If It's Modi in Sunshine then It Will Be Modi in the Rain Too; As PM Stands Diminished, There’s a Lesson Here for Rahul Gandhi
FATF not pleased with India targeting NGOs in name of money laundering, beti padhao but beti mat dikhao, behind Railway ‘accidents’, Gujarat HC raps state for ‘protecting’ official in lake case
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
June 28, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
India’s attempt to cite adherence to global rules against money laundering and terror financing to justify the ongoing crackdown on non-governmental organisations has been red-flagged by the Financial Action Task Force’s mutual evaluation process. The global concern is not yet enough to place India on the FATF’s ‘grey list’ but is unpalatable enough for the Modi government’s official press release to avoid any mentioning of NGO issue.
Blaming a prime minister for building collapses and flooded infrastructure might seem excessively partisan but when that PM is Narendra Modi – who uses inaugurations and ribbon cutting events to build his personality cult and project power around the country – it seems only fair for the sodden chickens to come home to roost.
The unprecedented rainfall in Delhi is surely an act of god but the leader who says he was sent to earth to do the parmatma’s bidding is finding it hard to escape being blamed for the death of a taxi driver from a collapsed canopy at Terminal 1-D of the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The terminal, which is just 15 years old, was scheduled to be shut down in a month’s time, but the collapse suggests poor maintenance and perhaps faulty design too.
After weeks of horrendously high temperatures, the record rainfall has thrown Delhi from the frying pan into the flood. The weather station at Safdarjung reportedly recorded 228 mm of rain over the 24-hour period beginning at 8:30 am yesterday – this in a city that receives an average of around 80 mm of rain in all of June. In parts of the city, streets are waterlogged, many with knee-deep water, some chest-deep, and visuals show cars nearly submerged. It also led to the closure of the Pragati Maidan Tunnel, inaugurated a few years ago with splendid visuals showcasing Modi in splendid isolation, and caused severe water-logging along Mathura road.
“Corruption and criminal negligence is responsible for the collapse of shoddy infrastructure falling like a deck of cards in the past ten years of Modi government,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote on X, rolling out a list of incidents that included the Delhi T1D collapse, the Jabalpur Airport collapse, water-logged streets of Ayodhya, leakage in the newly constructed Ram temple at Ayodhya, cracks in Mumbai’s Atal Setu, the collapse of 13 bridges in the state of Bihar in 2023 and 2024, the submerging of the Pragati Maidan tunnel and the collapse of the Morbi bridge in Modi’s home state Gujarat are some stark instances which exposes the tall claims by Modi and BJP of creating “world class infrastructure. On March 10th, when Modi inaugurated the Delhi airport T1, he called himself “doosri mitti ka insaan (made of a different stuff)”. All this false bravado and rhetoric was only reserved for quickly indulging in ribbon-cutting ceremonies before elections. Our heartfelt condolences to the victims of the Delhi airport tragedy. They bore the brunt of a Corrupt, Inept and Selfish government,” Kharge wrote.
Both Union civil aviation minister K. Rammohan Naidu and the GMR group were quick to point to the fact that a separate part of the terminal was inaugurated by Modi on March 10, while the collapsed canopy was erected in 2009. It takes a certain degree of shamelessness for the minister and the company which runs the airport to essentially tell us that those structures which Modi had personally inaugurated are still safe. We shouldn’t be surprised if an entire list of such ‘safe’ structures circulates on Whatsapp so that citizens can make an informed choice about where to go.
Speaking of the GMR group, it has funded the ruling BJP through an electoral trust. Since 2018, the company has been one of the top contributors to the Prudent Electoral Trust, which, in turn, has been directing the largest chunk of its funds to the BJP.
Meanwhile, the focus of BJP MPs and leaders continues to be to defend anything and everything that Modi has done whenever it comes under attack. Right now, their priority is the Sengol, a monarchical symbol that Modi had installed in parliament last year.
The Lok Sabha was adjourned until Monday after opposition parties called for a discussion on the NEET-UG paper leak. Speaker Om Birla did not take up the adjournment motion to discuss the issue, following which the opposition raised slogans and the House was adjourned until noon. It was adjourned again soon after it reconvened. Birla and the government argue that the motion of thanks to the president’s address, which was delivered yesterday, ought to have been discussed first.
While the President addressed the NEET issue in Parliament on Thursday, only a few kilometres away, Jantar Mantar saw back-to-back protests with students and youth leaders demanding the dissolving of the controversy-riddled National Testing Agency (NTA) and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Simultaneously, Congress-affiliated NSUI members marched to the NTA and demanded its closure, attempting to lock the office from outside.
Multiple student outfits that have come under the banner of ‘India Against NTA’, which saw the participation of two recently elected members of Parliament staged second day of their indefinite sit-in at the Jantar Mantar to protest against alleged irregularities in several centrally held examinations like NEET-UG, PG and UGC-NET. The students gathered in large numbers carrying ‘dhaplis’ and posters and banners with slogans like “justice for NEET applicants”, “NTA’s failure puts our future in danger” and “paper leaks have one solution, NTA’s dissolution” written over them.
Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay of the Jharkhand high court held today that former chief minister Hemant Soren was, on the face of it, not guilty of money laundering, his lawyer told PTI. Soren has been granted bail in the case, where it is alleged that he bought a piece of land in Ranchi through the proceeds of an illegal property sale, and in which he was arrested in January. He stepped down as Jharkhand CM shortly before his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate.
Five years on, the Modi government’s ambitious Central Vista redevelopment project remains mired in delays with no completion date in sight. Initially slated for March 2024, the Rs 13,500-crore project may now stretch beyond 2027, reports The Print. While the new Parliament building, V-P’s Enclave, and Central Vista Avenue are complete, the larger vision lags far behind. Stringent timelines set by the Centre in 2019 promised a revamped Central Vista Avenue and a Common Central Secretariat by March 2024. Yet, the project’s slow progress highlights significant inefficiencies and raises questions about the government's capacity to deliver on its grand promises.
A group of men threw ink and pasted pro-Israel posters at the Delhi residence of AIMIM chief and Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday, which led to the Hyderabad MP questioning Union home minister Amit Shah and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla about the safety of parliamentarians. “To the two-bit goons who keep targeting my house: this does not scare me. Stop this Savarkar-type cowardly behaviour and be men enough to face me. Do not scurry away after throwing some ink or pelting a few stones,” Owaisi posted on X after the incident on Thursday.
A little over a week after Amit Shah chaired a high-level meet to discern the “way forward” out of the ethnic crisis in Manipur – in chief minister N Biren Singh’s absence – the BJP’s Manipur president met Shah yesterday to urge the home minister’s immediate attention to “bring[ing] a permanent solution and tranquillity to the state”. Meanwhile, The Hindu reports, a Manipur government program where Singh was to preside over a government scheme-related event today was cancelled at the last minute.
Rising water levels in a river, triggered by heavy rain in Nepal, caused a bridge in Bihar’s Kishanganj district to collapse. Sound familiar? If it does, that’s because this is the fourth bridge collapse in Bihar in just over a week’s time. It feels like danger lurks around every corner in India—stepping out of your home seems like a risky endeavour.
Jio and Airtel have raised their mobile tariffs for the first time since 2021 – while Jio said it would hike prices in the 13%-27% range, Airtel said yesterday its hike would be in the 10%-21% range. The hikes will come into effect on July 3. An analyst tells Kashish Tandon and Hritam Mukherjee that the hikes will help the two companies boost their return on investments they made in 5G airwaves. He added that Vodafone Idea, with lower average revenue per user than Jio or Airtel, would need to hike tariffs the most – but it hasn’t announced anything as yet.
A hacker has been selling data associated with the government’s e-Migrate portal, including full names, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth and passport details, Jagmeet Singh reports, adding that he was able to verify that some of the hacker’s data seemed legit. The e-Migrate portal intends to regulate overseas employment and protect blue-collar workers from exploitation. It isn’t clear if the hacker obtained the data directly from e-Migrate servers or from a previous breach. When Singh contacted CERT-In, it said it was “in [the] process of taking appropriate action with the concerned authority”.
A BJP leader has been booked for rape and murder of a 13-year old minor. The party has expelled him. The victim’s mother alleged that her daughter was gangraped by Aditya Raj Saini and his accomplice Amir Saini before being murdered. This is Uttarakhand police and The Hindu reports that Saini is a nominated member of the BJP’s Other Backward Classes Commission. He has now been expelled from the party.
Meanwhile, some miscreants on social media are having fun imagining what it would be like for the leader of the ‘mother of democracy’ to see how leaders are supposed to behave in a democracy – answering unscripted questions from the members of the press.
Beti padhao but beti mat dikhao. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India bowed to the patriarchal, sexist, misogynist diktat of a chief guest from BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir and banished all women to the back of the hall so that their ‘polluting’ presence would not distract him.
Behind Railway ‘accidents’
Recent train accidents in India point to systemic issues in the railways, such as overworked train drivers, safety staff shortages and delays in implementing the Kavach automated train protection system, the People’s Commission on Public Sector and Public Services has said, adding that there needs to be clarity on what railways staff must do in the event of signal failures and criticising top officials’ tendency to blame workers instead of accepting responsibility.
The commission, which is a policy consultation body, said that shortages of safety personnel in the railways meant that existing workers faced high pressure – it cited internal documents as indicating that loco pilots were having to work 124 hours a week instead of their stipulated 104 (it recommended their working hours be reduced to 48). It also noted, to its dismay, that signal failure data are no longer publicly available in the railways’ monthly statistical bulletin.
Petition in Supreme Court to stay implementation of new criminal laws
A PIL was filed in the Supreme Court seeking to stay the new criminal laws, arguing among other things that their titles are ambiguous and do not speak about the statutes or their motive, Abraham Thomas reports. The petition, filed by two Delhi women, also alleges “irregularity” in their passage through parliament last year. The petitioners raised concerns about the contents of the codes, too: they allege that some of their provisions violate Supreme Court judgments, including on the number of days of police custody they sanction. They challenge the ‘vague’ definition of “petty organised crime” under the BNS, noting that the term “general feelings of insecurity” remains unexplained and that ‘gang’ remains undefined, Abraham Thomas reports.
Gujarat HC raps state government for ‘protecting’ official in lake tragedy case
The Gujarat high court has expressed strong displeasure and criticism towards the state government’s report on the Vadodara Harni Lake tragedy, which claimed the lives of 14 people, including 12 children. The court questioned the integrity of the inquiry committee’s report, suggesting that it was an attempt to shield the then-municipal commissioner of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) and shift the blame onto the technical team and contractor, reports The New Indian Express. “From the wording of the report, it seems that an attempt is being made to place the entire blame on the technical team and the contractor,” the high court bench comprising of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Pranav Trivedi, who were hearing a public interest litigation case related to the January 19 incident where a boat capsized on Harni lake.
The court had previously directed an inquiry into the role of the municipal commissioner after observing that the commissioner had “illegally” granted a contract to M/s Kotia Projects to run and develop the lake. However, the report submitted by the committee headed by the principal secretary of the urban development department found no fault with the commissioner’s actions.
The Long Cable
As Modi stands diminished, there’s a lesson in this for Rahul Gandhi too
Harish Khare
Undoubtedly, Narendra Modi 2.1 is a much-diminished prime minister. It is possible that he had reached his natural limits even before voters had the opportunity to cut him down to size. Or perhaps the electorate finally recognised the structured bogusness that this entire ‘Modi Project’ has been. Either way, his diminution is a reality.
Equally, there can be no doubt that Rahul Gandhi 2.0 is a much enhanced political presence. He has claimed the right to be leader of opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha; and, it must be a matter of satisfaction to him that the last recognised LoP from the Congress was none other than his own mother, Sonia Gandhi (1999-2004). As far as symbolism goes, Rahul Gandhi’s anointment as LoP represents the most glaring rejection of Modi’s 10-year old campaign against “dynastic politics.”
It can be a matter of a fascinating debate as to whether Modi finally ended up elevating and rehabilitating Rahul Gandhi to a position of political respectability and popular acceptance, or whether Gandhi applied himself seriously to a complete image make-over which finally blunted Modi’s sustained and – for the most part – effective campaign against the Nehru dynast.
In this age of instant analysis and instant judgment, it is easy to forget that every “great leader” is a product of certain circumstances that facilitate his or her acquisition and consolidation of power. Modi could achieve national power only in the context of the confusion and uncertainty of 2013-2014. He became palatable to the influential middle classes because the Anna Hazare movement had succeeded in painting the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress as the fountain-head of all corruption. And, Modi could acquire purchase in the national imagination because he marketed himself as the complete antithesis of Rahul Gandhi – the putative Congress prime ministerial face in the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign.
By 2024, circumstances had changed. Those very anxieties and aspirations that defined the 2014 context transmuted into a different set of concerns and resentments. India has changed these last ten years and the Modi regime had encouraged it to think more aggressively and, if need be, to be violently assertive in expressing its national “vision” and “greatness.” This front-footed-ness was enormously satisfying to the tiny elite at the top but it also empowered the masses to see through the essential spuriousness of the “naya Bharat” and the mofussil shallowness gilded up as ‘vishwaguru’.
Meanwhile, it took eight years of political adversity and official hostility for Rahul Gandhi (and his coterie) to realise and internalise the imperative to move from the anchorage of family entitlement to the legitimacy of popular acceptance. Not many noted—neither his determined foes nor his fawning cheer-leaders—that the Bharat Jodo Yatra struck a chord with the people because Rahul Gandhi was for the first time seen sweating it out for a cause other than his family’s privileges. He was out on the street selling “mohabbat”, or love, against the “nafrat”, or hatred being dished out by the Modi mobs.
In the process Rahul Gandhi ‘declassed’ himself and went plebian. Perhaps the most telling moment was when he walked into a local barber shop in Rae Bareli to get himself a beard trim. While Gandhi, often accused rightly of comporting himself as an entitled prince, was observing the rites of humility, Narendra Modi as prime minister was increasingly surrounding himself with trappings of an emperor. The man who invented and then romanticised his impoverished beginnings was seen as cultivating an imperial and imperious persona.
India’s voters were able to spot the incongruity between Modi’s pretensions – his “entire India is my family” claims – and his unseemly closeness to Gautam Adani. The poor masses, not unfamiliar with the magical qualities of sarkar and sifarish, were not prepared to believe Prime Minister Modi’s “saab ka saath, saab ka vikas” slogan. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi, himself an incongruous advocate of a fair economic order, was being heard with some respect. However, if Gandhi was being heard it was because he located himself in the long and rich legacy of the Congress Party; whereas Narendra Modi chose to move beyond his own party, the BJP, and, instead, started believing in his own personality cult, weaved out of nothing by paid advertising consultants.
A public figure often gets defined by the company he or she keeps. Narendra Modi’s most visible side-kick, at least these last five years, has been a gentleman named Amit Shah, a man who got his political baptism in Ahmedabad’s streets fights, a man who still wears the scars of those battles and who refuses to graduate to the nuanced exercise of authority. Amit Shah did not enhance Modi’s stature.
By contrast, Rahul Gandhi had around him Mallikarjun Kharge, elected as president of the Indian National Congress, in 2022. And, the young dynast took care to be deferential and respectful to the elderly Kharge. The Congress president is a man with a long record (not necessarily distinguished) of public life at the national and state level; a totally non-threatening presence, with not a single mean bone in his body. If Amit Shah’s intimidating presence as a chief consigliere to Modi diminished the prime minister’s political persona, Kharge’s presence was seen as a heathy restraint on an otherwise impetuous Rahul Gandhi.
If Modi has lost his lustre, it is because the incongruity between his message and his politics and policies has become far too pronounced. For ten years, he preached that the only thing a strong leader needs is idealism and a strong will to solve complex and complicated problems in this ancient land. Of course, that claim was fallacious. But what ultimately did him in was the 56-inch gap between his authoritarian persona and his professed love for the people of India.
Similarly, it is too early to judge how genuine Rahul Gandhi’s democratic make-over is. The “Family” still has that dynastic ring about it. Gandhi will do well to learn from Modi’s story: sleight of hand cannot carry you too far. Above all, politics cannot be totally divorced from morals. The unapologetic pursuit of immoral politics finally diminished Narendra Modi in the eyes of his most valuable customers – the citizens of India.
Reportedly
It is interesting how the caving in of a part of the Delhi airport rightly raised the hackles it has. But it is equally interesting how the BJP has been having a really shoddy infrastructure moment, with Jabalpur airpor’s new roof collapsing months after inauguration. This was inaugurated by PM Modi three months ago. What is going on with leaky roofs, infra hurting lives and these companies building them, in a hurry? Several construction majors have paid thousands of crores in electoral bonds to the ruling party. There should be a Supreme Court monitored SIT (Special Investigations Team) looking into possible corruption.
Deep dive
Vihang Jumle and Vignesh Karthik find in a study that “political discourse on digital platforms in India (a) revolved around personalities and (b) hashtags projected political personalities using discursive frames that allow personal subjective interpretations to emerge in resonance with an individual user’s worldview.” This, they say, could be “a form of political distortion enabled by digital platforms, shaping the perception of political leaders.”
Prime number: At least 50 years
At the current pace, a data analysis by Vignesh Radhakrishnan, Sambavi Parthasarathy and Mahima Rao finds, implementing the Kavach automated train protection system across the entire railway route will take at least 50 years. Even at a generous estimate of the pace of progress so far, it will take at least 100 years to install Kavach in every train engine. In any case, they say, it’ll cost just about 2% of the railway’s yearly capex to implement the system across all engines and tracks in about a decade’s time.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
“It takes great wisdom and tact to deal with an Opposition which has 234 MPs in the House,” writes PDT Achary, and the only way for Speaker Om Birla to run the House smoothly “is by being fair to all. In the context of the Parliament, it would mean a non-partisan approach informed by objectivity and absolute impartiality.”
Is saying Jai Palestine “unconstitutional” or “illegal”? As it is within legal limits for members to say anything that is not “unparliamentary”, even Jai Palestine cannot be called “illegal” as such, N Venugopal writes on MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s sign off.
Assembly elections are due in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana later this year. Prem Panicker writes on why the run-up to those polls is Amit Shah’s ‘probation period’ and why they may pose an existential problem for the prime minister.
India-Israel defence commitments and quid pro quos mean India is “stuck with the unenviable role of keeping weapons flowing to Israel” despite the global backlash it will generate. But might Modi be bothered by this? Bharat Bhushan’s answer is clear.
Andy Mukherjee on India’s potential to be a “global engineering workshop and research lab” that will create a future for the country beyond just software.
Vikram Patel brings the thoughtful mind of a public health specialist to the recent Tamilnadu hooch tragedy. “Governments look at alcohol from a moral point of view,” he writes. “At the same time, it is a source of revenue for them. This contradictory approach hurts the poor.”
Listen up
Did a ‘constitutional conscience’ drive much of the Dalit and OBC vote? Harish Wankhede and Ravikant Kisana discuss these questions in a conversation moderated by Abhinay Lakshman.
Watch out
Is there a case for India to sell weapons to Israel now? Karan Thapar discusses the question with former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE, Talmiz Ahmad, who says India doing so is “one of the most shocking developments” and a “travesty”.
Over and out
India set England’s T20 World Cup final hopes in flames as they won by 68 runs on Thursday in Guyana to set up a clash with South Africa for the title. India reached their first T20 World Cup final since 2014, with the win led by Rohit Sharma (57 off 39) and Suryakumar Yadav (47 off 36) in a rain-hit match. The T-20 match tomorrow may be marking the end of an era. This may be the “final time Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli will play for India in T20 format If Saturday indeed is their ‘Last Dance’ in T20Is, the void will be difficult to fill not just in terms of quality but also, and perhaps more so, emotionally.”
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.