by VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing “Ek Nayi Subah”, the event organised to celebrate the completion of two years of the NDA government at India Gate in New Delhi on May 29 PHOTO/PTI
The striking contrast between two events that happened within a span of 72 hours involving Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his close associate and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah has come to be perceived as symbolic of the two years of rule of the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The first event, held on the evening of May 28 at the India Gate lawns in New Delhi, was the grand second anniversary celebration of the BJP-NDA government led by the Prime Minister. Among the participants were an array of film actors and other prominent personalities. The second event, held in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, on May 31 and attended by Amit Shah was titled “Sardar Patel Kisan Mahasammelan” (a grand rally of farmers in memory of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Deputy Prime Minister of India and a Sangh Parivar icon).
Lukewarm response
The India Gate event was spectacular in terms of glitz and grandeur. However, there was nothing grand about the “grand rally” of farmers, which was attended by less than 3,000 people with no evidence of spirited support for the Modi-led government. This lukewarm response apparently upset Amit Shah so much that he returned in a huff to Varanasi, where he had earlier partaken of a symbolic meal with Dalits and people belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). This social dining was obviously aimed at strengthening the BJP’s Dalit-OBC base in Uttar Pradesh, where the Assembly elections are due early 2017.
While this political exercise did get significant media coverage, its contrast with the Delhi event was noted in social media. A social media post that went viral pointed out that any celebration of a government’s milestone would be worthy and meaningful only if the people observed it voluntarily without the powers that be having to goad them into it. Evidently, the difference between the two events was a reflection of the gap between high-blown rhetoric and realistic, ground-level perceptions.
The six-hour-long extravaganza at the India Gate lawns, titled “Ek Nayi Subah” (A New Dawn), was indeed high on rhetoric. It was attended by a number of film actors, including Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Vidya Balan, Anupam Kher and Anil Kapur. Of course, all these tinsel town heroes and heroines played second fiddle to the biggest star of the evening, Prime Minister Modi. The evening witnessed programmes titled “Mera Desh Badal Raha Hai” (My country is changing), “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter), and “Zara Muskura Do” (Smile Please). Jubilant advertisement films featuring Modi with the actors Madhuri Dixit, Kareena Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, Alia Bhatt, Frieda Pinto and Priyanka Chopra were shown. All in all, the objective was to promote a “feel-good” effect about Modi’s two-year rule. Modi’s own contribution to the evening was the now-too-familiar rhetoric, harking back to his Congress-led predecessor governments and pointing out how bad that party and its regime were for the country.
In many ways, it was like a return to his pre-Prime Minister days. After bashing the Congress, he went on to say that his government had ensured tremendous progress for the country in the past two years. He said that corruption, like a termite, had destroyed the dreams of the nation, and that corruption had stopped, not just for a year, but forever. He added that his government stood for the agenda of development (vikaswaad), while the Congress and the opposition stood for the agenda of obstruction (virodhvaad).
A large number of BJP leaders at the show were convinced that the creation of the “feel-good” effect had been made possible through the performances of the actors and politicians. However, the organisational and public embarrassment that Amit Shah faced in an important district of Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous State, underscored the fact that the “feel-good” sensibility was not uniform across all spaces in the country; it was particularly absent in rural areas.
Electoral reverses
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