Victor Narendra Modi has now more power than he ever wanted or dreamed of having. So the question now is – can he deliver on a national level while avoiding the pitfalls that befell him in Gujarat! He can be the statesman he claims to be and shed his so-called “Butcher” past by taking whole of India forward and keeping his party in power for a long time. He will be different and will try to put his stamp on his kind of India but he has to be careful that he doesn’t get bogged down in communal-racial tensions and corruption, which was in the end the one key thing that did the Congress in!
By R. Paul Dhillon
SURREY – From being labelled the “Butcher of Gujarat” for his role in the massacre of Muslims in home state, the kind of the saffron brigade Narendra Modi has made a splashy, dominant entrance on India’s national scene, not just winning a majority government, but a single party, his BJP, winning more than the 272 majority with their final tally of 283, a feat that has not been accomplished by any party for more than 30 years.
Modi and the BJP have completely demolished the Indian Congress Party (INC) and everyone else with a truly landslide victory, the kind that has not been seen in India during recent federal elections where it has always come down to regional parties still holding some power sharing.
Imagine this – that BJP by itself has a single majority with 283 seats and the NDA Alliance total of 337 seats – this means Modi can even tell their allies we don’t need you if the allies start behaving irrationally or not to his liking.
It’s ABSOLUTE POWER for Modi and the BJP but let’s hope it doesn’t go to Modi and his party men’s head as that could be totally disastrous for all of India, which is at a crucial state in its growth, having been hampered greatly by massive, widespread CORRUPTION, which essentially did the Congress in along with being in power for too long for their own good.
The Congress with their 43 seats and with their UPA alliance getting a total of measly 58 seats are in deep trouble and may not even get an Opposition status in parliament. The Gandhi family’s long control of the party is also in trouble as they alone oversaw this disaster. Rahul Gandhi is finished as leader and Sonia will not be able to hold on to control unless Priyanka Gandhi-Vadera decides to help build the party and may be seen by new generation of Indian as a capable leader or the second-coming of the young Indira Gandhi!
Congress’s only bright spot was former Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh making mince meat out of BJP’s top leader Arun Jaitley in handily winning the Amritsar seat and Congress may go back to him to build the party up in Punjab where it faces real competition for votes and political status from upstart Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won an incredible 4 seats, anointing former comedian-actor-singer Bhagwant Mann to star politician status, who helped the party rank at the top in Punjab with the Akalis, who had a measly showing of 4 seats after they spent truck loads of money on the election.
Despite their triumph in Punjab, AAP is flop with four seats nationally but Arvind Kejriwal and comrade in Punjab Bhagwant Mann have made a statement that they are here to stay. They can build nationally from their success in Punjab and earlier in Delhi and learn from their mistakes. Kejriwal must accept that when given power, he must govern and not get involved in Aam Aadmi side-dramas as the public unforgiving just as it is generous, something that all parties must heed.
The REAL LOSERS in the election are the Congress nationally and Badal Akalis in Punjab, who will now have a real challenger in AAP for the State Assembly elections. Badals can thank their poor management, total screw-ups by “Drug-Peddler” MLA Bikramjit Majithia and Sukhbir Badal himself, who had proven to be quite the election winner after the Assembly win and then the Panchayat and other minor polls. Badal Akalis were able to buy the voters in those elections literally with money but the real anger of voters in Punjab have surfaced and it will spell Doom for the Akalis in Punjab. That’s too bad given that now their ally is control of Delhi!! Karma is a BITCH!
And while it’s time to celebrate for Modi and BJP of their great electoral success, there is much caution and many in India as well as secular, pluralist and democratic NRIs are mourning the victory of rightwing demigods like Modi.
“The ‘Butcher of Gujarat’ will be the Prime Minister of India for the next five years,” stated Canada-based activist group SANSAD.
“As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi grounded his power on the corpses of over 2000 Muslims who were killed in the genocide of February-March 2002. Before that, he had a tenuous hold on the state. Post-genocide, he skilfully used spurious, disproved and at worst contested evidence of a train fire in which 58 Hindus were killed — the ‘trigger’ for a genocide that had been a long time in the making – to win a landslide electoral victory.”
But one of Modi’s canny abilities as a politician has been that he has made sure that nothing stuck to him.
“Diligent police officers were harassed and transferred out; there was witness intimidation; there were false ‘encounter’ killings of Muslim youth, framed as ‘terrorists’, to build the case that Modi was their intended target.,” SANSAD said.
But he won’t be able to get away with this on the national scene, where scrutiny and pressure to be fair and forthright is immense. If he goes astray from his plans to build a nation with much more equality and begins focusing on his rightwing designs, he will risk triggering backlash from extremists and could risk an assassination like Rajiv Gandhi, something that Modi should really learn from!
Modi has now more power than he ever wanted or dreamed of having. So the question now is – can he deliver on a national level while avoiding the pitfalls that befell him in Gujarat!
He can be the statesman he claims to be and shed his so-called “Butcher” past by taking whole of India forward and keeping his party in power for a long time!
He will be different and will try to put his stamp on his kind of India but he has to be careful that he doesn’t get bogged down in communal-racial tensions and corruption, which was in the end the one key thing that did the Congress in!
Somebody asked me Friday morning, whether there is a lesson for Canadian politicians in the election – there certainly is. With more than 550 million people voting, there is a great lesson for all democracies that when people want change, they vote for it, like people of India have done, delivering a clear cut majority for a single party!
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