General

‘Chaai Pe Churcha’ to ‘Gaai Pe Churcha’

November 16, 2015

“For great men, religion is a way of making friends;

small people make religion a fighting tool.”

      A P J Abdul Kalam

Arun Shouri (journalist, former minister in the NDA government and an economist with the World Bank), while participating in a recent book launch function attended among others by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chief Economic Advisor of the government,  Arvind Subranamian and former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, said that the current NDA government is UPA government plus a cow. Truly, the cow has been coming to the centre stage of Indian politics. And it became the paramount player in the Bihar Assembly elections.

An advertisement ran by the BJP in Bihar on the day before the voting in the fifth and final phase of the election was on cow. It had the picture of a woman hugging a cow (See image) with the header roughly reading, “Respected Chief Minister, you have remained quiet while your friends kept repeatedly insulting the Cow, revered by every Indian”. The advertisement quoted Lalu Prasad’s “Hindus-also-eat-beef” remark and his colleague R P Singh’s comment that “it is written in Vedas and Puranas that saints used to eat beef in ancient times.”The third quote it carried was the comment of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah that “if I want to eat beef nobody can stop me.”  


The advertisement sought an answer from the Bihar Chief Minister as to whether he agreed with those views aired by his friends. It ended with the tagline of the series, ‘Jawab Nahin, Vote Nahin’ (‘No Answer, No Vote’). It was no coincidence that most of the fifty-seven constituencies voting in that final face of elections in Bihar had a sizeable Muslim population (supposed to be beef-eaters).

Beef was already turned into a burning issue in the run up to the Bihar elections. A poor man in an Uttar Pradesh village was beaten to death and his son grievously injured by a mob that suspected the family of storing beef in their fridge. While the killing was dastardly, the response to it by some of the people, including ministers in the Union government, was shocking. The line taken by many associated with the party ruling the nation was that those eating beef were simply asking for death.  Such extreme views emboldened the clutch of fanatics. And more murders followed in the name of the holy cow.

A nation in which the cow was never a life and death issue suddenly seemed to erupt in intolerance, both for and against beef. In some places, beef was served in the public in what the organizers called ‘beef fests’. It was a signal for provocation. An MLA was thrashed in the J & K assembly by his colleagues and later doused with black paint. The protests went beyond the issue of beef. It became the issue of safeguarding the basic rights enshrined in the constitution. It also became the issue saving the nation’s secular ethos.

The killings in the name of the cow, the bloody murders of rationalist thinkers one after the other and the deafening silence of the government, particularly that of the Prime Minister to whom the nation looked up for reassurance, have together created a perception that India’s democracy and rule of law were under threat. To some extent, the media overplayed such apprehensions. Many prominent people including the Hon President of India cautioned against the growing sense intolerance in the country. Several writers, scientists and film personalities decided to surrender the Awards they received from the Government and Academies.

It was against this backdrop that the BJP went into the Bihar Assembly polls. The party and the government had two options before them. One was to come down heavily on the troublemakers in the fringe groups, and others in the government and the party aiding and abetting them. The other was to try to exploit the communal sensitivities of the people by deploying the cow as the primary issue in the elections. The party chose the latter option.  

Yet, the party did not go the whole hog with the communal polarization strategy around the cow, in the beginning of its Bihar campaign. Instead, it had started on the development plank. Just hours before the declaration of the election, which activated the moral code of conduct for the political parties, the PM announced the ‘Bihar Package’ to a packed crowd at a function in Ara. Mr Modi said, “Earlier, I had declared that I would give a Rs. 50,000-crore package to Bihar, but now, I realised it was not enough for the State. So I have come here to Ara to declare that I will give a Rs 1.25-lakh-crore package for its growth and development.” His fans cheered loudly. But many in Bihar took it an insult to the Bihari pride. After all, it was public money.

The hype and drama attendant with the announcement of the ‘Bihar Package’ apparently gave the impression that Mr Modi was, in his magnanimity, throwing such a huge sum into the begging bowl of the Bihari. It was not in good taste. The grand idea simply backfired. Yet, the cow remained on the sidelines. Mr Modi was focussing more on his developmental agenda for Bihar. Thanks to the disciplined cadres and lavish corporate funding, huge crowds were brought in for the election rallies addressed by Mr Modi. He left no stones unturned to woo his audience.

However, as the campaign progressed, one thing was becoming clear for all.  The consuming excitement and enthusiasm of the crowd that India had witnessed during Mr Modi’s Parliament election rallies were somehow missing in Bihar. In spite all the elaborate theatrics and venom-spitting speeches, most people kept their studied cool. As the number of Modi’s outings climbed, his speeches started losing its former originality and punch. He often sounded like the previous day’s newspaper.

The people on the street were fully conscious of the reality that beyond the juicy slogans and juicier promises, nothing changed in their lives because of Mr Modi becoming the Prime Minister some seventeen months earlier. People who were eagerly looking forward to their ‘Acche Din’ were actually served with ‘Bure Din’. Many finally opened their eyes to see that the much touted ‘Gujarat Model of Development’ was pure myth. Gujarat was not the paradise on earth.

The party president Sri Amit Shah tried to explain away the past promises made by Mr Modi as mere ‘Chunavi jhumla’ (Election gimmick). If the promises were bad, the explanation was worse. There was suddenly a question mark on the credibility of the party and the government.  The party strategists recognized the reality that BJP needed something more than Mr Modi’s grand promises and grandiloquent manners to win in Bihar. And they decided to go aggressive on the cow. Thus ‘Gaai Pe Churcha‘ (Debate over the cow) became the predominant election strategy in Bihar for BJP.

It is not that the cow was absent from India’s political scene until the Bihar elections. The cow had always been alive and kicking. But mostly remained on the periphery of the election strategies of BJP.  Then in May 2015 Sri Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs, said on public television, “If a certain section is dying because they can’t sell or eat beef then this is not the country for them. Let them go to Pakistan or an Arab nation.”  The Minister was participating in a debate on the TV Channel ‘Headlines Today’ (Now ‘India Today’) moderated by  India Today Group consulting editor Rajdeep Sardesai.  With it, the cow officially became the holy animal of the government. It was also transformed into an overly hot commodity carrying the potential to polarize the Indian society.  

The keystone of BJP’s successful Parliament Election campaign in 2014 was ‘Chaai Pe Churcha’ (Debate over [a cup of] tea). It was indeed a brilliant idea, the seed of which was served to the BJP strategists on a platter by Sri Manishankar Aiyar, the leader of the Indian National Congress. Interacting with the media at the venue of an AICC meeting at Delhi, Mr Aiyar had quipped, “I promise you in 21st Century Narendra Modi will never become the Prime Minister of the country. …But if he wants to distribute tea here, we will find a place for him”. His party must still be ruing over the comment.

That was perhaps the worst political gaffe of the decade. With Mr Modi repeatedly playing up his humble roots as a ‘Chaaiwala’ (tea boy), Aiyar’s highly insensitive taunt was turned by BJP’s campaign managers into a smashing campaign issue. The backroom boys of Mr Modi’s election campaign successfully presented Mr Aiyar’s comment as an instance of unabashed insult of the poor. In a very short time, ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ became a big hit. Mr Modi’s claim that those who then ruled at the Centre “don’t know what poverty is all about, but I know it”resonated with the audience and apparently unleashed a huge sympathy wave.  This, along with Mr Modi’s machismo image and mouth-watering promises swept him into power. And for the first time in thirty long years, Mr Modi became the head of a single party majority government at the Centre.

But some seventeen months later when Mr Modi was campaigning for the Bihar Assembly elections, the image of Mr Modi as a man who would deliver was substantially sullied. Besides, there was an apparent air of arrogance surrounding the person.  

An article published in the Guardian (UK) on Monday 9 November 2015 under the heading “Narendra Modi: the divisive manipulator who charmed the world”,says, “Modi conveyed early the audacity – and tawdriness – of power when in May 2014 he flew from Gujarat to the oath-taking ceremony on a private corporate jet emblazoned with the name of his closest corporate chum. In January this year, he turned out in a $15,000 Savile Row suit with personalised pinstripes to hug Barack Obama. Launching Digital India (a programme to connect thousands of villages to the internet) in Silicon Valley last month, the eager new international player seemingly shoved Mark Zuckerburg aside to clear space for a photo-op for himself (the video has gone viral). One of his most fervent cheerleaders in India now complains that the prime minister is like a new bride remaking herself for her powerful and wealthy in-laws”. (Remember, he was supposed to be one among the poorest of the poor of this nation, my foot!).

There was hardly anything to cheer about the economy after seventeen months of Modi rule. The official view that the nation’s  economy was the fastest growing economy in the world had few takers.  As Sri Arun Shouri had put it, the government failed in managing the economy, but succeeded in ‘managing the headlines’. Look at how a dubious change in the formula for computing the country’s economic growth (GDP) made the rate of growth jump overnight. The headlines screamed that India started growing at the rate of over seven percent from the five percent growth achieved in the final year of the previous regime. But when the previous year growth was recomputed using the new formula, the growth of 5% vaulted to 6.9%. It was a whopping forty percent increase in growth because of a change in the formula. Who said there was no magic wand?

Sri Raghuram Rajan, the RBI governor did some plain speaking on the country’s economic situation while delivering the C K Prahalad lecture on Friday, 18 Sept 2015 at Mumbai. He said, “Jugaad or “working around” difficulties by hook or by crook is a thoroughly Indian way of coping but it is predicated on a difficult or impossible business environment. And it encourages an attitude of short-cuts and evasions, none of which help final product quality or sustainable economic growth”. I wonder whether Mr Rajan would stay in his seat for long.

In spite of the general economic slow-down globally, India remained in an advantageous position. Across the world, oil and commodity prices have fallen heavily. Crude prices have gone down from the level of some $120 a barrel during the previous regime to less the $50 a barrel. This has substantially brought down India’s import bills and subsidy burdens besides favourably influencing the country’s Current Account Deficit (Import Bills Vs. Export Earnings). The government seems to be quietly skimming off huge undisclosed sums by refusing to pass on the full price-fall to the end consumer and by simultaneously increasing levies. It increased service tax through the last budget from 12.36% to 14%.  Another 0.5% has been added to it in the name of ‘Swatchh Bharat’ from 15.11.2015.  And the life of the common man has only gone from bad to worse.

While electioneering progressed in Bihar, onion was selling at over a hundred rupees per kilogram and ‘dal’ at a whopping Rs. 225/- a kilo. The economy remained more or less stagnant in spite of all the planted media hypes. Except for a trickle, black money hoarded in Swiss banks remained untouched. Industrial production was falling and agricultural sector was facing one of its worst crises. Farmers were killing themselves left, right and centre. More Indians were dying almost on a daily basis at the nation’s borders. Train accidents were becoming more frequent. Touts were minting money by drilling into the e-ticketing system of the Railways. Stock Exchange Indices fell steadily.  Mobile calls were dropping like flies around a burning wick.  The telecom minister came to be known as the ‘Call Drop Minister’. And the Minister hailed from Bihar…

Apparently, it was difficult for the BJP to seek vote on the performance of its government at the Centre.  So they went into the caste arithmetic. The forward caste population, which was estimated to be around 15% in Bihar, was supposed to be solidly behind BJP. But to win, the party needed a large chunk of the backward class votes too. It found an obliging accomplice in this mission in Mr Manjhi belonging to the Extreme Backward Community – a politician who had back-stabbed his own party head.

In a desperate attempt to make the EBC votes doubly sure, Mr Modi who thus far belonged to the Other Backward Community (OBC) proclaimed one fine morning that he belonged to the EBC! Still, situation on the ground did not look comforting for the BJP. So Mr Modi raised the alarm of Nitish taking away the backward quota to give it to the Muslims. And he promised to lay down his life to ensure such a danger did not occur!  

As the voting inched to its final phases, apprehensions mounted in the BJP camp. So just before the fourth phase of polling, the BJP President Amit Shah addressing an election rally in Raxaul, on the border with Nepal said, “Agar BJP galti se bhi Bihar me haarti hai to jay-parajay to Bihar me hogi, pataake Pakistan me chhutenge (if BJP loses in Bihar even by mistake, then victory-defeat will take place in Bihar but crackers will go off in Pakistan)”. Did he really mean that people voting against BJP are traitors? Your guess is as good as mine. Then on the day before the final day of the Bihar vote, the party splashed its cow advertisement prominently in the Bihar dailies. But the cow did not save the party.

On 05 Nov 2015, curtains came down on the Bihar elections. It was then the turn of the pollsters to gaze into their crystal balls to ferret out a preliminary verdict. The first exit poll results came out in the CNN-IBN channel. It predicted a close fight with a reasonable majority for the ‘Grand Alliance’. More results followed. At least two polls prophesied an NDA victory. Most others gave a slight edge for the Grand Alliance.  The exception was Today’s Chanakya that came up with around 155 seats for the NDA. The nation waited for the counting day.

The leads started trickling in minutes after 8 A.M. on 8 Nov 2015.  If the exit poll outcomes were confounding, the lead positions were more so. I was watching NDTV. An hour or so into the results, the NDA was racing ahead of the Grand Alliance. When the NDA was some 20 seats ahead of the GA, Mr Prannoy Roy went to his graphics to display the likely scenario in the Bihar assembly based on the then trend. He gave 140-150 seats to the BJP Alliance (NDA). At the same time CNN-IBN was showing the trends of a landslide win for the GA. Interestingly, the Lok Sabha channel was showing NDA ahead while the Rajaya Sabha channel showed the opposite. (That was revealing!). The final outcome was that the BJP alliance was badly clobbered.

Experts have already done their extensive analysis on the reasons for the defeat of the BJP. I have only one observation to make on it. I believe that the party was punished by the voters of Bihar for its ugly displays of muscle and arrogance. It starts at the very top of the government and the party. The PM often seems too proud to speak. He mostly speaks only when he is outside the country addressing the NRI crowds. For instance, at London, he remembered that India was the country of Gandhiji and Buddha. Surprisingly, he also recalled that India had Prime Ministers before him including its first PM Jawaharlal Nehru. Hallelujah.

But PM is not alone in this ugly display of haughtiness. For instance, reacting to the return of awards by a large number of scientists, writers, filmmakers etc., Sri Jaitley said, “They are rabid anti-BJP elements“. Let me make it clear that I too have serious reservations about the need and relevance of ‘beef-fests’ and ‘Award Vapasi’ programs. The point is that the Minister as a public figure could have shown some regard for the age and reputation of the people involved. And on the NJAC verdict he said, it was the ‘tyranny of the unelected’. That was some respect for the Judiciary!

The arrogance of the government is unmistakable when it comes to dealing with the opposition in Parliament. The rulers apparently think that they have a right to ride roughshod over the opposition simply because they have the numbers in the Lok Sabha. Heady with power, they seem to have discarded all accommodative and conciliatory approaches to deal with the opposition. It may be good for the country’s democracy if the ruling party remembered that nearly seven out of the ten people voting in the last Parliamentary elections did not vote for it. Incidentally, the Hon Home Minister Sri Rajnath Singh alone seems to be an exception, displaying maturity and sobriety in his reactions. One hopes we had more people like him in the government and the party.

Let me now conclude. The voters of Bihar have shown that power dressing and vituperative rhetoric would not fool common people for long.  The myth of invincibility of the Modi-Shah combine was exposed first in Delhi and now in Bihar. Knowing the backwardness of the State and the social issues besetting its population, it is certainly surprising that ordinary people of Bihar could be so politically aware and so emphatically assertive in their voting.

People have long forgotten their sweet dreams of ‘Acche Din’.  The PM does not dare to say it any more to the resident population of India. There are newer and more seductive slogans and acronyms invented each day. The nation has lost count of it. So Mr Modi went to the Wembley Stadium in London and got the British Prime Minister say, ‘Acche Din Aayega’ (Good days will arrive). Perhaps, realizing that good days for the people of India were still a mirage, Mr David Cameroon repeated ‘Acche din Zaroor Aayega’(Good day will certainly arrive).  Amen.

Finally, in the Lok Sabha elections, ‘Chai pe Churcha’ addressed the aspirational India. India voted for change. In Bihar, it was turned on its head to become ‘Gaai pe Churcha’ (Debate over the cow) aimed at engineering a divisive India. The cow became a raging controversy in the Bihar elections. A preposterous connection was established between the cow and the Muslims and the Muslims and Pakistan. And Bihar voted for unity and harmony. To the surprise of the pollsters and the shock and disbelief of the BJP, (and even the winners) the holy cow failed to sell in Bihar. It does not surprise many. After all, Bihar was a State where ‘beef ban’ was already in force.

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Postscript

Some Facts on Indian Economy

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the primary indicators used to gauge the health of a country’s economy. It represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period; you can think of it as the size of the economy. Usually, GDP is expressed as a comparison to the previous quarter or year. For example, if the year-to-year GDP is up 3%, this is thought to mean that the economy has grown by 3% over the last year(Investopedia).

The current size of the Indian Economy is just over Two Trillion US Dollars. But while speaking in the course of his interactions at the Facebook HQ during his last high profile US visit, Mr. Modi had said, “Economically, every institution says that we are the fastest growing economy. My dream is to increase our GDP from $ 8 trillion to 20 trillion”. (So much for the PM’s grasp on the nation’s economy).

Now, let us deal with the story of India being the fastest growing economy.  It is true that in the year 2014, India’s economy grew at 7.4 percent while for the US the growth was 2.4% and for China 7.3%. But what is not considered in these ratios is the actual size of the economy. The size of the US Economy (at Current Prices) in billions of US$ was 17,348 and that of China was 10,356. Against this, the size of India’s economy in 2014 was just 2051. In other words, the size of the US economy was close to nine times bigger than the two trillion economy of India. It was five times bigger for China.  Thus, if India has to catch up with the growth of the US economy, we have to grow some NINE times the US growth. That would be around 20% a year. (Think how many years it would take to make India a twenty trillion economy from a two trillion economy. Let us keep in mind that it took nearly eight years for India to grow by one trillion (i.e. from one trillion to two trillion US$). Our PM can really tell jokes to the international media!)

Even such impossible levels of growth would not suffice for India when we compare the population of both countries. The per capita GDP growth of the US in 2014 was $54,629 while that of India was $1688. This figure was $8280 for China and $97,519 for Qatar, which tops the list. 

The point is that it is all very complex. So, let us not be fooled by the myth of India being the ‘fastest growing economy in the world’.

(Data Sources: World Development Indicators (WDI), October 2015 & IMF world economic outlook October 2015).

 
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  1. Who cares facts and figures,Its been selfies over substance,rhetoric over rationality and event management over economy management for a while….but still people easily get hallucinated !!!!

  2. @Anonymous Thanks for the comment. I agree. Even in the Bihar elections, people might not have voted on the basis of rational political thinking. May be, the victory of the Grand Alliance was the consequence of another kind of 'caste and communal polarization'. Yes. People easily get hallucinated.

  3. Bihar everybody says is an eye opener, Biharis all of a sudden have become so adorable to all as the savior of the Indian Democracy … Bihar is now the mecca of all those who had a point to prove and who conveniently forget that still NDA posted a 41% of vote share.And the mighty Biharis voted Lalu with the maximum number of seats… So thats the wisdom we look forward too.. Well God Save the Country! Bow for Modis criticism by all writers and authors for two deaths both of which happened in opposition rule states one in Karnataka and the other in UP abd lo All hell breaks loose for Modi is the PM… What Sir about Dabholkar killed in Maharashtra under Manmohan Singh, who then was responsible,and where was intolerance! And then the Communists in Kolkata… Pls write your next research on them, itll be an eye opener.. And your post on the killings in UP village if Muslims, Sir th3 then PM must have hung his head in shame, i am sure! And for the 8 trillion economy, yes India is one when measured on PPP terms, yes it SURPASSES even Japan taking the third spot! Yea it is not that simple as you said!

  4. @Anonymous
    I am grateful for your valuable comments. May be, I sounded too one-sided although I honestly did not mean to be so. I have made it clear that I did not agree with the view of intolerance of an unprecedented scale warranting the overreaction by politicians and intellectuals. Yes. Law and order is a matter for the State governments concerned to deal with. The problem was the patronage that some people connected with the ruling party at the Center seemed to provide to the miscreants. The silence of the PM only added to the disquiet. May be it is mostly a matter of perception. But restraint in public reactions is particularly important for people who are wielding power. Regarding Indian economy, whatever is the state of our economy, the credit or blame would go not just to the current government but also to the previous regimes. It is not fair to say that everything positive about the nation is because of the last eighteen months of NDA rule. I thank you for the language of reason you have employed in expressing your views. (I am really frightened of the abusive language I come across in the social media). I would be happy to receive more such inputs from people who differ with my views. It would help me to be more balanced in my opinions.
    Best Wishes.

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