Politics
As Make-Believe
Is Politics
about reality or perception? If both,
then is it led by perception as reality catches up after a lag, or is
perception the entire game afoot?
Is yesterday’s news as stale as yesterday’s reality – in our
short-span-of-attention times? This is a TV generation via satellite, brought up
on drama, the telling visual, and rank opinionating just as much as reportage.
Print and the digital word tries to make deeper sense of things, but how many
bother to read reasoned arguments?
And if it is perception that is paramount, is its sole
purpose to retain and enhance power? Or even create an opportunity where none
existed? Contradictions, misinformation, unkept promises, U-turns,
unconstitutional behavior, soft sedition, anti-nationalism under the guise of
freedom of expression, everything, and anything, goes.
US President Trump has been taking his executive use of
power to unprecedented levels as the international media watches in
consternation. He has taken studied and demanding postures at NATO asking its
constituents to pay their fair shares of the associated expenses. A demand that
has never really been made, ever since Captain America helped a shattered
Europe and Japan back on to its feet after the end of the WWII.
In Britain, its so-called ‘oldest ally’, Trump has shown
his disdain for its messy and inept handling of its Brexit ambition. He returned
its bad manners on petulant display during his recent visit, by hardly
bothering with the protocol associated with its 92 year old queen.
The UN too was
earlier put on notice about ponying up the money for its various expenses, in a
manner quite similar to the broadside at NATO.
The aggressive stance has marched on with continued and
enhanced trade sanctions on China, to right by this method a huge and stubborn
trade deficit. Nothing done by previous administrations has persuaded or fazed
the one-sided trade practices of the Chinese. Trump has also shown the flag to
North Korea with some preliminary results towards its defanging. And ditto in
the South China Sea, that is, after all, an international waterway, and not
China’s exclusive stretch of sea seen as private pond.
Similar tariffs have been threatened and even started in
for Europe, now contemplating big taxes on US imports of BMW and Mercedes cars.
Canada, that got by on neighborliness thus far, has also
been asked to mend its advantage-taking and freeloading ways.
Mexico of the “wall” is on notice and under pressure from
the latter days of the Trump campaign itself. The Wall is still in Trump’s mind
as opposed to under construction, but he’s not joking on illegal immigration
and trade practices inimical to US interests.
Trump has also
refused to worry about the dictacts of the WTO. He has walked the US out of the
Paris climate talks too, even as the twitterspace is ablaze with suggestions
that he may be insane and /or senile. However, Trump’s personal confidence is
immense, and he gives as good as he gets in terms of the abuse.
Is all this disruption then designed to change everything
at once? Or it it merely aimed at getting
Trump reelected to a second term? If his voters stay strong, does he have to
care about any other force? Sanctions against China, for example, were said to
have hurt American farmers who export their produce through value-adding
intermediaries to China. But, they seem content to stick with Trump despite
Chinese predictions to the contrary.
The red-necked Middle American Caucasian, the typical Trump
voter, likes his style, and credits him with fulfilling his election promises.
They think he is a welcome departure from the professional politicians, with or
without billions of dollars like Trump, that have been POTUS before him - from
either Party.
The Opposition Democrats, much of the left-leaning media,
are mostly aghast and wondering how to deal
with this very different style of politicking. And indeed, the two
houses of Congress have been rendered into helpless spectatating.
Trump makes his
unexpected and unpredictable moves at considerable speed, in his highly personalised
manner, and they don’t know what to do, particularly because his voters seem to
be sticking with him.
Here at home, Narendra Modi plays it a little differently.
He has fulfilled only a fraction of his copious election promises. And has no
apparent difficulty in making bushels of new ones too. He seems to not care
whether Parliament functions as long as the Opposition gets the blame. He has
done little for his erstwhile core constituencies and gone after the vastness
of the poor as a substitute. But, his popularity ratings are still in the
Seventies. The biggest business houses are in his corner with open wallets.
The Opposition, on the contrary, is disunited, despite its
pretensions, and unable to make a dent. There is property damage, bloodshed,
death and propaganda, but no gains politically for the Opposition worthy enough
to put them back in the saddle.
Modi is clearly seen by the masses as its best bet in 2019. He is perceived to be an honest man in a
highly corrupt political space, and the public is determined to trust him. He
rides much above his often hapless Party and its fringe groupings, along with
his trusted Party President Amit Shah in tandem.Both enjoy the solid backing of
the parent RSS and its formidable organisation.
Dissidence within the BJP from the side-lined LK Advani
camp cannot touch his popularity. The criticism of the Opposition led by a
shrill Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee, and their out-sourced trouble-makers,
is seen to be coming from corrupt and self serving politicians. Besides they
are mostly dynasts from “family owned” political parties.
There are more Generals than foot-soldiers amongst them,
each with a separate, difficult-to-reconcile agenda. There is no-one credible
to take on Narendra Modi. Old war-horses with ill concealed ambitions may say
never die themselves, but don’t really stand a chance.
Traditional efforts to divide the polity along religious
lines, once attributed to the Advani-Vajpayee led BJP and the RSS by the
so-called secular ruling parties, is fraying at the edges. Now even the
Communists are climbing onto the Hindutva bandwagon!
Even Muslim unity in terms of vote banks is under potential
threat as the BJP works to give power over their own fate to Muslim women.
Congress and others are seen to be favoring revanchist Muslim/Christian
attitudes, upheld solely by their men and their priests/maulvis.
Real work, apart from infrastructure development that does
not talk back, in terms of bringing economic offenders to book for example, is
being given a soft touch by the Modi government.
This, perhaps because it is wary of creating any kind of
sympathy wave when it is clearly enjoying “advantage Modi” with a fast growing
economy to boot. The same may be said about a long list of unrequited hopes-
education, health, jobs, security, all mostly given the go by.
This, as the
Opposition, whose track record is no better, tries to coalesce around a cause,
any cause, with sufficient traction.
Winning and winnability is everything in electoral politics.
And the perception is that Modi will win again in 2019 against an Opposition
that is far from united.
(1, 194
words)
For:
My Nation
July
19th, 2018
Gautam
Mukherjee
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