Modi's Magnum Opus & The Gujarat Marathon
BY R.K.MISRA
Like Midas, whose touch turned
everything into gold, every event of Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns into an
extravaganza. Especially in his home state of Gujarat.
During his recent two day visit which
ended June 30,the Vijay Rupani-led BJP government pulled out all stops, going
overboard in building the glitz and glamour quotient for the visit .
The chief
minister’s hometown, Rajkot where the Prime Minister had four high profile
functions packed into as many hours, went into ‘paroxysms’ of weeklong
celebrations .There were concerts, plays, ’lok-dayras’, street lighting, illumination
of public buildings, cycle rally, fireworks, beautification of traffic circles,
light and sound shows, laser shows. In the build-up, rallies galore to invite
people,5.50 lakh stickers pasted door-to-door, for the Prime Minister’s road
show,150 hospitals decorated with fairy lights,550 hoardings and 40,000 BJP
party flags placed across the city. This was apart from the official
illumination city-wide.
Schools had a holiday, lawyers
abstained much to the inconvenience of litigants and the Rajkot Bar Council
appealed to the court authority to give adjournments in cases .The city bus
service was virtually shut down.
Then there was a phalanx of security-men
on duty. Besides the Special Protection Group(SPG) commandos, there were three
Inspector Generals of Police,26 SSPs,66 Deputy superintendents of police,50
police inspectors,500 sub-inspectors besides 15 companies of the State Reserve
Police (SRP) to back the city’s own 8000 strong police complement. Since the Prime
Minister was to hold a 9-km road show from the site of the dam to the city
airport, over a hundred stages had been erected en route to enable selected
caste group leaders to felicitate him but he chose not to stop.
The Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar
engagements of the Prime Minister saw similar marshalling of resources with
normal life, already beset by rains, being thrown out of gear .The state
capital was awash in BJP flags as was Ahmedabad with a rash of hoardings
carrying images of the Prime Minister and the state Chief Minister announcing
both achievements and schemes. Put up just a day before Modi’s visit,it was not
known for whom they were aimed at. The Prime Minister has been the state’s Chief
Minister for over a decade and the people of the state are being told about the
achievements of the government almost on
a daily basis through a variety of media.
The fact is that for almost a month, the
bulk of the state machinery was glued into only the Prime Minister’s two-day
visit with every other administrative and policing function taking a backseat. The
common man whose cause Modi vociferously espouses was the least of the
administration’s concern, atleast for these two days as official instructions
went from zealous to bizarre. There were
1200 Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) buses on call to take
people to any of the Prime Minister’s engagements for free. These were pulled
out from all over the state in callous disregard of public concern with routes
cancelled and people left to fend for themselves in the midst of a full-blooded
monsoon.
The most bizarre, however, was a
letter received by the divisional railway manager, Ahmedabad from the inspector
in-charge of a police station under whose jurisdiction the state guest house falls
where the prime minister was to stay.”A railway track passes near the state
guest house and hence in view of the security of the Prime Minister, train
movement should be halted along the railway track or the trains should be
diverted”, read the official letter. Trains to Delhi as well as Saurashtra
region use this track. Imagine the mayhem if train traffic on the route had
been halted for two days. However better sense prevailed and well in time.
Modi is known to abhor any form of
protest at his public engagements right from his chief ministerial days. The
case of the then Congress MP, Prabha Taviad who was forcibly prevented by the
cops from attending the official Gujarat
day function on May 1,2012 despite being invited as the area MP is one of many
such cases during Modi rule in the state. The matter figured in the Lok Sabha
and was referred to the Privileges Committee of Parliament.
With the Prime Minister acquiring
demi-god status, curbing any sort of protest has now acquired paranoiac
proportions under the Vijay Rupani government. Even the hint of a black cloth, even
handkerchief or dupatta is not permitted
by the police at the Prime Minister’s meetings. Opposition leaders are marked
out and put under unofficial detention in their own homes or offices for the
period of the function.
While Intelligence shadowing is
routine, for the first time in the history of the state, the Gujarat police
deployed 2500 police personnel as part of ‘detention squads’. Worried that
rising discontent among ethnic and business groups may trigger protests, the
cops set up these squads. The patidars have been protesting for reservations in
jobs, dalits against atrocities, traders are on
the warpath against GST and the Congress against the policies of the
government .Five hundred cops were deployed at each of the venues in the four
cities under the supervision of five SPs.
The Prime Minister who hardly visited
Gujarat in the opening years of his stint has broken all records this year with
six visits in six months. Quite clearly
the ensuing Assembly election-politically critical - weighs heavily. There
is much pent up anger. Anti-incumbency is for real. A public show of strength
attended by BJP chief Amit Shah and chief minister Rupani in Surat on September
8 last year had to be wound up within minute,despite the fact that netting had
been strung between the audience and the stage to prevent a footwear shower on
the VIPs. It took the Prime Minister to retrieve the situation with a 11 km
long road show in Surat on April 16 this year. The Rajkot engagements were similarly
poll-oriented.
Quite simply put, the BJP is
electioneering at state cost spending colossal amounts on extravaganzas. Rajkot
town in Saurashtra is water deficient and carrying the Narmada waters to the
Aji dam is laudable. But doing so,during a bumper monsoon when the skies have
opened up in full, sounds ludicrous. And then organizing a seven day state ‘fair’
and getting the Prime Minister into it, moreso. Sadly, there is more of it to
follow at peoples cost, in the days to come.
Watch out for the Narmada yatra to be
flagged off by the Prime Minister in August. It will be a massive 45 day
campaign to reach out to 159 cities and around 8500 villages of Gujarat with
the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister leading and the entire Gujarat
administration pulling out all stops for
the show !
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