Chowkidar bore hai - An election without fizz

In absence of a successful single-issue narrative, PM Modi may have no option but to create smaller and dispersed events distributed throughout the election period

Prime Minister Narendra Modi desperately needs to regain his magic as this election is fast slipping into the mundane. Without a new tamasha (spectacle), the electoral future of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime minister remain uncertain.

National fatigue seems to have set in. As a wag summed up, “Aaankh thak gayi aur kaan pak gaye (eyes are tired and ears are numb)” referring to the theatrics of the Prime Minister. His words capture the consequences of over-exposure of the BJP’s best campaigner. The oratorical and dramatic flourishes sound repetitive and rusty.

The recent demonstration of a missile shooting down a non-functional satellite in order to claim that India had now joined the elite club of space powers with anti-satellite missile (ASAT) capability is a case in point.  The PM kept the nation on tenterhooks and glued to their TV screens about an impending address to the nation. The garbled narrative about enhancing India’s military might that followed left viewers wondering why they had wasted so much time and emotional energy in the middle of a working day.

Incidentally to avoid charges of violating the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct, the address to the nation was filmed by a private news agency and subsequently “sourced” from its news feed by Doordarshan.

It is surprising that the prime minister has not chosen to talk about about the provisions announced just weeks ago in the Interim Budget, such as increasing the income tax exemption limit for the middle classes, the minimum income of Rs. 6000 per year of which the first instalments have been deposited in farmers’ accounts. Nor is he showcasing the much-touted 10 per cent reservation in government jobs for the upper caste poor.

As a result, the 2019 general elections looks granular – increasingly about caste and political alliances. Even social and economic issues are local.

In western UP therefore, the election may be about unpaid sugarcane dues to farmers, while in other parts of the state it will be about potato farmers facing a crashing market, and among the youth about unemployment. In the face of an aggressive and non-performing government they cannot access, there is a lingering anger against local MPs. Looking for enemy satellites in outer space and ways of shooting them down is the last consideration in their mind at the time of voting.

Given these circumstances, Prime Minister Modi has been forced to go back to the drawing board in search of a larger unifying campaign narrative. However, Balakot failed, ASAT failed and #MeinBhiChowkidar is also failing as an election narrative. On top of this comes Congress president Rahul Gandhi promise of a Rs.72,000 per annum basic income to the rural and urban poor under its NYAY scheme. This is twelve times more than the minimum income offered to farmers with small land holdings by Prime Minister Modi. The BJP’s electoral chances will be affected should the discourse shift to Gandhi’s NYAY scheme.

In the absence of a successful single-issue narrative the Prime Minister Modi may have no option but to create smaller and dispersed events distributed throughout the election period. Perhaps he has had a Plan B all along.

A biopic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to be released on April 5, just a week before the first phase of polling on April 11. On April 20, in the middle of the election campaign, Prime Minister Modi will also visit Abu Dhabi to lay the foundation stone of a Hindu temple, in a Muslim country.

The Enforcement Directorate is pushing for the arrest of Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra – a Delhi court is scheduled to give its verdict on his anticipatory bail on April 1. If Vadra is arrested, the prime minister can once more go into theatrical mood as the “only leader” who had the courage to act against the “corruption” of the first family of the Congress party. 

The downside of the arrest is that it may generate sympathy for Priyanka Gandhi or worse still, she may enter the electoral fray in Varanasi to take him on. Indeed, her rhetorical question at one of her public meetings asking people whether she should contest from Varanasi seems to be a warning aimed at the BJP government to desist from any such foolhardy step.

In Karnataka, which goes to the polls on April 18, the BJP faces a tough contest from the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular). Here the Income Tax Department has raided Irrigation Minister C S Puttaraju and other leaders close to the JD(S) taking the help of Central Reserve Police Force officers. The raids were conducted across the state at 15 to 20 locations. However the unintended consequence of building a corruption narrative against the JD(S) has been that while the raids have served to unite the cadres of the two alliance parties who were finding it difficult to work together on the ground.

Another state where a similar discourse is being readied is Tamil Nadu which also goes to the polls on April 18. Last weekend, Income Tax department raided the Treasurer of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Durai Murugan, apparently to seize unaccounted money to be used for electioneering.  IT raids have also been conducted on a firm close to the Telugu Desam party in Andhra ostensibly because it stole government data to manipulate elections. In West Bengal, the narrative would be around the Saradha-Narada scams and so on in the other states.

The point is that instead of a unifying national narrative, the campaign will include local narratives which promise some advantage to the BJP. While Prime Minister Modi will keep up the rhetoric on Pakistan and refer to the Opposition parties as “supporters of Pakistan and terrorists” (read, Muslims), essentially, he has lost his magic.

He used to be master of the spectacle whether at Madison Square Garden or in Meerut. However at his inaugural campaign rally in Meerut last week, the crowd progressively walked out of an hour-long speech. It bodes even worse for him and the BJP if instead the slogan moves from “Chowkidar chor hai”, to “Chowkidar bore hai (The watchman is a bore)”.

The writer is a journalist based in Delhi. He tweets @bharatitis.