Weekend Musings: Where Modi can do no wrongs
By Vivekanand Jha*The Adani issue continues to have its reverberations across the polity as well as the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The National Stock Exchange has removed Adani Port, Ambuja Cement and Monarch Network Capital from its surveillance list. The Opposition has resorted to the rare display of unity in Parliament and formulated a joint strategy against the government to pin it down. It has sought a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) to investigate into the Adani episode.
Apparently, the disruption of Parliament by the Opposition, which lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his “undue favouritism” of Adani, left no stone unturned in its effort to undermine ‘Brand Modi’.
Also read: Prime Minister avoids Adani, swears by ‘Brand Modi’
Nonetheless, it was the Prime Minister who appeared to have the last laugh by going hammer and tongs to blow his own trumpet. Replying in Lok Sabha to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address, he articulated all his achievements over the last nine years of his Prime Ministership, which he felt had broadened his appeal across the length and breadth of India.
Hence, any amount of criticism of his government, will not only cease to resonate with the people of India but they would be outrightly rejected lock, stock and barrel by them. Significantly, the confidence in his voice was apparent to one and all. He refused to get into the trap and did not mention Adani et al in his speech.
So has the Opposition lost its battle against the government again?
The Adani issue which appeared an opportunity for the Opposition to pull Modi down was significantly watered down, at least for the time being, significantly by the Prime Minister’s projection of his own brand image. Modi in the process asserted that the people would scoff at any suggestion where he is shown in poor light “the trust in Modi is not born from newspaper headlines”, he said.
Modi’s effort to project himself as someone who is trusted by the people of the country is indeed a bold ploy to take on the feeble and fragile Opposition by aggressively combating them, rather than chickening out to the pressure brought upon him to concede to the opposition’s demand of JPC.
Unequivocally, Modi tore into the Opposition by harping upon his own achievements vis-a-vis his predecessor whose decade of tenure, he outrightly dismissed as a ‘ failed decade’.
Incidentally, ‘Brand Modi’ under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime is what ultimately counts. It is only the ubiquitous face of Modi which is doing all the work. Be that as it may, even though Modi evoked the infrastructure development in which almost Rupees 10 lakh crore investment has been allocated, the visibility of the infrastructure revolution is apparent to one and all, and he appropriated the entire credit for the same. Unequivocally then, today it is the Modi brand which is at a premium, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is purportedly basking in the ubiquitous presence of Modi as the behemoth.
By making an effort to turn the Adani episode to his advantage, Modi gave a resounding message to the Opposition: whatever allegations you may label against me, the nation will not believe you. This way he even sounded the bugle for the Parliamentary election of 2024.
The effort of Modi seems to be sending a message to his voters that they need not be ruffled by the Adani fiasco. He now tries to project that the voters will continue to back him even if scores of Adani scams break out, for they staunchly believe that ‘Modi can do no wrong’. The foreign hand’s efforts to destabilise India, as claimed by the Adani Group, is what perhaps the BJP would like its voters to lap up.
Small wonder then, that even as the unprecedented rise of the Adani Group is part of a larger public debate, efforts are on to keep ‘Brand Modi’ intact by the BJP camp. That Modi can do ‘no wrong’ is what Modi is trying to convey to his voters by invoking the trust factor. Can the Opposition be trusted to negate such an effort by the Modi camp, and if they do, how?
