With barely three weeks to the first phase of General Elections 2024, the preparations for the electoral battle are going on full throttle. Unlike the previous General Elections, the Indian Opposition is entering the fray openly acknowledging the return of the incumbent dispensation with renewed majority and strength. No less than the Congress Party president and leader of the Opposition, Mallikarjuna Kharge in the concluding session of the 17th Parliament humorously alluded to “Ab ki baar 400 par…. With a current majority of 330-334 seats, this time it will be 400”. The desperate attempts of the opposition to put up a sham unity of the INDI Alliance in the face of Modi’s rolling juggernaut of “Once more Modi Sarkar” is falling like a pack of cards.
Even the much-touted
attempt to grab the people’s attention through Bharat Jodo Yatra and Bharat
Jodo Nyay Yatra ended up doing more harm than good to the Opposition and
especially to the Congress. The body blows suffered by the Indian opposition
parties have been their making given their inability to challenge the
government on real issues and ineffectiveness to play a constructive role. As a
result, the elections have turned out to be largely one-sided with people now
waiting for what next rather than who next. Airing a modicum of confidence in
returning to power, PM Modi has pledged Rs 10,000 crore financial assistance to
Bhutan for the next five years. Even the media is also abuzz with PM Modi’s
meeting with ministers for the first 100 days of his government in the third
term.
Ensuring
sustained political stability is one of the hallmarks of any developed country.
Bereft of an absolute political majority, for three decades, Indian polity was
roiled by a series of coalition governments. Concomitantly, the developmental
agenda was sacrificed at the altar of the so-called “coalition dharma”. Lack
of political stability in India caused a laggard growth. In terms of GDP, India
and China were of roughly similar size till the early 1990s. But subsequently, China
rapidly zoomed past India with a consistent double-digit growth rate and now
China is 4.8 times richer than India. An unobtrusive development vision backed
by a strong political leadership in China has made all the difference.
A third term
for the Modi government is poised to bestow such an advantage on India. India
is at the cusp of a critical development phase. But unlike the authoritarian
regime of China which has effectively insulated itself from external influences,
thanks to the filial loyalty to the Communist party, nonexistence of political
diversity and dangling sword of corruption purges, India has been a playground
for foreign players. The fidelity of Communists to the Soviet Union facilitated
the latter’s infiltration into the Indian political system which subsequently
declined following its collapse. Since its stoic rise as a developing economy
after the economic reforms, external agencies forged connections with
influential media, academic, social and political organisations of democratic
India.
The
dangerous gameplay of these foreign agencies which went unchecked under the
pliable political regimes suffered a jolt under the Modi regime. An
uncompromising nationalistic strategy and a developmental vision of the Modi
government frustrated the vested interests bent on making India an experimental
ground for proselytization and turning it into a fractured, disunited, laggard
nation. To have their way, vested interests in cahoots with external agencies
have rolled out concerted attempts to vitiate India, its polity, and its
democracy with international media under its fold. Resultantly, India began to
suddenly slip in all rankings ranging from Poverty Index through Happiness
Index to even Democratic Index.
The abrupt
fall of India in the international rankings has been steady and consistent
notwithstanding the stable and steady development enabling environment. The
unabashed bias became so glaring that the common man began to mock the Western
aptitude of giving a better rank to Palestine and Afghanistan, the seedbeds of
terrorism as much happier places to live than India. According to the World
Happiness Report, India is at 126th position among the 146 countries
below its neighbours-Nepal, Bangladesh and China. The Varieties of Democracy
(V-Dems) reports placed India among the top ten autocracies deeming it an “electoral
autocracy”. The sudden fall of India in all these indices from 2013 is
glaring.
The
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) which relies on the annual reports of US-based
think tanks like Freedom House, Pew Research, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters
Sans Frontieres termed India a “Flawed Democracy”. JSF has downgraded
India from completely free to partially free in terms of press freedom
Similarly,
India is being pulled up on global platforms for its strategic choices even as
the Western countries continue to violate the sanction regime with impunity.
The attacks have been multi-pronged and multi-sided. Unfortunately for the
West, the decade-long sabotage attempts to taint India's polity and malign the
robust democratic institutions boomeranged. Instead of trust-deficit, these
despoiling attempts appear to have heralded a steadfast faith in the current
dispensation. Frustrated by the futility of biased narratives bolstered by
toolkits deployed to unseat the political dispensation, the vested interests
and their masters in the West have now shed the pretense of propriety.
The attacks
reached a tipping point with the arrest of AAP supremo and Delhi Chief
Minister, Arvind Kejriwal. From providing a platform to the disgruntled and
reluctant politicians to spew venom against the syncretic fabric of India,
countries are now openly hitting at the democratic framework. Lending weight to
the opposition claims of “politically motivated” arrest, the German
foreign minister in response to a question remarked, “We assume and expect
that the standards relating to the Independence of the judiciary and basic
Democratic principles will also be applied in this case. Like anyone facing the
accusations, Mr. Kejriwal is entitled to a fair and impartial trial”1.
After MEA summoned the German envoy and issued a demarche, Germany retracted
the statement expressing faith in the Indian Constitution that guarantees basic
human rights and freedoms.
A day later,
the US responding to an emailed query voiced, “We encourage a fair,
transparent and timely legal process for Chief Minister Kejriwal”. The note
also lamented the freezing of Congress party bank accounts and toed the line of
Amnesty International’s Aakar Patel-“the growing crackdown clearly shows the
authorities blatant disregard for human rights and rule of law”2.
Taking a
serious objection to US spokesperson Miller’s remarks, MEA summoned US Deputy
Secretary Gloria Barbena and at the weekly briefing MEA Spokesperson Randhir
Jaiswal lodged a strong objection and protests and said, “The recent remarks
by the State Department are unwarranted. Any such external imputation on our
electoral and legal processes is completely unacceptable”. He even added, “India
is proud of its independent and robust democratic institutions. We are
committed to protecting them from any form of undue external influences….
Mutual respect and understanding form the foundation of international relations
and states are expected to be respectful of the sovereignty and internal
affairs of others”3.
India
is proud of its independent and robust democratic institutions. We are
committed to protecting them from any form of undue external influences…Mutual
respect and understanding form the foundation of international relations and
states are expected to be respectful of the sovereignty and internal affairs of
others.
Interestingly,
even after summons, Miller reiterated that the US is “closely monitoring the
situation” raising questions about its alleged interference in the internal
affairs of a fellow democratic country. Washington’s replies have recapitulated
the entrenched fears about the US’s dubious reputation in the orchestration of
“Colour Revolutions” across different countries.
Earlier in
the week, Washington criticised India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) over
“human rights”. This is in line with USCIRF’s (US Commission on International
Religious Freedom) gross misinterpretation of “religious requirement” of
asylum seekers in India by glossing over its historical context and relevance.
India strongly hit back at these regurgitated narratives as “misplaced,
misinformed and unwarranted”. The above three back-to-back unwarranted
references to India’s domestic affairs have inadvertently stoked the old
mistrust towards the US. The US which crossed India’s redlines by hosting
Kashmiri Separatists is adeptly playing a double game with its inaction against
the mushrooming Khalistani ideology on its territory despite its repeated
requests. Above all, the timing of President Biden’s letter to Pakistan's Prime
Minister after three years of long prolonged silence is also raising spurious
speculations.
After the US
and Germany, the UN waded into Kejriwal’s row saying, it hoped that “everyone’s
rights are protected in India” and that they “encouraged fair,
transparent and timely legal processes”. It is interesting to note that a
Bangladeshi Journalist, Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey serving as a White House/UN
correspondent for SA Perspectives and Just News BD has directed these queries
to Germany, the US and the UN. Ansarey, a Columnist for The Wire, connected to
Jamaat-e-Islami, a proscribed terror organisation, has been a supporter of the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party, the architect of the “India Out Campaign” in Bangladesh. An
IPA Newspack Report indicated that William B Milam, former US ambassador to
Bangladesh with ties to the Democratic Party and co-manages Right to Freedom
has reached an agreement with Ansarey4. A close look
indicates that an unholy nexus of anti-India, Civil Society Organisations and
political parties is relentlessly at work to tarnish India’s image and to
politically destabilise the country.
Indeed,
every pillar of Indian democracy is under attack. Calling the Indian Judiciary
as “majoritarian”, “not as strong as it can be”, “at its
weakest in modern Indian history” and “Pakistan’s Judiciary has done
much better than India in many cases”, a lobby group has been casting
aspersions on its functioning5. Underscoring the dubiety of
these systemic wanton attacks over 600 advocates in an open letter to the CJI
expressed concerns about “vested interests” attempting to “pressure
the judiciary”, “influence judicial process” and tarnish the
reputation of the judiciary with “frivolous logic and stale political
agendas”6.
The current
scenario validates Late CDS General Bipin Rawat who cautioned against a “two
and a half front war”7. The oblique reference to the
malicious agenda of the “vested interests” is the prescient “half-front
war” India is now faced with. Calling the bluff of this nefarious narrative
war, EAM Jaishankar showed a mirror to the US by pointing at the Jackson-Vanik
Amendment, Lautenberg Amendment and Spector Amendment that fast-tracked
citizenships of certain minorities. India is now going full guns blazing
against the Western hypocrisy reminding them of the cardinal rules of diplomacy
and vociferously questioning the Western precedent of judging countries as
their imperial moral compass.
The fumbling
opposition incapable of garnering the electoral mandate is hanging to the coattails
of the West to tilt public support in their favour. The brazen interference of
the West in the internal affairs of a sovereign country is uncalled for and
reeks of unjustifiable moral constabulary. The subversive acts perpetrated by
the vested interests at the behest of the foreign puppet masters can
potentially destabilise India and can pose a security threat. India must rebut,
counter and confront the agenda now!! The decision to have India’s own
Democratic Index is the first pragmatic effort in this direction.
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