In this pandemic season of coughs and colds, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown exemplary courage . With one single sneeze, he brought forth the lightening-swift measure of lockdown, taking everyone by surprise. Following it, in his social conduct and official policies, he has been strictly adhering to the protocol of the lockdown to fight Coronavirus. Let us take one by one the rules of the protocol, and see how the Prime Minister has lived up to their demands.
First, the requirement to maintain <strong>social distance</strong>.’ In fact, Narendra Modi had been faithfully observing this rule even before the outbreak of COVIND-19. Ever since he became the Prime Minister, he had scrupulously kept his distance from the media, and had not held a single press conference. Occasionally whenever he feels like it, from a safe distance he takes up the mike to deliver monologues like Maan ki Baat’, or spends some time in the echo chamber of his courtiers in the TV channels. During the lockdown, the Prime Minister went a step further beyond `social distance,’ by completely turning his back upon the lakhs of migrant workers who, thrown out of jobs, for days together undertook arduous journeys to return to their village homes.
The second obligation is to <strong>wash hands</strong>.’ Here also, all through the two phases of the lockdown (from March 25 till the last week of April) the Prime Minister totally washed his hands of’ the various ills that had erupted as a result of the lockdown – the shut down of factories and small and medium scale businesses, non-payment of salaries to their workers, helplessness of farmers unable to harvest and sell their produce, unhygienic conditions of the quarantine shelters where COVID-19 suspects are herded into, police assaults on citizens who step out from their homes to buy rations . Mr Modi has quite characteristically refused to acknowledge his responsibility for the outbreak of these economic and social maladies that threaten to be far more deadly than coronavirus. By remaining silent on these issues, he also follows the code of `social distance’ from the basic problems that ail our country.
Next in the list of rules is the need to wear a `mask .’ Here also the Prime Minister scores a point over any successful performer in a masked ball. Long before the advice came up to wear a half-mask to cover the lower part of the face to avoid the COVID-19 virus, he had converted his entire face into a mask, without the need for any external cover. With the ever fixed paternal smile and a cold glint in his eyes, his face conveys the impression of an all-knowing leader who will brook no dissent from anyone. With this permanently embedded mask on his face, for the last fifteen odd years, he had been performing on the Indian political stage , winning thunderous applause from the audience which voted him to power twice. The mask had hidden acts of malfeasance – like the writing off of Rs 68,607 crore of debt of top 50 wilful defaulters which include industrialists, many among whom based in Gujarat, Modi’s home state (Reserve Bank of India data released in April in response to an RTI inquiry ). His latest act is the extension of the lockdown for another two weeks accompanied by promises of bonanza – a masquerade that will continue to cover up the misdeeds of his government, and hypnotize the people.
Indefatigable in his efforts to make us adhere to the code of conduct, the Prime Minister has added some more rules (described as Narendra Modi’s ‘Seven Steps’ ) to the above mentioned three-point protocol. Important among them is one which is to help the poor. In this regard also, the Prime Minister followed faithfully his personal code of conduct. After maintaining social distance’ for weeks from the poverty-stricken and persecuted victims of the lockdown, he suddenly did a fast about-turn by directing his attention to them. As the situation was turning explosive with migrants, desperate to go back to their villages, fought pitched battles with the police in places like Bandra in Mumbai and Surat in Gujarat among other places, Narendra Modi hurriedly switched on to the role of the benevolent patriarch. He announced the arrangement of buses and special trains to facilitate their journey. But quite characteristically again, he left vague the question of who would bear the expenses of their journey – the Centre or the states. As a result, the migrants are left in the lurch digging into their half-empty pockets for money to buy railway tickets.
In another similar gesture of generosity, in the wake of manifestations of a mood of hostility among the poor, Modi asked his Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to announce a financial package of Rs. 1.7 lakh crores. Amounting to only 0.8% of the GPD (much smaller than most of the other G 20 nations), this measly sum is supposed to meet the daily necessities of some 12 crore people who have lost their jobs after March 25 (according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) . Even this miserably small sum has not reached many among the poor, as evident from the reports coming out in the press.
We keep hearing the promise of another second stimulus package of a trillion rupees this time – to help the micro, small and medium scale industries (which have suffered losses in business due to the lockdown), apart from farmers and daily wage labourers. But like many other similar pledges and their half-hearted implementation by the Modi government, these packages are also likely to remain elusive, or at best, transient balms to soothe the frayed nerves of the poor.
A super-performer in political charades, Modi has succeeded in giving a false colouring to the lockdown, embellishing it with highfalutin terms like war’ , decisive fight’, extremely critical’ strong action,’ etc. etc. He has won over the audience by praising them for coming together in the hour of crisis,’ and fighting COVID-19 like trained soldiers.’ An expert in the exquisite art of political pirouetting, he will continue to hold Indians spell-bound with his swift moves – by putting his best foot forward to take a step in one policy direction, and then suddenly twisting it in a fast U-turn in another direction of damage control.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari' (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
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Prime Minister is neither a migrant labor stranded either in detention camp without even the bare facility of food and stay, nor he is walking back to home. he can do it. What is important there in his following the lock-down fully. Crores of Indians are doing it.