The season of promises

The events of this week brought into sharper focus the government’s strategy in an election year. First, Piyush Goyal presented a Budget that seemed interim only in name. Targeting the rural poor and the middle class, Goyal lavished one gift after another on the back of better savings due to the government’s technological drive on subsidy distribution.

Then came the drama in West Bengal. By sending Central Reserve Police Force troops to the police station where Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials probing the Saradha scam had been detained, the government signalled its intention of getting to the bottom of the probe. Even if that meant engendering a Constitutional crisis when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee chose to protest the government move by sitting on dharna.

Ultimately, it was the Supreme Court that gave the CBI the go-ahead to continue its investigation of Kolkata police commissioner Rajiv Kumar without arresting him, causing both camps to claim victory. Regardless, if the probe confirms the charges against senior Trinamool Congress leaders, including members of Parliament, the smiles in the Opposition camp may not last.

Since he became prime minister, Narendra Modi has repeatedly spoken of 2019, the year of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, as a watershed moment in India’s history. To back his claim, he has indicated that he would like to usher in a “new” India by 2022, an India with zero open defecation, an extensive highway network, electricity for all, health insurance for all, improved farm incomes and better provisioning of government services.

The goal that Modi embarked on during his current stint — captured in the slogan “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” — seems to have lost some of its cachet, given how the government has seen the need to increase welfare spending while simultaneously focusing on improving delivery and eliminating fake beneficiaries. The Budget introduced proposals that merely add to the government’s agenda in this direction (for example, the 10 per cent upper caste quota).

Even so, the government, and specifically Modi, recognise that elections are not won on the development plank alone. Every election ends up having a theme, and it is generally the Opposition that decides its contours. In 2014, the Opposition was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Modi played up to the hilt the “policy paralysis” of the UPA regime.

Eager to increase its seat share in West Bengal, the BJP may have calculated that it made better sense to focus on financial impropriety than on more emotive issues | Photo: Reuters

This time the Opposition faces several challenges in coalescing around such a theme. The Mahagathbandhan in UP may upset the BJP’s calculations but it is yet to come up with a substantial critique of the government. Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to rake up Rafale have met with limited success at best, with both the Supreme Court and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman pouring cold water on his designs.

The BJP could have wrested the electoral theme from the Opposition camp with a Ram temple in Ayodhya, which the party seems to be working on frenetically even at this late hour. But these negotiations are likely to be led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and other Hindu groups and not explicitly by the BJP. The prime minister may subtly hint at his preference but he is unlikely to take charge on this matter.

This leaves only corruption as a theme that can grab eyeballs and provide a conversation starter at the national level. In Bengal, the BJP and the Trinamool have been at loggerheads over a number of issues, ranging from Durga Puja to illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Eager to increase its seat share in the state, the party may have calculated that it made better sense to focus on financial impropriety than on more emotive issues.

The BJP’s stated position on this is that stemming corruption is not restricted to sending its political rivals to jail, as has happened with Lalu Prasad. It is about reconfiguring the way things are done in India. From bank cleanup to demonetisation, the government has used every opportunity to indicate its commitment to ushering in  financial rectitude.

Together with the flow of middlemen landing in India from Dubai and the sustained efforts to bring Vijay Mallya home, the government will make the 2019 election a repeat of the 2014 one. This would be terrific for no other reason than that the BJP will raise these issues while it is in government. The party will argue that the “system” continues to be in the grip of sordid players who have kept the country backward, and that it needs another five years to complete its programme of purification. Whether voters buy Modi’s promise of a golden 2022, only time will tell.

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