Challenging, eventful two years of Modi 2.0

Destiny deprived the Narendra Modi-led government of another chance to celebrate an anniversary. In 2020, when Prime Minister Modi completed one year of his second term on May 30, the country was facing the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. An unexpected and unwanted fallout of the disaster was that it emptied out the cities of their working class migrants, who held aloft the organised and subterranean economies, after the Centre announced a long national lockdown.

One year hence, a brief lull that induced optimism and complacency in the government has resulted in a bigger catastrophe that shows little sign of subsiding. If anything, experts have warned of a third and a more intense wave looming large.

Still, by the reckoning of the faithful in the large BJP fraternity, Modi’s first year in 2.0 was creditable, barring the electoral reverses in Delhi, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. The BJP, nonetheless, managed to put together coalition governments in Haryana and Bihar.

Considering that electoral outcomes have become an index of Modi and the BJP’s popularity like never before — even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, BJP’s first Prime Minister, took defeat on his chin and went about the business of governance with equanimity — it looks like the party is unable to live down the loss in West Bengal.

Indeed, as the second anniversary approached, the Centre and the BJP had hoped that a success in the eastern state would be the crowning glory of their record of electoral “conquests”, quite unlike even Uttar Pradesh, which the BJP is used to winning now and then.

A win in West Bengal had several implications, not the least being vanquishing an ideology that was anathema to the RSS from the start. Therefore, even celebrations on a limited scale were in order, regardless of the devastation the pandemic wrought in the countryside. Mamata Banerjee robbed Modi of his moment of glory.

Premature triumphalism marked the government’s approach to pandemic management. The flight of migrants, the job losses, the beating taken by the economy, particularly in the manufacturing, construction and service sectors, and the inadequacies evident in the sphere of health were not factored in the “feel-good” mood which the government infused among people after the first wave receded.

Hospitals, health centres and pharmaceutical companies managed to cope ably because the severity of the virus was less than the magnitude that followed.

There was hope that a vaccination programme would kick off on a large scale with the help of indigenous manufacture and imports. The government’s confidence was not entirely misplaced but there was little evidence that the sentiment was commensurate with hardcore efforts to launch mass vaccination of the scale seen in earlier programmes. India has a legacy of successful immunisation policies and projects and there was no reason why the Covid immunisation would not take off.

In retrospect, the project’s beginning was wrong. It reflected a sense of misplaced priorities. The ‘Vaccine Maitri’ diplomacy, however well intentioned, saw the Centre dispatching Covid vaccines to multiple countries in the belief that India would not require huge doses because it had “contained” the virus.

The exercise began in January 2021, when forewarnings of a second and possibly more severe attack were issued by experts. Was the seemingly goodwill gesture intended to enhance the PM’s image in the global community? If it was, the endeavour took a serious beating within months when the virus spread uncontrolled, this time to the rural areas that were relatively untouched in the first phase, and vaccines remained short.

The health infrastructure collapsed, death counts were inaccurate because the villages were largely impenetrable and life-saving medicines and oxygen ran scarce. The images of cadavers floating on rivers and devoured by dogs and vultures will linger on for a long time.

The government’s approach was marked by callousness, that some mistook for helplessness, over-centralisation, giving a wide berth to the non-BJP states and their chief ministers, allowing RSS-aligned quacks a free play and a curious reluctance to share critical information.

Fortified by the 2019 mandate, the government did not let the RSS down or compromise on its ideological commitment. Modi 2.0 started on the right note from the Sangh’s perspective: the government passed the Bill criminalising the practice of ‘triple talaq’ among Muslims; revoked nearly all of Article 370, of which 35A is a part, and which formed the basis of Kashmir’s complex relationship with India for nearly 70 years; amended the Citizenship Act to disenfranchise Muslim immigrants in West Bengal and the North-East and confer citizenship rights on the non-Muslim settlers from Bangladesh and other countries; and strengthened the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), empowering the state to designate an individual as a terrorist and impound his properties. The tweaked UAPA was employed with impunity to crush dissent, notably the protests against the altered Citizenship Act from students on Delhi campuses, some of whom are still languishing in jails.

The pinnacle of achievements on the BJP’s core ideology was the start of the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya with the Supreme Court’s green signal. Modi promptly set up a government trust to oversee the construction that capped a “movement” dating back to 1984.

The other big — and unforeseen —political challenge was the fight by the farmers of Punjab and Haryana against the new farm laws that were packaged as a major step towards reforming agriculture. The protests spread to parts of Uttar Pradesh and partially revived the state’s dormant Opposition.

The farmers show no sign of backing off as the Centre seems equally determined not to revise its stance.

Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls in February-March 2022, will be the first big test of how people view Modi 2.0 because the BJP proposes to showcase the PM more prominently in its campaign than the Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath. The only source of comfort for the BJP is that the Opposition remains disunited and largely passive.