition ruled state governments, sometimes several of them in a single day. 

In fact, with the exception of the Emergency, the single biggest power grab in India’s history is possibly the Anti-Defection law passed by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985. It should be noted that the Indian anti-defection law has no parallel in any other major democracy; not in America, not in Britain, nor France, Germany nor Australia. With this law in India, individual legislators lost all bargaining power and became shadows of the party leadership. All power in the leadership, and all the leadership in one family. 

Decline of the Congress led to appeasement and Divide and Rule

Looking at the political landscape today, it seems hard to believe that Rajiv Gandhi began his 1989 election campaign from Ayodhya, promising Ram Rajya. Three years before, Rajiv Gandhi had passed the ironically named Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, denying maintenance to then 76 year old Shah Bano from the husband who had pronounced talaq on her. 

In those days, the Congress was still frighteningly dominant, but the political monopoly was clearly over. But because the party still had a base in every community, they tried to contain the restlessness by pandering to one, and then to the other. The attempts at ‘divide and rule’ also began around this time, with the tiny community of Sikhs as the first victim. 

But the decline of the Congress continued. The party’s vote share came down from over 40 percent in the 1950s and 60s to the high thirties, and then dropped into the twenties. The Muslim vote bank politics became increasingly crucial to the Congress, which everyone noticed. The upper caste nature of the Congress was also noticed. And one by one, the various voting blocks left. 

Today, with a vote share below 20 percent nationally, and not even enough seats to form the opposition, Rahul Gandhi seems to have discovered the virtues of decentralization. What else do you expect a party now restricted to patches here and there, to do? 

There has never been a better time for federalism in India

In February 2019, when CBI officials went to Kolkata for an investigation, the West Bengal state police under the imperious Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, swooped in and detained them. However you feel about this ugly situation, could anyone imagine such a show of power by a state government in the face of a Congress led center? Ask the BJP itself, which once saw five of its state governments dismissed in a single week.

In fact, we in India have learned more about the powers of state governments in the last seven years than in the remainder of the last seventy years. During this time, numerous state governments have revoked ‘general consent’ given to the CBI in their states, leaving the central agency at the mercy of state police. The powers of the central government even in core matters such as citizenship have been questioned, with several states deciding that they would not implement the law.

In a recent incident in Kerala, the car of the mayor of Thiruvananthapuram tried to cut off the official convoy of the President of India while headed for a public event. This of course is a ceremonial issue, but it reflects just how far we have come from the days of ‘India is Indira.’

And this is not just about center-state tensions, ego conflicts nor about a city mayor thumbing their nose at the President of India. We have actual positive developments that have led to real federalism, such as the GST Council. All decisions require at least a three-fourth majority, while the center gets only one-third of the votes. The states have two-thirds of the votes. By its nature therefore, the GST Council requires consultative decision making on a scale that has never happened in India before.

If India is a conversation, Rahul needs to read before he can speak

Since Uttar Pradesh elections are the flavor of the season, let me recall something from Rahul Gandhi’s 2012 campaign in the state. Back then, somebody had told the Congress they had a chance and Rahul Gandhi decided to make a grand entry. The slogan chosen for the occasion was “Nehru ji ko yaad karenge, Rahul ji ke saath chalenge.” So if the Congress as well as its political and civil society allies want to know why we are still talking so much about Nehru, let me remind them that they started it. Like so much else, it just spun out of their control.

In July of 1910, a young Jawahar wrote to his father that he wanted to leave Cambridge because Cambridge was “becoming too full of Indians.” But Jawahar grew up, and his attitude towards Indians changed. He became humble. He learned to listen. He then wrote the Discovery of India. The question is this: when will Rahul grow up?

Why vested interests are hell-bent on dragging India into a distant conflict in Ukraine

A lightly edited version of this post appeared on Firstpost here.

The other day, while addressing media from all over the world at the White House, President Biden issued a stern warning. If Russia invades Ukraine, they can forget about the crucial oil pipeline now under construction from Russia to Germany. The economic costs of such an action would therefore be too heavy for the Russians. Unfortunately for President Biden though, the German Chancellor happened to be in the same room at the same time. When the media posed the same question to him, the latter refused to say anything of this sort.

In the world of diplomatic niceties, this is the kind of epic beizzati of the Biden administration that can only be captured by some kind of meme. The writing is on the wall. Nobody wants Biden’s war; not Germany, not India, not even Ukraine itself. The Washington establishment however, continues to press on. They say that a Russian invasion is imminent.

Not surprisingly, the Indian government has abstained from the procedure vote on Ukraine at the UN Security Council. Why would India want to take sides in a distant conflict in Eastern Europe, that too at the cost of damaging ties with Russia? By all accounts, the Indian public couldn’t care less about this subject.

But sections of the Indian elite, spread both in India and abroad, have other ideas. They insist that the conflict is a moral crisis, and India must choose the side of the ‘free’ world. A number of articles have appeared in Indian newspapers and news portals advocating this, as well as in the three newspapers that make up the Washington bubble. These are written by think tank experts and veteran journalists on the foreign policy beat, who are compromised to varying degrees, as well as by young writers on their first ‘scholarship.’ They all say the same thing. They quote unnamed US officials and ambassadors from Eastern Europe, who speak of all the moral and material benefits of siding with Washington. At least one well known commentator spilled the beans outright. The think tanks say that India has lost its status as a liberal democracy in the last few years. If Modi wants to win back this tag, India should get on the right side of Washington’s war. The anxiety within the Biden administration is palpable.

Why Biden needs this war

Last year when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the forty-sixth President of the United States, the American establishment breathed a collective sigh of relief. For a while, big media, big business, big academia and big tech were all eating out of his hands. And for the most part, they still do. They couldn’t get enough of the new old President and his two dogs, the images of him eating ice-cream, being a devout Catholic, his watch and sunglasses, and pretty much anything else that doesn’t actually matter. Despite all the promises, when the pandemic continued to ravage the nation and Americans died in unprecedented numbers, they stood by him. 

Except in August and September, when the media gleefully tore apart the Biden administration over his handling of Afghanistan. The withdrawal was botched for sure, but nevertheless it was an end to America’s longest war. That was the problem. Wars cost money. And when the government stops spending on them, the defense contractors in Washington lose out. The US military budget is a staggering $700 billion, bigger than the next seven or eight countries combined. That is why lobbies in Washington like to keep wars going on forever.

And now the Biden administration is in dire straits, with the President’s approval down to a measly 33 percent in some polls. The disenchantment with the President is visible across all sections of people. With midterm elections only nine months away, it is time to press the panic button.

Biden knows what to do, at least to get the establishment back on his side. And they have responded to his call with predictable enthusiasm. They swallow without question, and then repeat, every claim of the Biden administration about an imminent invasion of Ukraine. In fact, they embellish such claims with additional source based reporting, and somber declarations of how every intelligence agency in the world agrees with their assessment. Just as they did with the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Fool me once, even Bush used to say.

Getting involved in Ukraine would be a disaster for India

Imagine for a moment that India gets on board with the Biden administration in Ukraine. The actual war may never happen, but consider the consequences for India. For one, India would come to be seen as a client state of the US, and ties with Russia would be permanently damaged. How does it help for India to ruin our relationship with our number one weapons supplier? We already have a hostile Pakistan and an aggressive China to contend with. Add in grumpy Russia and the disaster is complete.

Who would gain from this? China, of course. The close relationship between Moscow and New Delhi has always been a stumbling block for the Chinese. As it is, if there are US sanctions on Russia, it will only make Russia get closer to China for their economic needs. 

Who else would gain? American defense contractors, who would very much like to replace Russia as our weapons supplier. Keep in mind however that the American military establishment is much larger than its Russian counterpart. As a big buyer of Russian weapons, India has significant leverage over the Russian establishment. With America, we would have much less bargaining power. 

Last year, the Biden administration swooped in and announced an alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), which they say would be the backbone of their policy in the Asia-Pacific. Among other things, this meant an abrupt cancellation of a $66 billion submarine contract to France from Australia. The officials of France, which also happens to be America’s oldest ally, learned about this only from media reports. Against this backdrop, the ravings of Indian elites who say that New Delhi has some kind of moral obligation to pick a side in Ukraine, seem almost like dark humor. It also raises the more disturbing question: what do Indian elites who are pushing the line of Washington hope to gain from this?

Made up intolerance narrative is about making India pay ransom

Nothing is free in international relations, not even the so-called foreign aid. So what do we make of the exaggerated concern in foreign media over the last few years about the state of democracy in India? What do we make of those press freedom rankings and absurd labels such as ‘electoral autocracy?’ 

If you live in India, you have probably watched an entire class of civil society find lucrative careers in the protest economy. They got rich by calling the government ‘fascist.’ So you couldn’t seriously believe that there is no freedom of expression in India. But these foreign newspapers and foreign think tanks; what are they so worked up about?

Well, now we know. They buy influence inside India and put themselves in charge of India’s image abroad. Now they demand ransom. To rescue our image, we need to join their moral crusade in Eastern Europe, and switch weapons suppliers. Liberal democracy is important, but it is nice when things work out so perfectly.

Observe of course that this moral urgency is utterly one sided. Has the Western liberal establishment taken a similar moral stance in favor of India against China? Instead, they spent the last eight years trying to paint India as an autocracy, no different from China.  In other words, the intolerance narrative was an alibi created by the global elite to excuse themselves should China ever threaten India with war. And they want to use it as a bargaining chip to make India abandon our interests and join their war in Eastern Europe.

Two things have happened in the last few weeks which should ensure that nobody in India trusts the global elite ever again. One is the plain ransom-seeking from India over the conflict in Ukraine. The other is the Canadian Prime Minister cracking down on protesters in Ottawa, after all his moral grandstanding over ‘farmer protests’ in Delhi. If you now know how these lobbies work, thank a Canadian trucker.

India can have both Russia and the US as strategic partners

Unlike what think tank elites would have you believe, it is not impossible to have two strategic partners who are polar opposites of each other. It is not even that difficult, nor is it particularly uncommon. Israel does it, coordinating closely with both Russia and the United States. In fact, Israel has taken almost the same exact position on Ukraine that India has. They also don’t see a war happening any time soon, nor are they particularly interested in the subject.

In turn, the United States has deep strategic relationships with both Israel and Saudi Arabia. The latter are enemies, at least on paper. Shall we see the liberal establishment say any time soon that America’s foreign policy must choose between Saudi Arabia and Israel, or between Saudi Arabia and Qatar? Or for that matter, between Pakistan and India? 

I would not hold my breath. In the 1980s, the CIA procured weapons from the Jewish state of Israel, as well as Kalashnikov rifles made in Communist China, and supplied them to Islamic fundamentalists to fight the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan. As such, anyone asking for India to make some kind of urgent moral choice between America and Russia probably has an agenda of their own.

Compromised Indian elites can no longer be trusted

If there is any clarity that emerges from this tug of war, it is this. Indian elites and elites of Indian origin, especially those affiliated with foreign think tanks or those who profit from foreign media, can no longer be trusted completely. These individuals manage to inject themselves freely into matters of domestic and foreign policy. In this, they usually do not encounter the natural suspicion with which we would regard any other foreign entity that meddles in Indian affairs. That age of innocence is over. 

India is now a very powerful country. With this power, there comes a class of people whose objective is to lobby for bits and pieces of this power, to launder all over the world. This is the transnational elite. They do not owe allegiance to any nation or any people anywhere, but they benefit from power everywhere. They are very good at building narratives, and presenting the same as moral emergencies. The narrative of intolerance, the baiting of India into a distant conflict in Eastern Europe, is only a beginning. 

We can never completely get rid of this class of transnational elites. Because it is in the nature of power to attract them. But with practice, we can learn to recognize them, identify their motives, and then ignore them.

Notes on Phase-I of UP polls

So it has begun. Not the 2024 election, but this is basically just as good. I am sure of one thing. This election determines the outcome of 2024. If BJP wins UP, they win 2024. If they lose, it is as good as over.

One circus like thing that plays out in our country is the EC banning exit polls until the entire election is over. This means that pollsters have to find all sorts of creative ways to express themselves until the very last moment. It actually makes for gripping television, but it is sort of infuriating really.

I listened closely yesterday to two people. The first is Axis pollster Pradip Gupta. Yes, he messed up in Bihar, but then everyone makes mistakes. The fact is that he is still the most trustworthy pollster, at least when it comes to Hindi belt states. The other reason I trust him is kind of visceral. If you ask me, Pradip Gupta just does not give off that slimy, corrupt, ecosystem vibe. That’s just my impression.

He says that this is a one way wave election, or at least it will eventually turn out that way. Let’s see. What are the chances of an Akhilesh Yadav wave? I would say zero. The worst that can happen is a loss of a few seats in Western Uttar Pradesh.

And Pradip Gupta also made the basic common sense point that nobody seems to be raising. Let’s do the arithmetic.

RLD < BSP

Adding SP to both sides of the inequality, we obtain

SP+RLD < SP + BSP

That means if BJP was able to breach the combined might of the SP and BSP in 2019, there is no way they should lose to the SP+RLD alliance now. So talk about threats of “Jat consolidation” all you want, but don’t forget the BSP’s Dalit (mostly Jatav) votes. All across India, whether it be in Bihar or even Bengal, there is an increasing trend of Dalits gravitating towards BJP. The non-Jatav Dalits already left the BSP for the BJP five years ago. With Mayawati virtually out of the contest, where will the remaining Jatavs go this time? Obviously to BJP. I should mention here Baby Rani Maurya, the ex-mayor of Agra, and a Jatav who has been highlighted heavily in the BJP campaign.

Actually, I don’t buy into the whole “Jat consolidation” myth very much. First of all, we are forgetting identical rumors from the 2017 election. There is Jat anger, they said. Turns out that BJP swept 53 of 58 seats in this area last time! The collapse of caste based parties, and Hindus gravitating towards BJP, is what people call a “secular trend.” It is so broad and powerful all across the country that it is no longer possible to stand in its way. Will Jayant Chaudhary turn the tide? How? What makes him so special? In Haryana, where Jats are so dominant, the INLD was reduced to under 2% of the vote in 2019. In 2017, the RLD did not even get 2% of the vote in Uttar Pradesh. It shows just how deep the BJP’s inroads into the Jat votes are. Can you really halt something so masssive and set the clock back to like 2002 or something?

And finally, the way I see it, the SP has three kinds of “core voters” in this election. The Yadavs, the Muslims and the Jats. Of this trio, the Jat flank is heavily compromised with huge sections voting for BJP. So the BJP has forward castes (big chunk in UP), the non-Yadav OBCs and the Dalits. The BJP’s base is very big.

In fact, the BJP’s base is so big that it is “big” in as many as three other ways in addition to caste! Uttar Pradesh is actually quite urbanized, with nearly a 100 urban seats. The BJP is virtually unbeatable here. So that’s one.

Then, there is the very important gender base. Because of the law and order issue, BJP will have a clear lead among women voters. That is a big lead among half the population already. This is why I was so eager to see the male vs female voter turnout numbers yesterday. But it appears that the EC has not released them, at least not yet.

The third is the regional base. At the heart of Uttar Pradesh lies the Avadh region, with roughly 120 seats. This is the original “Ram leher” region, where most surveys give BJP a double digit advantage. Add to that the Bundelkhand region, which has about 20 (actually 19) seats. Here, the advantage is well above 10%, even 15% in some surveys. Btw, the reason this is happening is that BJP solved the issue of water in Bundelkhand. Go to news reports from 2011-12. There used to be water riots here…

So you add together and get 140 seats where the BJP has a double digit advantage. At that point, vote to seat conversions by pollsters become irrelevant. You could get a virtual sweep here, say 2/3 at the very least, possibly even 3/4 or even 4/5!

So let us be conservative and give BJP 100 seats out of this 140, which is 71% or just above 2/3. It remains for BJP to win 100 seats out of the remaining 260. This should work out, even if you don’t have a wave election.

Oh, I never got around to mentioning who was the other “expert” I listened to closely. Rajdeep is not a pollster, but he has a sharp political mind. He is not say Sharat Pradhan nor Sheshnath Singh nor a clown of that sort. It is clear that there is no anti-incumbency wave. And keep your eyes on the women vote.

Instead of piecemeal promises, BJP should make a mega guaranteed minimum income scheme

Another day, another manifesto. The BJP manifesto in Uttar Pradesh was released today. Along with the usual offers of freebies, there is an interesting promise of Rs 1500 per month to widows and women who have no other means of support. In other words, a cash transfer.

At first, and because I am a geek, I used to keep tabs on the various cash transfer schemes across the country. The most well known of these is of course the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi of Rs 2000 every four months to small and marginal farmers. Then there was the one implemented just after the pandemic began, of transferring a few hundred rupees into Jan Dhan accounts of poor women. But slowly, I lost count of the maze of yojanas. There is one for women implemented by the BJP government in Assam. I think DMK is doing one in Tamil Nadu. The AAP has promised a scheme like this in Punjab. In his last rally in Uttarakhand the other day, Rahul Gandhi promised a cash transfer scheme for BPL families. The TMC won’t even get 1000 votes in all of Goa, but notice that they have promised a scheme for women there.

And there is relentless chatter about how the government will soon raise the amount in PM-Kisan significantly.

The trend is unmistakable. The Jan Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile trio near fully implemented till the last mile. This has given the Indian state a delivery mechanism that is unprecedented in history. And politicians are making use of this electronic super highway to make cash transfers.

First, the good. These schemes are actually working! People are getting money and they are happy. Politicians finally have something concrete they can deliver, and which makes people happy. And you know what? Economists should be happy too. It has actually made welfare delivery more efficient. The cash transfers do not appear to have broken the government’s fiscal math in any signifcant way.

So it is time to pull out the big ideas and go for broke! Wait, that’s a bad choice of words. But still.

What has been Modi sarkar’s biggest strength? They have been able to make the ramshackle Indian state deliver for common people, for the first time. When I was visiting Ranchi last week, I caught a glimpse of several new blocks of buildings with PM Awas Yojana written on them. Folks, it actually works.

As an Indian, I have been around for 37 years. I suspect that the “Indira Awas Yojana” has been around for at least that long, or for a significant portion of that time. In my life, I have never come across something that has actually been built under Indira Awas Yojana. For sure, I never actively went looking for it. There must be something built under the yojana somewhere. But I didn’t go around looking for homes built under PM Modi’s Awas Yojana either. Clearly, they built so many that it became impossible not to notice one.

It is not just PM Awas Yojana. Follow the progress of Jal Jeevan Scheme and you will be blown away by the scale and speed of it. The same goes for toilets, for gas connections, electricity connections and Ayushman Bharat. And thanks to Aadhar, people are getting this stuff without paying a bribe for the most part. That is why people are signing up in record numbers for these welfare schemes. There are several crore people signed up already for PMSvanidhi. It is a scheme that gives Rs 10,000 loan to street vendors. It’s not even that well publicized in the media. But because these schemes actually work, word among the target audience spreads like wildfire, from one beneficiary to the next.

But like the cash transfer promises of various amounts by various parties in various states, the maze of yojanas is now getting too big. It is time for someone in the government to sit down, crunch the numbers, and figure out how much the government is spending on subsidies like these per citizen, or at least every person with a BPL or APL card.

And then consolidate all this into one big round number. And transfer that directly into the beneficiary bank account at the end of the month.

I have been saying this for a while now. In large part because I don’t want some other party to get the credit, eventually. It is inevitable now. PM Modi excels with the big ideas and the big headlines and the ability to make the bureaucracy actually perform. He should do it.

I suspect they have already thought about this. What is holding them back? Possibly Rahul Gandhi & Co. claiming that they thought of it first, during the 2019 campaign. To that I say, who cares? Will saying that get him one extra vote? Rahul Gandhi is so completely discredited that nobody can rescue his career any more. BJP supporters complain about ecosystem, but if there is one thing that the BJP’s machine got done, it is turning Rahul Gandhi into a universal object of ridicule. To be fair, it was rather easy. And Rahul Gandhi cooperated in spades. All that BJP had to do was shine a light on him. Rajdeep has guessed correctly; the BJP attacks Rahul Gandhi not because he is important, but because he makes it easy for them to score points.

Do it fast. Do it now. Do it before someone else can scoop up the credit.

India’s first online election: BJP needs to step up its Youtube game

One of the things that the pandemic did was turbocharge the processes of history. For a while now, we had known that some of the stuff that we humans were used to doing in the “real” world could well be moved online. That includes shopping, meetings, almost any kind of gathering and even kids’ birthday parties (sad). What we didn’t realize is just how much.

The Uttar Pradesh elections are probably going to be the first “online” elections in India. Gone are the days when someone like Rajdeep Sardesai would make fun of social media from within the confines of TV studios. That is so old now that it almost feels unreal, like Paul Krugman’s prediction that the impact of the internet on the economy would be no more than that of the fax machine.

But here we are. With the Election Commission banning rallies in Uttar Pradesh, India is set to have its first online election. How is that going to work out, for BJP and for SP?

First, a basic observation. It is a good thing that PM Modi finished his first round of Uttar Pradesh in November and December itself. On the contrary, Akhilesh Yadav was just getting started with his yatra. Although everyone knew that the BJP was ahead, the crowds at Akhilesh’s rallies had become a talking point for everyone. If you ask me, with the EC banning rallies and roadshows, the loss is most certainly that of the SP.

It’s like this. You have one kid who has prepared for exams all year. The BJP’s election machinery never stops working, whether election or not. And then you have another kid who hasn’t studied all year, but was hoping to ace the exams by staying up and studying the night before. But then, something happens and the fire alarm goes off the night before. That’s Akhilesh Yadav now, unable to study on the night before the exam. It is a panchatantra story really.

But with elections moved online, I just had to go back and look at my favorite metric: Google trends. It is certainly not perfect, but it does provide some kind of approximation. If you are going to get votes, the first thing you need is for people to be interested in you.

So who are the people of Uttar Pradesh interested in? Here is the trends data for the last one month.

A slim but clear lead for Yogi Adityanath. Of course, one should look at parties as well. So, here is that data

This one is a much more convincing lead.

I know there might be questions. How do we know this reflects any ground realities? First of all, let us try to not sound like Rajdeep Sardesai from 2011. And secondly, take a look at this graphic from the last 7 days in Uttar Pradesh

See how the dots for both Yogi and Akhilesh are concentrated in western Uttar Pradesh? Yep, Google data is picking up the real world fact that the election is in the west, while the election in the east is weeks away. This should be reassuring. The data passes the basic sanity test.

I have been following this “7 day moving” trend for both Yogi and Akhilesh for a while now. While Yogi Adityanath has been ahead for most of the time, Akhilesh’s graph starts rising around the time he begins his yatra and soon surpasses Yogi. But the initial interest trails off, and Yogi gets in the lead again as the rallies and yatras stop. So, yeah, if nothing else, the internet trends is a good indicator of mahaul. Akhilesh’s momentum was destroyed by the third wave.

In fact, in the month of January, there have been just two occasions when Akhilesh went ahead of Yogi. One was for 2-3 days when he got ministers to defect to the SP. The second was more hilarious: it is when Aparna Yadav joined BJP. Lots of people wanted to know the internal dynamics of the Yadav family; and as a result, searches for Akhilesh went up. This of course is noise, not data, but the fact that the tracker picked up this noise shows its power.

So just because Yogi Adityanath is generating more interest than Akhilesh, does it mean he is winning? For that, we have to ask not where the tracker is, but where it should be. Isn’t there an urban legend that BJP voters come from richer sections of society and so the BJP will always be ahead on the internet? But look at this astonishing data.

This is from the campaign season in 2019! See how Akhilesh Yadav towers over Yogi Adityanath. In other words, the Samajwadi Party campaign machine is absolutely capable of beating the BJP decisively when it comes creating a buzz on the internet. For some reason, this time they are not able to manage that. And this time, the election is all about being online.

One obvious question you must be wondering. Where is PM Modi in all this? Why didn’t I include him in the discussion?

The reason is that he is miles ahead, of both Yogi and Akhilesh. Try it yourself on google trends and see. His graph is so high that you could see it as an outlier that may not reflect the ground reality of the contest between BJP and SP.

All this sounds sweet for BJP, but there is something to worry. For months now, and in election after election, I have noticed this alarming trend.

This is what happens when you look for youtube searches, instead of online searches. If you think this gap is daunting, you should note that the same gap was there in Bihar in 2020.

Only when you switch to web searches, do you see Nitish Kumar edging out Tejashwi Yadav

State after state, the same story. On Youtube, the BJP is behind. The BJP is failing to reach the voters through his powerful medium.

The latter conclusion seems to be supported by anecdotal evidence. Almost all the big youtube influencers are anti-Modi. Hardly anyone on the BJP side.

The BJP needs to get its act together, before it is too late.