Modi Should Offer Shah His 56-Inch Chest For Succour

It's been a bad few days for Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Fortunately, one has a 56-inch chest and the other ample shoulder-space for each to lean on the other and cry. But, alas for them, Omar Khayyam's "Moving Finger" has written - and not all their "tears can wash out a word of it". So, while the nation waits with increasing skepticism for their promise of "achche din" to be delivered, the duumvirate's "burey din" have certainly arrived upon them.

It began a week ago, on Sunday, 15 October, when the results of the Gurdaspur parliamentary by-election came in from Punjab. That Sunil Jakhar of the Congress would win was a virtually foregone conclusion - which is, why, of course, Modi had not rushed there to campaign, for he goes only where he feels assured of victory (quite unlike Rahul Gandhi who, braver than his principal opponent, courageously picks up the democratic gauntlet, win or lose). When, therefore, Jakhar's victory was announced, it would have been taken in the normal electoral stride - except for the quite stunning margin of Jakhar's victory: one lakh, ninety three thousand votes! Now, that's a landslide, especially in a three-cornered contest.

What accounts for such a humongous margin, given that the last election in 2014 was won by the BJP's Vinod Khanna by a massive majority of one lakh, thirty five thousand? For this means that over the three years of Modi raj, the BJP in Gurdaspur have lost an amazing 1.27 lakh votes - that is, over a lakh and quarter of those who voted "Har, Har Modi" in May 2014 are now crying, "Hai, Hai Modi!"

Of course, the new Punjab Chief Minister's governmental performance and his personal charisma, as also the unity within the Congress that Capt. Amarinder has generated, account for a significant share of the victory. But credit is due also in substantial measure to the rejuvenation that has set in since all doubt was cleared as to who would be helming the Indian National Congress in the run-up to the next Lok Sabha election. Yet, I would give the BJP - and Modi/Shah - the biggest "Thank You" for they have lost so much of their lustre that the vote is principally by disillusioned BJP supporters against the BJP. That is its national significance.

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Consider also that on the same day, down in the deep South, in the Kerala assembly constituency of Vengara, K Janachandran, who The Hindu described as the "most popular BJP candidate of the district", got no more than a miserable 5,278 votes against the winning candidate's score of 65,227. Once again, no particular note need be taken of this distant by-election result except that the BJP were making much of the gain in their share of the popular vote in 2014 and so had fielded a formidable team of senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah and Yogi Aditynath, on a yatra that included Vengara assembly constituency to leverage their "growing presence" in the state: another illusion shattered.

There followed a further setback in Tamil Nadu, where the BJP has been fishing in troubled waters ever since Jayalalithaa fell seriously ill about a year ago. Taking advantage of dissensions in the ranks of the AIADMK after Jayalalithaa died, the BJP has been playing one faction against the other, and the Governor against everybody else, to somehow filch party political advantage for itself in a state where it has no presence.

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Among the games being played has been to try to inveigle support from one or the other, or both, the leading film stars who have been testing the political waters - Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. The BJP had some slight success with Kamal Haasan in November last year when he came out in support of Modi's demonetization. However, now that the deleterious consequences of demonetization are in full evidence before the nation, and particularly in light of the poor having borne the brunt of Modi's political impetuosity and economic illiteracy, Kamal Haasan has demanded an apology from Modi for the needless suffering he has inflicted on the most needy. Since Modi has not apologized for even the thousands of Muslims massacred and gravely injured on his watch 15 years ago, I doubt that Kamal Haasan has any real expectation that he will have to salute Modi for apologizing over "note-bandi". So, there goes one more straw that Modi-Shah were clutching at to further their vain ambition of becoming a "national" party.

Last week, this column took stock of the poor showing of the Trio - Shah, Irani and Adityanath - in Amethi where they desperately tried to distract attention from the BJP's increasingly unsuccessful campaign in Gujarat by focusing on the alleged Italian origins of Rahul Gandhi's spectacles. It didn't even raise a titter. The week under review further added to their woes with the young Dalit leader, Jignesh Mewani, and the Patidar hero, Hardik Patel, hinting that while they were definitely not going to side with BJP, they were open to joining hands with those who would oppose 'Modishahi'. That is a roundabout way of saying they were on the same side as the Congress, since Gujarat remains one of the few states where there is a straight one-on-one contest between two parties, the Congress and the BJP.

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Modi sought to restore his primacy by thundering in Gandhinagar that the difference between the BJP and the Congress was that between "development" and "dynasty". People have heard this old chestnut so often before that they just turned away and yawned before smiling at Rahul's tweet, getting back at the Siamese Twins for calling him "shehzada" by clubbing them as "Shah and Badshah"! It is such quick-wittedness that has resulted in retweets of Rahul's one-liners pulling ahead of Modi's. The BJP is learning to its cost that social media, which they cottoned on to first as a novel political weapon, can quite as easily be turned against them.

The final blow has been the Global Huger Index showing India at 100 out of 119 in the number and share of Indian children and adults going to bed hungry. Economists and statisticians have jumped on the wagon to demonstrate that the Index is less about hunger than about malnutrition, but what comfort they find in claiming that, as a people, we are not "hungry", just "severely malnourished", I really do not understand. However you define it or measure it, the Index reveals Modi's India wallowing at the bottom, "shining" no more than under Vajpayee. False assessments ring hollow in the ears of those awaiting succour. Moreover, with unemployment soaring; growth stuttering; small businesses closing down because of ham-handed implementation of  GST - "Grim and Stupid" rather than "Good and Simple" as the clever, clever Prime Minister had so wittily quipped back in July (have you noticed how Modi and the Modi-wallahs have stopped saying that?); and the informal sector that employs 93 per cent of the work-force pushed into a miserable corner by demonetization, where once the Modi mantra was believed by the gullible, now, owing to dreadful ground-level performance, the phrase has entire lost its sheen, its earlier reverberation. Indeed, the much-vaunted "Gujarat Model" that took in millions once upon a time long, long ago is being mocked in Gujarat itself as "crazy development". The Modi dispensation is truly living up to the old adage, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time". Modi-Shah have seen this; hence the panic. They can't even stomach a GST joke in the Tamil mega-hit "Mersal".

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What then ties together all these quite separate developments ranging across the nation, North to South? Bluntly, it is the withering away of the economy. The Chandigarh Tribune summed it up in one rather moderate indictment: "It was," says its editorial on the Gurdaspur election outcome, "the (BJP's) doings at the Centre - demonetization and GST - that have actually handed the victory to Sunil Jakhar on a platter". Or, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, "It's the economy, stupid". Modi has his Economic Advisory Council, but it is so filled with courtiers of the likes of Surjit Singh Bhalla and Bibek Debroy, that they have transmogrified into clapper boys from the academics of standing they once were.

That is one explanation. There is another. Because I am a 'Macaulay ki aulad' (an illegitimate descendant of Macaulay), as the Sangh Parivar describes me and my ilk, I have no belief in astrology. But Modi, who is on record as proudly believing ancient India knew plastic surgery and aeronautics, does, one presumes, have profound faith in what, after all, is testimony to our nation's ancient wisdom on the links of astronomy to astrology. I mention this because I ran into a professional astrologer at a Diwali party last week and he took great pains to explain to me why he thought things were going so badly for the Duo.

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If I got the astrologer right, he said, Ruchak Panch Mahapurush Rajayoga is written into Modi's astrological chart, it was when the Moon entered his lagna, which, (how appropriate!) is Scorpio (!), in September 2011, that he began his dizzying rise to national power. However, as the Moon was debilitated, once Mars joined the lagna and gained the position of yogakaraka (significator), Modi's fortunes changed to Neech Bhanga Rajayoga. This resulted in Modi starting to issue a string of false promises to the youth of India during the last elections that greatly appealed to young voters. However, as Prime Minister, he just could not, and cannot, fulfill these promises. Then, unfortunately for Modi, in July this year, Mercury joined the Moon in Modi's lagna. Since Mercury and the Moon are inimical to each other, the Moon tries to get away with Modi's bogus pledges to the young (who constitute 70% of our electorate) while Mercury holds Modi down to ground realities. This is why, says my astrologer-friend, Modi is stuck in the quagmire into which the Moon has led him, but from which Mercury allows him no escape.

So, dear reader, take your pick. Either attribute some astrological hocus-pocus for Modi's present mess - or, like me, conclude that since it is Modi, and none other, who has steered the nation into the doldrums, it is his actions, and his actions alone, as the captain of the vessel, that have sprung such a big leak that there is no way left, other than straight down, for his ship of state to take.

(Mani Shankar Aiyar is former Congress MP, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.)

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