India Is Under Tear Down Renovation

India Is Under Tear Down Renovation

It is a strange time of elections when the President of the Congress Party embraces not only every anti-national gun and bomb toting fringe element in the country, but also most terrorist organizations abroad.

He heaves with sympathy for these dangerous elements, and muses aloud in seeming innocence, about legitimate causes of what may have led them to their revolutionary positions.

The bloodthirsty are given open licence. Scandals of corruption against the present government are created where none exist. There are shrill denouncement of the government’s Rafale purchase of 36 fly away aircraft to provide cover for the myriad corrupt deals of the UPA. Allegations of crony capitalism and heartless indifference towards the poor are propagated, ignoring all facts to the contrary.

Other shockers include the airbrushing of facts from 1984, when the Congress Party led by Rajiv Gandhi organized a pogrom against ordinary Sikhs that left thousands dead in the streets. Congress, said its current president, had nothing to do with the Sikh riots.

Even his handlers, embarrassed by the enormity of the lie, said Rahul Gandhi was too young to be held responsible for the goings on at the time. But, not yet satisfied in his strange projections, Rahul Gandhi spoke on the now defunct LTTE that murdered Rajiv Gandhi and thousands of others. He said he (and his sister) felt bad when its ruthless and double crossing chief was finally killed in his lair.

These recent pronouncements are beyond Rahul Gandhi’s periodic relaunches and reinventions. These are twisted tales and fictions in a magic realism universe designed to create an alternate reality shorn of the usual moorings in propriety and fact. These are signals to everyone who wants to bring the Modi government down, for its alleged fascism, that anything goes in the endeavour. Truth can substitute for lie, and fiction for fact, in an almost Shakespearian tragedy of word play. Later, there is the multiplier of national outrage and consternation playing out in the TV studios as a bonus. But isn’t all this messing about very remote from the booth level where the voters are?  

But putting these antics in perspective, it is a truism that what some old civilizations can do by way of ignoring the relatively immediate past, is not a luxury that the new ones can afford. If  the very new US, or reformulated  countries like Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and the like, throw out its meagre contemporary history, its precedents of freshly minted traditions, what will they have left?

Some have barely had the tumult of their births, actually rebirths, fading from earshot, and others actually know that there was nothing they could make a meal of before they came, except animist Red Indians and prairies full of bison.

Their sense of being and possession could almost blow away like chaff in the wind if they uproot the tent pegs. Its not for nothing that Margaret Mitchell’s great classic is so compelling, despite Rhett Butler immortalizing giving a “damn” or Scarlett O’ Hara looking forward to a new day.

Sometimes, when a once resplendent monarchy is overthrown, as in the Russian Revolution, there is a haunting classic like Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago to mark the transition.  

In everyday life, when the ground is shifting under one’s feet, it is often difficult to see the drama of it, but it is there nevertheless, even if it becomes evident only with the perspective of time.

A monsoon visit to North Goa at the end of August leaves one wondering how long the whole of the tiny state has, before it becomes a seamless city with some green bits plus a little old world leftover Goan cheer as relief.

It will soon have a spanking new airport at Mopa in the North, to add to the Military cum Civilian airport of Dabolim in the South.

Bridges and flyovers, a BJP speciality, are going to connect the raucuous razzmatazz of the North to the quiet villages of South Goa, the sprawling expanse of Vasco Da Gama notwithstanding.

A new state-of-the-art connector, San Francisco style suspension bridges, across the Mandovi and Zuari rivers, will reportedly cut the commute down time from  over an hour to just thirty minutes.

This could well be completed by 2020, and the work done already makes this assertion quite plausible, particularly if the BJP wins another term both at the Centre and in this State.

The Gatbandhan, should it come in however, will have a large number of other fish to fry, and development of the country may have to take a seat at the extreme back of the bus.

How long then before Goa becomes a full-fledged all season destination? The roads do not flood here after downpours that sometimes last all night, because of clean guttering alongside, though the surface takes a beating in parts. And the mangroves have so far been left alone.

Locals tell us things are more alive these days compared to recent years past, with boisterous if low budget tourists from nearby Hubli and Dharwar flocking in, plus the usual full flights of fly-ins from Delhi and Mumbai. A large contingent of six charter flights of Russians are expected in October to break the jinx of a Russkie absence over the last few seasons.

But reviving business or not, the quaintness of Goa is fast vanishing, with  an unprecedented real estate boom and buildings that are pointedly modern. It is as if they want to ignore the crumbling edifices of colonial Goa, even its lovely white washed churches, its embedded Portuguese/Konkani  influences.

Prices too are no longer cheap, and there is a great deal of Bhangra music booming out of eateries via oversized amplifiers in place of what went before.

Change is inevitable, of course. And this little state is saying bring on the growing opportunities of 21^st century India. Is this chronicling of an unabashed maturing of a tourist state cum its per capita pride a metaphor for what is happening nationally?  One for how India itself is moving towards its future with an unsentimental jettisoning of its economic, political, and even immediate cultural past?

In some things, we find, like it or not, continuity is not as important as relevance to the here and now.

It is this cleaving to relevance by the current dispensation that is unnerving the Congress Party into making desperate manouevres. Modi speaks constantly of Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas, a slogan and substance that is making a mess of vote bank politics. This particularly with its various adjuncts of dismantling the Nehruvian “Idea of India”, in favour of Modi’s “New India”, with only a small mention of the Nehru-Gandhi contribution. 

It has become a do-or-die mission of survival for the Congress even as other elements of the Opposition watch mutely from the sidelines speaking up only when it suits their purpose. But The Congress seems to be saying that if you don’t want our version of India, built by us over decades of promoting a certain narrative, we will work for the destruction of this country rather than let the BJP recreate it in its own image. The bugles have been sounded. It is now up to the ever wise electorate to settle the issue in 2019.

(1,206 words)

August 30^th 2018

For: My Nation

Gautam Mukherjee

 

The Vajpayee Legacy And Modi

The Vajpayee Legacy And Modi

 Amongst the deluge of eulogies and hosannas on the passing of former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee last week, few rose above the sentimentality that is something of a national hallmark. It was, besides, a veritable week of high profile deaths – of stalwarts, icons, colossuses and titans.

But why, if Vajpayee was thought to be quite so universally wonderful, was he virtually forgotten for over a decade by all except his fellow travelers in the BJP/RSS?

And why, this latter day attempt to co-opt him into the left-liberal lexicon? Is it as innocent as a spontaneous national outpouring of grief and affection?

There he was, an invalid, at his bungalow on the Krishna Menon Marg, almost invisible if not disappeared. Until, then President Pranab Mukherjee,  was persuaded to break precedent, and trundle off to bestow a Bharat Ratna on him in 2015. Strike one certainly, but only at the behest of a stern Modi Government aware of its debt of gratitude.  

Vajpayee has been fortunate in his death as in life. He has been honored fulsomely, by an incumbent BJP/NDA government. One that is carrying his staff and rod, forward again, after a decade in the wilderness.

That this is so, has been glossed over by many, in a frenzy of bizarre Nehruvian comparison. They would have it that AB Vajpayee was the Hindi- speaking Nehru, minus the rose in his lapel, and a dhoti in place of a sherwani, but nothing like that provincial upstart Modi.

The world of left-liberal commentators, languishing mostly on the shelf these days, gnashing their teeth to a stub, seized upon Vajpayee’s suddenly politicised legacy, with extraordinary ambulance chasing vigour.  

Never mind the contra-indications, the passage of circumstance, and time, that has changed everything. It became a nostalgia-soaked farewell, as if Vajpayee was the Nehru that BJP manifested in one shining moment that was its Camelot.

Indians do this kind of thing. It was similar for Karunanidhi, with his heirs lamenting his passing alongside the rank and file of the DMK, accompanied by full blast praise in the media for the departed leader. And there was the drama over his burial at the Marina Beach, over the objections of the AIADMK.

And again, though already receding into the mists of time, the eruption of emotion for India’s first cine superstar Rajesh Khanna, when he checked out of Aashirwad for the last time.

Fact is, Vajpayee followed on, as politicians must, not so much from Jawaharlal Nehru as someone else in the Congress. He actually had nothing in common with Nehru, beyond parliamentary etiquette, albeit gone AWOL these days.

Nehru himself was no inclusivist when it came to his political opponents, as the record well shows - though he pretended, British-fashion, to collaborate on the surface. He quite specialized instead in sending them on to oblivion even as he set his own dynastic stage.

And Vajpayee, being in the Opposition for most of his political life, had no choice but to make himself endearing, at least in parliament, if he was going to be heard at all.  

No, it was the Congress’ own but mostly disowned Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, the first radical modernizer of India along with his Finance Minister Manmohan Singh - to faithfully carry out orders,  that Vajpayee had more in common with.

Some commentary did touch on this, but mostly to contrast the way they were each treated in death by their respective political parties. Together though, the Telegu Bidda and his successor, the Gwalior School Master’s son, put the first nine inch nails into the coffin of Nehru-Gandhi hegemony.  

One was awarded a Bharat Ratna and accorded a full-dress national farewell. The other was sent back to his family at Hyderabad, despite over 25 years in high office at New Delhi, to do with what they would.

The price of ignoring the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, if you are a Congressman is indeed steep, despite the fraudulent inclusivist propaganda. This has  stretched now to saccharine  and proxy pieces on Vajpayee the family man, the humanist, the poet, ad nauseam, to imply how he was almost a Nehruvian Congressman.  

The short-lived Janata Government, ostensibly tried to put the hegemonists into the political dustbin. This was post the JP Narayan movement, post the Emergency, in the late seventies.

But its internal jealousies, echoed in the would-be mahagatbandhan of today, even if the shoe is on the other foot, ruined the day.

The ire was pointed at the 93 seat winning Jan Sangh, out of 298 for the Janata, painted then as “communal untouchables”. And this by others in the Janata Party too. That is how the baton got handed back.  

Vajpayee, one of just three Jan Sangh origin ministers, faced internal pressure from the prudish  Prime Minister Morarji Desai, erstwhile of Congress himself. As for external pressure, there was the extensive Nehruvian narrative to contend with, in a largely left-liberal world. The silver-tongued poet cum Hindu/Hindutva hard-liner, who was India’s Foreign Minister, had quite a tightrope to walk.

Still, the collapse of the Janata Party coalition, also birthed the Bharatiya Janata Party, with Vajpayee, if not at the helm, certainly on the dais. 

Later, after LK Advani’s Rath Yatra, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, this erstwhile set of “untouchables”, emerged as the unapologetic Hindu nationalist alternative.

Vajpayee’s carefully nurtured if unwieldy coalition, held together over 6 years, and three oath takings, not only ended the curse of unstable, short-lived non-Congress governments, but laid the very foundations of  the BJP/NDA majority government to come.

But Vajpayee’s stability in government was not so much because he was following a path of Nehruvian inclusiveness, myth though it was, but the “compulsions”, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used to cry, of coalition politics.

Still, Vajpayee built the Golden Quadrilateral, and took India nuclear weaponised through it all. Evidently, he wasn’t carrying people along to no purpose!

 The next ten years went to a spectacularly corrupt UPA. And then we have had the first majority NDA government, after Rajiv Gandhi’s, exactly 30 years before. Conversely, Congress saw itself reduced to just 44 seats in parliament.

Is Bharatmala a progression of the Golden Quadrilateral? Are Railway freight corridors, bullet trains, metro mass transportation systems in every large city, the linking of rivers, all extensions of Vajpayee’s vision?  

Wasn’t it Vajpayee who first tilted India’s foreign policy towards the United States? Didn’t Manmohan Singh, and now Modi, consolidate that relationship since?

But naturally, Modi, with a similar RSS Pracharak background to Vajpayee’s, has a few reformist ideas of his own. And so we have Swacch Bharat, Make in India, manned flight into space, GST, demonetization, Aadhar,  health insurance, mudra,  the fugitive offenders bill, OROP, digital India, universal housing and electricity, bringing the North East into the mainstream, the bankruptcy and insolvency codes,  doubling of MSP to farmers, boring tunnels into Ladakh, and so on.

There is, it is seen, via Narendra Modi’s excellent relationship with Mohan Bhagwat of the RSS, no contradiction between “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas” and promotion of an ethos that is more even-handed towards the Hindu majority.

Perhaps Vajpayee did not quite enjoy the same level of concordat with Sudarshan of the RSS in his time.  But did it cost him the 2004 election? Or did the electorate simply revert to what Rahul Gandhi calls the “default” position?

Both Vajpayee with his coalition, and Modi, lacking a majority in the Rajya Sabha have not had it easy. But both moved forward despite this, to make far reaching policy changes.

Has the Nehruvian “Idea of India”, which supported the promotion of the minorities as its badge of secularism, already changed into Modi’s “New India”?

Is the bid for “cultural dominance”, since 2014, protested bitterly by the Congress, nevertheless well on its way?

It seems very likely. And no attempt to drive a wedge between an imaginary “soft BJP” from the Vajpayee era, and the artificial construct of a so-called “hard BJP” under the Modi-Shah dispensation, will amount to anything.

There is, in fact, no contradiction, no appreciable shift in ideology or vision, since the Vajpayee years.

What has changed substantially is the attitude of  a large part of the voting public, fed up with “pseudo-secularism”. It is these people who will see Modi through to victory in 2019.

(1,383 words)

For: The Sunday Guardian

August 22, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

BOOK REVIEW: THE UNENDING GAME BY VIKRAM SOOD OF R&AW

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: THE UNENDING GAME-A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights Into Espionage

AUTHOR: VIKRAM SOOD

PUBLISHER: PENGUIN VIKING, 2018

PRICE: Rs. 599/-

Spying For Your Country

Intelligence gathering these days is not all careful-not-to-squeak “gum shoe”. The old style “private detective”, overcoat and hat pulled down low over the brow, has acquired a lot of supplementaries.

The two world wars ushered in the breaking of secret-code Ciphers, and monitoring of Ham Radio frequencies. Spying became as much a HQ Expert feature as the Agent in the Field.

 Speed is of the essence now to thwart threats, increasingly from Islamic Terrorism with a nuclear overhang.

The tools at hand have multiplied. There is HUMINT- Human Intelligence; received from both trans-border and undercover resources, and still, in 2018, probably the best way for qualified professionals good at finding nuggets amongst “unprocessed intelligence”.

There is also OSINT- that which comes through third countries who have access to target countries. TECHINT, meaning technical intelligence gathered from snooping devices, voice transcripts, recordings, and increasingly the social media.

 There is satellite and photo surveillance/reconnaissance – IMINT.  COMINT- from monitoring communications and conversations. ELINT-  radar and electronic intelligence-intercepts, decrypted cipher messages, topographical information.

Is there just too much information being generated to afford timely analysis? The author of this book, Vikram Sood, former R&AW Chief who retired in 2003 after 31 years in intelligence, thinks it is best suited to developing and executing medium to long term strategies. This book, written in a rich anecdotal style, certainly affords an insight, particularly on the operability of the process in a democracy.

Intelligence plays a more inward-looking and repressive role in totalitarian regimes and dictatorships. The history of organizations such as the KGB in the erstwhile USSR, the STASI in the former East Germany, SAVAK in pre-revolutionary Iran, Egypt’s Mukhabarat, all point to “the midnight knock”  purpose of intelligence gathering. “Enemies of the State”, a code phrase for dissidence, had such unfortunates jailed, tortured and eliminated.

In terms of international espionage, the most extensive and well-funded is certainly the CIA. Other admired and dreaded Intelligence organizations such as Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI are partially CIA trained. Of course, the fanatical dedication to ideology and country, observed in the Mossad and ISI, make them very much harder to infiltrate.

In India, the true mother of external intelligence was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her legendary R&AW Chief RN Kao. Subsequent administrations took a less supportive view, making for neglect, stagnation and stunting. Prime Minister Morarji Desai actively cut R&AW down-to-size. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi revived its fortunes somewhat; even as Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao more or less ignored it.

Prime Minister Modi has a healthy respect for intelligence and has demonstrated it with the prominence given to the National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, a former spy himself. Prime Minister Modi has gone out of his way to arrange for international intelligence sharing particularly to prevent Islamic terrorism and economic offences and absconders. Intelligence, it appears, is almost invariably run from the top echelons of the political pile.

Vikram Sood’s book takes the reader on a tour of the world’s intelligence services and their modus operandi, using an elegant prose to do it.

For example, Sood describes the American collaboration with the Pakistanis in his chapter on the ‘Asian Playing Fields’: “Apart from the money generated by the Americans and the Saudis, opium cultivation in Afghanistan and the processing of opium into heroin in Pakistan was encouraged to finance the war…. By 1990 the region accounted for 70 per cent of the total global production….The CIA would deliver weapons at Karachi and the ISI would carry them inland in their transport company, the National Logistics Cell. The vehicles on their return to Karachi from the NWFP would carry processed heroin for global shipment.” Other stringent American laws crack down on drugs, but so what?

The Soviets were no slouches in the espionage game either. In the days of the Cold War, they put money and effort into India to try and expose “the CIA hand”.

The much talked about second volume of The Mitrokhin Papers has nearly 17,000 stories planted in the Indian media between 1972 and 1975.

Citizen and Minister Morarji Desai, was said to be a very productive and paid CIA informer, says Seymour Hersh in one of his books!

But of course, as India has changed and grown into an emerging economic power, and the USSR has collapsed into history, the chess pieces have had to be rearranged.

The Chinese too have become increasingly important players in the world intelligence community. According to Sood: “They freely use diplomatic cover in missions abroad, deploy their defence attaches and use journalists.” They also infiltrate academia, defence manufacturers and even the CIA itself, using their ethnic Chinese employees whose sympathies can be aroused. Chinese Intelligence sponsors a number of Think Tanks in China via its Ministry of State Security (MSS), most useful in reciprocal interchanges with other Think Tanks and in the ever popular “Track II Diplomacy”. Since everything is state owned however,all roads in China do lead to Beijing.

And today, the Chinese classic Art of War by Sun Tzu which advocates defeating the enemy without firing a shot, is an international and universal aspiration, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons that guarantee Armageddon if used.

But, with international cooperation, specifically with ideas transmitted by a French Intelligence Chief to Ronald Reagan, then in his first term as US President, the Soviet Union was eventually brought down.

Comte Alexandre de Marenches suggested that Reagan should frequently refer to the USSR as  an ‘Evil Empire’ in order to encourage its fissiparous tendencies. He  further suggested that the US frame the Soviet Union, by purchasing Soviet  armaments in the black market and shipping them to battles against Soviet allies so that they became confused. Lastly Marenches suggested that the US should encourage the Islamists and promote the Koran to make the Turkmen, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Kazakhs and the Kyrghyz- all restive.

Vikram Sood narrates tale after tale of string-pulling and shadow-boxing  around the rich and inflential secret societies of the world, with profound effects on the future course of events.

A background in espionage has produced many heads of government including current Russian President Putin. However, it takes great nerve and patience, and is certainly not a career choice for the faint-hearted.

(1,038 words)

For: THE SUNDAY PIONEER AGENDA BOOKS

August 14, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Assertions Towards A New India From The Ramparts Of Red Fort

Assertions Towards A New India From The Ramparts Of Red Fort

 There is something about Independence Day that brings the focus back squarely on the Armed Forces. Not just at Red Fort in Delhi, but in State after State of our Union, the visuals on TV show the flag, the politician, framed and bracketed always by senior members of the three wings of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

It is they, above all, who have kept this country united and independent these 72 years, often despite the short-sighted antics of politicians.

The Prime Minister’s own speech this year started with a salute to our martyrs, followed by fulsome praise and gratitude to the Armed Forces for keeping our country secure.

While, in the course of his speech, which laid out many of his Government’s achievements over the last 50 months, he took credit for implementing the long pending OROP, let us hope he has taken note of the unprecedented Court Case filed by 350 soldiers.

They have moved the Supreme Court against having cases filed by civilians against Armed Forces personnel doing their duty in good faith and coming under the auspices of the CBI.

The Armed Forces have always been allowed, till very lately, to do their own disciplining and policing, conduct   their own enquiries, hand out judgements and punishments; all outside the purview of Civilian Courts.

This in all save exceptional cases, where the Armed Forces themselves have deemed it necessary to hand over a case to the civilian Judiciary.

 This move therefore to involve the CBI across the board is seen by the Armed Forces and many other observers as a betrayal.

On the other hand, given the demand to bring the Armed Forces to heel under the politicians, not just by criticizing AFSPA where it is applied, it may be a good thing for the Supreme Court to examine the case on merits.

The Supreme Court will hopefully come down on the side of the autonomy of the Armed Forces. For then, the likes of former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of J&K, and others looking out for the rights of Maoists for example, cannot file cases against the Armed Forces in civilian courts.

Mufti may be motivated to pander to her perceived political constituency of separatists and separatist sympathizers, rather than the principles of equity and impartial justice.

But the darker implication being aired is that the Armed Forces would tend to shield their own, despite blatant wrong-doing or overstepping of orders.

The government on its part, may be seeking constitutional support from the Judiciary to let the Armed Forces do its duty unhindered. This, despite the political clamour from Leftist elements in the Opposition.

In any case, given that the political classes have instituted near universal immunity from prosecution for themselves, particularly as parliamentarians, they should certainly absorb the sentiment.

To add civilian law to the supremacy of the civilian government with regard to the Armed Forces, is a way to both adversely affect morale, and attack the effectiveness of the Armed Forces.

On India’s 72^nd Independence Day, Prime Minister Modi made his overall pitch for another term in office with a confidence that seemed to indicate that there was little chance that he would not be making his 6^th address from Red Fort on 15^th August 2019.

Not only did he make extensive comparisons from the state of play in 2013 under the UPA, but seemed to blithely gloss over the unkept promises of his administration, from a platform that positioned him above the Party he represented.

He seemed to say, and it is difficult to refute this, that what I have accomplished in just four years is in any case unprecedented. And I have a lofty vision for India that I will see through in the years to come.

A very similar stature accrued to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during her long innings, typified perhaps by the infamous and toadying Emergency era slogan “Indira is India, and India is Indira”.

However, Modi’s perceived claim to tower above the BJP/NDA government, has indeed manifested after just some 50 odd months in office.

One reason is certainly because he has repositioned the sociological “Idea of India”, code for the Nehruvian world-view of Secularism that favored the minorities at the expense of the majority; into a “New India” in his own write.

In this view, the key notion is “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas”, code for doing away with the raw deal for the Hindu majority.

This has certainly struck a cord with the broad population of the country, and accounts, along with Modi’s transparent honesty, for his unwavering popularity and ratings in the high seventies.

This is why Modi will win another term in office in 2019, aided of course by huge resources, the Party apparatus under confidant Amit Shah, and the RSS machinery under Mohan Bhagwat. It is also because the public wants Modi to make this profound course correction stick nationally.

This is irrespective of the fates in the coming Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. These Assemblies may well go to a floundering Congress, partly because the public has grown weary of the Chief Ministers, and the relentless wages of anti-incumbency.

But these losses, if they come, will not put a dent in the way the voters in these States, and elsewhere, vote in the general election to favour of Narendra Modi.

If he enjoys a stature larger than his Party, it is because he has demonstrated a vision and persona that has cast him as a man of destiny come to take India to its rightful place in the comity of nations.

Modi harped on the dramatically changed international perception of India during his tenure, the promise of tremendous and transformational economic upliftment, and even planting the Indian flag  in manned space flight by 2022.

The big picture, like  the eternally charismatic JFK, seems to belong to this gifted politician, underpinned with a very strong nationalist streak. The thrilling possibility of climbing higher from 6^th largest economy to the third in the coming decade or so is decidedly uplifting for all.

Mock as the Opposition might, Modi asserted that farm incomes are indeed being doubled universally via MSP mechanisms. He is working on a massive  health insurance programme ,dubbed Modicare by the media. Universal electricity, gas, rural infrastructure, Swacch Bharat toilets by the millions, universal housing, universal connectivity via the Internet are proceeding apace.

There is a squeeze, of course to finance some of this. Direct tax payers have doubled, indirect tax evasion has been struck over the head via GST, black money is under pressure with the Benami Act with teeth.

Economic offenders are cornered with the Bankcruptcy and Insolvency Acts. Economic absconders are being collared.

 Modi’s greatest advantage is the singular lack of similar or even an alternate vision on the part of the Opposition, reduced to a default position of criticism of the Prime Minister and his “lies”, rather than anything constructive of their own.

They are therefore in no position to give content to the renewed Independence Day patriotic pledge and cry of Jai Hind!

( 1,179 words)

For: My Nation

August 15^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee