Witoubou Newmai
As the country gave way to Narendra Modi led BJP’s juggernaut, the resonance of off-the-cuff or otherwise comments over the “Main Bhi Chowkidar” and the “Chowkidar Chor Hai” came to a halt on Thursday. This is also to mean that the Narendra Modi’s narrative has proved its mass appeal. In other words, the results of the Lok Sabha electiona 2019 have affirmed that Modi-led chariot is much closer to the ground than that of Rahul Gandhi.
With this, from now on the narratives are going to be ‘what-was-the-mistakes’ of Rahul Gandhi and ‘what-was-the-magic-of-Narendra Modi’, and not otherwise, as human nature tends to see no wrong on the victor.
But interestingly, a sound debate can be advanced whether the outcome of Lok Sabha election 2019 was attributed to Rahul Gandhi‘s Congress party and opposition’s failures to ‘break’ their message to the ground, and not because of what the Modi government did.
One of the key factors which Rahul and the planners of his group, or the ‘Third Front’ for that matter, failed to recognise was that, their slogans such as demonetisation, surgical strike/Balakot issue, Rafale deal, GST et cetera have not penetrated the voters. Take the demonetisation issue for instance, demonetisation could be a policy or may be not for Modi and the BJP, but the Congress leaders failed to convey to the ground that it was a failure. That was why the voters felt that, ‘Ok, here is the government that will pull out the black money’.
There is also not an iota doubt that people find charms on certain schemes of the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) such as on healthcare, cooking gas etc. etc. But, there are also detrimental issues under the Modi government which the Congress party or the ‘Third Front’ failed to find the right chord during the electioneering. They have also failed to point out the collective rural distress under the BJP led NDA government.
Meanwhile, the loss of the Congress president in his family bastion Amethi constituency to BJP’s Smriti Irani also gives a strong message that there is some radical flaw with the Congress leader's politics. So, it is time for the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi to have a brutal and honest introspection on their missteps.
It is also worthwhile to point out that the kind of thumping results in favour of the Narendra Modi-led NDA will have far reaching implications in the landscape of the Indian politics. Nobody can deny that Modi is a hegemon now.
Modi came with an enviable confidence in 2014. With today’s thumping victory he will come with even greater confidence this time to the extent that any hesitation he had in the previous term will be routed.