INSIDE OUT!

Party more powerful than Government after 3 years

It must be just a co-incidence that Sarkar 3 was released almost at the same time that Modi Sarkar completed 3 years in office. But jokes apart, there is hardly much analysis of the performance of the Modi Government in the media.

The convenient explanation for this black out could be that the media is under pressure. But that’s not the whole truth. The media has lost its credibility in these three years because those anchors who are behaving like James Bond have devised their own style of generating TRPs.

But the more plausible reason for this absence of labour by the media is that given the victory march of the BJP all across the country there is no Opposition worth the while to be put up as the alternative.

In Delhi citizens have been putting up literally with filth and garbage on their way to office, and near their homes, with the BJP in power in the MCD. People are now going by slogans and not performance, with the BJP working hard to annihilate the Opposition in the country.

For instance, the Prime Minister made 56 trips across the globe. Beginning with the trip to Bhutan in 2014 to the ongoing four nation tour to Germany, Spain, Russia and France is there any accountability or transparency (two most favourite words of this dispensation) about these tours?

There were some moments which were highly embarrassing (one where he is seen gloating that demonetization was creating problems in the marriage of girls) and some which he would like to permanently delete from the memory chip if he could (taking an impromptu decision to visit Pakistan to greet Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, instead of returning directly from Afghanistan to India).

But such is the environment today that questions can not be raised, besides this PM is even more reticent than his predecessors in holding press conferences.

The Gandhi’s as the original gau rakshaks

Who got cow slaughter banned in 2017? Maneka Gandhi. Who banned cow slaughter in 1971? Indira Gandhi?

So what if the two personalities are in different camps, they are technically Gandhis. And the official name of Maneka underscores the connection, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi .

It was Maneka Gandhi’s lobbying that has culiminated in the ban on the sale of animals for slaughter. And naturally she was the first to welcome the move.

For the younger generation of Modi bhakts it may come as a surprise that Indira Gandhi had banned cow slaughter in 1971 after which all the Congress ruled states had followed suit.

Of course the current Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi explained the ban in her own inimitable style, telling journalists that milch cattle is sold to farmers for Rs.5,000 but a slaughter house pays Rs 25,000 for the same.

When Indira Gandhi had banned cow slaughter the party’s election symbol was cow and calf. And now Rahul Gandhi’s strong condemnation of the slaughter of a calf as ‘thoughtless, barbaric and totally unacceptable’, even though it was done as a protest by his own Youth Congress unit in Kerala makes him a true inheritor of his grandmothers legacy.

Abhijeet Bhattarcharya, Sonu Nigam, Anupam Kher all entertainers

The list of supporters of the present regime is growing like the tail of Hanuman as we head towards Ramrajya!

Except that their actual language is quite in contrast with their image in the public mind. Now it’s up to them to decide whether they want this Janus type façade to continue or come out with their true colours (saffron or whatever they decide).

There was a time when Red was the favourite colour of artistes and revolutionary poets and writers who refused to bow down to any kind of state pressure.

But what is sickening is that some of these vocal supporters of the saffron brigade like Abhijeet Bhattarcharya have been using such language that even Twitter had to intervene and block his account twice.

But bans by Twitter or getting reaction on the social media seems to have become a badge of honour nowadays. Bhattacharya’s Facebook followers are said to be 2 million.

The soft spoken chubby faced Sonu Nigam seems to have become the latest poster boy of this brigade after he spoke out against the morning ‘Azaan’. And supporting channels gave him one hour interviews as if he had said something very profound.

For reporters following the BJP and its leaders through their student avatars, it comes as a surprise that a party has degenerated to this level. In fact University reporters in the 1970’s associated abusive langauge and violence on campuses, and the streets, with the Youth Congress of those days. But now compared to the BJP the goons of yore appear like saints!