If Modi loses next year, he can only blame himself

In one of the previous entries in this diary, I had said how Prime Minister Narendra Modi could well retain power after next year’s parliamentary elections because there is no one on the horizon in any rival party who could replace him. The word TINA (There Is No Alternative) is a favourite with political analysts in the Indian capital. But over the past ten days or so there has been a plethora of aspiring prime ministerial candidates who have raised their heads in the hope they will be counted and recognised when it was time for Indians to make their choice in the next one year. West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Uttar Pradesh’s Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati, Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu and even Telangana’s Chandrasekhar Rao have all started preparing for the big day without directly admitting - and in some cases even denying - that they were looking to become prime minister, but no good politician can ever be taken for her word when it comes to ambition. Of course, there is Rahul Gandhi who, the Congress Party thinks, is the man ideally suited to replace Modi. And then there is Arvind Kejriwal who has always harboured grand ambitions ever since that tumultuous and stupendous victory in Delhi in 2015. The party is dreaming for Rahul while Kejriwal is doing his own dreaming.Be that as it may, with just a year to go, Modi’s chances of retaining power looks a little less bright than it had a year ago. Curiously, this has more to do with his and his party’s own actions/inactions than what Mamata, Naidu et al are trying to do.The fact that the regional satraps are hogging national limelight once again is because Modi has fallen short of the expectations he had raised when he became prime minister four years ago. He had disrupted the cozy old boys’ club in the national capital. The average Indian loved him for it. Even the hardships of demonetisation did not deter her/his admiration for the new ‘disrupter in town’.But the disruption stopped short of his own Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whose members seemed to be a law unto themselves. Initially the blame was placed on the so-called “fringe”, meaning small-time local chieftains who worked with their own agenda. But soon it became clear there was a larger dimension to the whole scenario as amply illustrated by the ban, though short-lived, on the sale of livestock for slaughter at cattle markets. That one incident, strangely initiated by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change, did more damage to India’s economy in terms of job losses and export cancellations than many of the so-called financial scams during the previous Congress-led regime.Yet Modi seemed unmoved. He very well knew that all he had to do was speak up against the lawlessness of his party men and they would have been left with no choice but to fall in line. The lynching of Muslim men transporting cattle or the violence in the name of perceived shaming of a mythical queen of Rajasthan in a Hindi film, to name just two examples, would have stopped immediately.  But the prime minister, despite repeated entreaties from various quarters including columnists like Tavleen Singh, chose to maintain prolonged silence. The opposition took full advantage of the reluctance on the part of the prime minister to engage in the national debate. In all probability it even helped the rioters along as evidenced in the destruction of some statues in Uttar Pradesh and Telangana and the attacks on Christian churches in Kolkata and Delhi. In these politically cynical times the opposition will always look for chances to spite the government - the boot was on the other foot four years ago - so it is for the government, more especially the prime minister, to make sure that no such chance is given. Post 2012 Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi gave ample chances to the BJP which made sure the Congress did not return to power. They may say it was Modi-Amit Shah machinations that did them in. But in their hearts they must be ruing the many missteps they had taken that eventually led to their downfall. If Modi does not win in 2019, he will have nobody but himself to blame. Nothing fake about rap on Irani’s knucklesMuch before President Trump made ‘fake news’ famous, Indians were already introduced to the expression thanks to Narendra Modi. But as with McDonald’s or Pizza Hut or Pepsi, all things American had to have a local twist to suit the Indian palate to survive here. So, we had the Congress Party, smelling danger from Modi’s challenge to its till-then unquestioned supremacy over Lutyens’ Delhi, started calling him ‘Feku’, the innuendo being the man was fake and, therefore, had no right to be what he was aspiring to be - the prime minister of India. That was 2014. The Congress realised, however reluctantly, that this particular ‘Feku’, in fact, was the real thing and there was no escaping that reality. We did not hear much of ‘feku’ or fake for quite a while although we all knew we were being regaled day in and day out by fake news on 24X7 television, the print media and, most importantly, the social network without which life seems to be worthless, at least for some. I say ‘regaled’ because after the first shock waves of sensationalism that garnered much attention, things settled down quite a bit so much so that most people knew fake news when they saw/read one and it just about managed to stay afloat because of its entertainment value. The latest in that series of fake news was the “death’ of former chief election commissioner T N Seshan and, like Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain to you and me) had once famously said, the news of Seshan’s death was “greatly exaggerated”.Anyway, the short point is fake news is here to stay because the means of communication or dissemination of news has greatly changed over the past decade and the chaff will perforce come with the wheat. This is especially so in the case of a democracy like India - and perhaps the US as well - because the freedom of expression is guaranteed in our respective Constitutions.So, how to curb fake news in a democracy? Will shooting from the hip do any good? It will look very macho in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western but not with India’s minister for information and broadcasting. But that’s what Smriti Irani tried to do in her bid to curb fake news. Eastwood always hit target at first shot whereas Irani missed both the tree and the woods.Last week the I&B Ministry issued a directive that journalists accredited to it will lose that coveted recognition if found indulging in disseminating fake news. The operative word here is “found” because how do you ascertain that a certain piece of news is fake and what is the yardstick with which you gauge how seriously damaging that news is? More importantly, who will judge the quality of news to decide if it is fake or not? The ministry guideline, in fact, said once the complaint is registered for determination of fake news, the accreditation of the journalist, whoever “created and/or propagated” the fake news, will be suspended till the determination regarding the fake news is made. In short you are guilty until proven innocent!The media in India is overseen by the Press Council of India (PCI) for the print version and the National Broadcasters Association (NBA) for television and FM radio. Till date they have been doing a reasonably good job of self-governance. But Irani felt she should do more to “clean up” the press. Mercifully, Prime Minister Modi got wind of the ruling and within 24 hours of its promulgation forced Irani to withdraw the notice. With some crucial state assembly elections and even the general election not far away, it would have been a very dangerous but convenient weapon for the government had Irani’s diktat prevailed. Curiously, the Emergency during Indira Gandhi’s regime had witnessed the incarceration of several of Irani’s colleagues even as the press was muzzled. If Irani had hoped for a throwback to those dark days, that was not to be and rightly so.