VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
Sundays always had special
significance in northern India,
particularly Punjab, ever since the colonial days.
As it’s a holiday, weddings and
other auspicious functions are fixed on this day so that maximum well-wishers
find time to attend it without any pressure of work. Not surprisingly, the
election managers of BJP and Akali Dal chose a Sunday afternoon for BJP’s prime
ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s rally in Jagraon in the heart of Punjab.
Attired in a saffron colour
pagri, Modi touched all issues which the Punjabis wanted to hear and given the
long association with the Akali Dal, reminded the people how Parkash Singh
Badal’s pro-farmer and traditional approach complements the modern approach of
his son and deputy Sukhbir Singh Badal’s vision on industrialisation, IT and
related sectors. As Modi has a grass roots understanding of the entire northern
belt comprising Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and
Jammu & Kashmir due to his organisational
responsibilities before becoming
the Gujarat Chief Minister, his understanding of the issues did not surprise
many.Modi talked about the Hindu-Sikh unity in his rally and how the Akali
Dal-BJP alliance was working for it. As he was in a minority dominated State,
had he spoken about the need to bring the Muslim minority on board for
inclusive development, right note would have struck across the country. But
perhaps that is not in the agenda, at least not before the Lok Sabha elections.
But watching Modi in Jagraon and
other issues which he highlights in his speeches all over the country, what is
apparent is that there is a judicious mix of local and regional issues with
that of national ones. Modi has clearly realised that federalism is too
important an issue and you cannot carpet it under so called pan-Indian issues.
What is important to a person in Ludhiana
or Amritsar could be different to
that of a person in Gandhinagar, Guwahati, Kochi
or Vijayawada. Realising this
difference, identifying the regional issues, highlighting them and promising to
make them a part of the mainstream is the way to go about it.
Perhaps this is why Modi talked
about the wastage of foodgrains in the State which is the food basket of the
country, the menace of drugs, agriculture, along with his economic vision of 33
per cent each — agriculture, manufacturing and services sector for the growth
of the country. As the region has the largest concentration of ex-servicemen,
targeting Congress on the delayed ‘One Rank One Pension’ scheme found many a
sympathetic ear in Punjab and the region.
Contrast it with the speech of
Congress’ prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Dehradun soon
after Modi’s speech ended. Rahul as usual concentrated on talking about
empowerment of women, right to health, eradication of poverty, schemes for poor
etc — issues which the party has been talking for the last over 60 years
without finding a solution for them.
At Jagraon, one found Modi
talking about trifurcation of the Food Corporation of India,
a practical solution to the problem of storage and distribution of foodgrains
in the food basket of the country. In Dehradun, one found Rahul talking vaguely
about some vague issues without connecting to what the people wanted. Of
course, the live audience at both Jagraon and Dehradun was “captive”. In
Jagraon, they were Akali Dal-BJP supporters while in Dehradun, they were
Congress supporters. So whenever there is a slogan in favour of Modi or Badal,
people responded in Jagraon while whenever a Zindabad was demanded from the
crowd for Rahul Gandhi, the people responded.
Rahul spoke of the natural
tragedy of Uttarakhand only once perhaps as a lip service. He must have
realised that the party had to change its Chief Minister of the State for poor
rescue, relief and most importantly rehabilitation and reconstruction. Apart from that he had nothing to offer to
the people of the Hill State
who are yet to recover from the tragedy even as the next season of the Char
Dham yatra approaches and there has been little effort in the State to restore
the facilities.
It was ironic when Rahul said
that the party gave 12 LPG cylinders realising the pain of the women who needed
12 cooking gas cylinders. Come on Rahul, wasn’t it your Government which
brought in nine cylinders and linked it with Aadhaar scheme and then raised it
to 12? You take from one hand and then deliver from another and make the entire
thing look virtuous. I don’t think, people are that naïve to buy such an
argument.
Days of being vague are gone. You
cannot simply say that you will empower women and bring employment for the
youth. Even Jawaharlal Nehru talked about that in his election speeches. Now,
people want to know how you would achieve that. Give a blueprint, a practical
solution.
In all his speeches so far,
Gandhi invariably talked about his father bringing computers in the 80s. It was
time, he spoke on what the Manmohan Singh Government did in the last 10 years,
particularly a list of its achievements and a frank admission of its failure.
It would only add to your magnanimity if you admit that your party indeed
presided over the mega scams like spectrum allocation and coal scam and
thwarted development through inaction and sitting on decisions.
Also, perhaps Congress under
Rahul Gandhi sees the entire country as one unit with the same set of problems
not realising that each State has specific issues and needs specific grievance
redressal mechanism. The third rally of the Sunday was at Rohtak in Haryana,
the home State of Arvind Kejriwal.
Many analysts might be calling Kejriwal the star of T20 style of politics but
his supporters insist that he has a long term gameplan. But in Rohtak, he
continued to bank on issues which he thinks paid him dividends in the Delhi
Assembly polls last December and would again help in the April-May Lok Sabha
polls.
Kejriwal’s rally in Rohtak was
largely on expected lines and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Attack on
the two parties — Congress and BJP on corruption along with Mukesh Ambani, land
scams, etc. So far, he has not come out with
a vision for governance and the plan for the future — what will he do on
industrialisation, generating employment, farmers, service sector, youth, etc.
After resigning as Delhi Chief
Minister, perhaps Kejriwal has started believing in the opinion polls which
predict that he will be getting around 20 seats and would not be in a position
to have any say in the next Government formation as NDA is way ahead and UPA
way behind. Or May be, the AAP is still in the process of formulating its
opinion on the national issues as it tries to grow from a Delhi specific
regional party to a pan-India party. (February 24, 2014)
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