Tag: narendra modi news

‘Stop Lowering Dignity of PM’s Post’: Rahul Gandhi Slams Modi Over ‘Black Magic’ Remark

Prime Minister Modi had lashed out at the Congress for wearing black clothing on August 5 in a protest against price rise, saying those who believe in “kala jadu” will never be able to win the trust of the people again.

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his “black magic” remark, saying he must “stop lowering the dignity” of the PM’s post by talking about such superstitious things.

Gandhi’s attack came a day after Prime Minister Modi lashed out at the Congress for wearing black clothes on August 5 in a protest against price rise, saying those who believe in “kala jadu” will never be able to win the trust of the people again.

Attacking him, Gandhi asked if the prime minister was unable to see inflation or unemployment in the country.

“Stop lowering the dignity of the prime minister’s post and misleading the country by talking about superstitious things like ‘black magic’ to hide your black deeds, prime minister-ji,” Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.

“You will have to give answers on people’s issues,” the former Congress chief added.

Addressing a function in Panipat via video-conferencing to dedicate the second-generation ethanol plant worth Rs 900 crore, Modi had said, “On August 5, we saw how some people tried to spread ‘black magic’. These people think that by wearing black clothes they can end their despondency.”

“But they do not know that by engaging in witchcraft, black magic and superstition, they cannot earn the trust of people again,” Modi had said.

The Congress hit back at the prime minister over his ‘kala jadu'(black magic) remark, saying while the country wants him to talk about their problems but “jumlajeevi” keeps saying just anything.

(PTI)

‘Passing the Buck’: Opposition Lashes Out After Modi’s Comment on Reducing Fuel VAT

At a meeting on COVID-19 where chief ministers were allegedly not allowed to speak, the prime minister claimed that opposition-ruled states were overtaxing fuel.

New Delhi: The opposition on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of playing politics during his meeting with chief ministers on the COVID-19 situation by raising the issue of fuel prices and “passing the buck” on to states to reduce prices of petrol and diesel.

As the prime minister’s remark triggered a war of words, the BJP said the opposition’s stance reeks of hypocrisy and alleged that for every litre of petrol, opposition-ruled states were earning twice as much as the BJP-ruled states.

Alleging higher fuel prices in many opposition-ruled states, Modi had urged them to reduce VAT in “national interest” to benefit the common man and work in the spirit of cooperative federalism in this time of global crisis.

Modi raised the issue of many states not adhering to the Centre’s call for reducing the Value Added Tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel after his government slashed excise duties on them in November last, and called it “injustice” to people living there and also harmful for neighbouring states.

Reacting to Modi’s remarks at the meet, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said the interaction with him was completely one-sided and misleading.

“Facts shared by him were wrong. We have been providing a subsidy of Re 1 on every litre of petrol and diesel for the last three years. We’ve spent Rs 1,500 crore on this,” Banerjee told reporters in Kolkata.

She claimed there was no scope for the chief ministers to speak at the meeting and hence, they could not counter the prime minister’s statement.

“It would have been better had the PM not spoken on fuel price hike in a COVID-19 review meeting, it was his agenda,” she said.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said the Centre owed Rs 26,500 crore to the state, after Prime Minister Modi said some states did not reduce VAT on petrol and diesel despite the excise duty cut by the Union government in November last year.

Thackeray also accused the Centre of a step-motherly treatment to Maharashtra and that the state government was not responsible for the rise in prices of petrol and diesel.

Kerala finance minister K.N. Balagopal said the increase in petrol and diesel rates was due to the cess and surcharge levied by the Centre. He said Kerala has not increased taxes on petroleum products in the last six years.

When the state government has not increased taxes on petrol or diesel by even one rupee in the last six years, then how can it be asked to reduce taxes, Balagopal asked.

He said that cess and surcharge are to be levied only in special circumstances like natural calamities, pandemic, etc. and for a specific period like six months or a year.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala attacked Modi, demanding that he give an account of the Rs 27 lakh crore “collected” by the BJP government from tax on petrol and diesel.

“Modi ji, No criticism, No distractions, No Jumlas! Please give an account of ?27,00,00,00,00,00,00 (?27 Lakh Crore) collected by BJP Govt from Tax on Petrol & Diesel,” Surjewala said.

He said that on May 26, 2014, when PM Modi assumed charge, crude oil was USD 108 per barrel, but petrol and diesel were priced at Rs 71.41 and Rs 55.49 per litre, while today, crude oil is USD 100.20 per barrel, but the petrol and diesel prices have been increased to Rs 105.41/litre and Rs 96.67/litre respectively in Delhi.

“We will urge all states to decrease VAT on Petrol/Diesel to pre-May 2014 level. Please admit BJP Govt earned Rs 27 Lakh Crore from Petrol/Diesel while all states collectively received about 16.5 Lakh Crore. Central Govt revenue from Petrol/Diesel has doubled in 8 years,” he said in a series of tweets.

Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi also slammed the prime minister, alleging that he made the “COVID meeting about politics”.

“The central government has earned 26 lakh Crore out of central excise on fuel, increased 18 times even when oil prices hit rock bottom. The GST share to states still owed, compensation component to state done away with and now pointing fingers,” she tweeted.

Hitting out at the Modi government, TRS leader K T Rama Rao said fuel prices have shot up because of “NPA Central govt”.

“Name-calling states for not reducing VAT even though we never increased it; is this the co-operative federalism you’re talking about @narendramodi ji,” he asked on Twitter.

Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill said after collecting Rs 26 lakh crore via taxes, after raising excise duty by 531 per cent on petrol and 206 per cent on diesel, despite having 68 per cent in fuel taxes and not sharing single rupee of profit, “PM is asking states to reduce VAT and pass benefits to Janta”.

“Classic BJP theory ‘Profit is Mine & Loss is Yours’,” he tweeted.

“Does CM Modi, who solely and entirely blamed UPA Central Govt for fuel hike, agree with PM Modi who now is conveniently & mischievously passing buck to states for reducing fuel prices? Nation wants CM Modi to wake up PM Modi!!” Shergill said.

Attacking the opposition, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said the chief ministers of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Jharkhand “reek of hypocrisy” as their respective parties nonchalantly go on demanding a decrease in the fuel prices but when the ball is in their court, they charge high state tax on fuel to amplify the problems of common people.

(With PTI inputs)

An Attack on Those Who Helped the Helpless Is a New Low, Even for Modi

If sending migrants home was a crime then Modi seems to have forgotten his own complicity in it. The reason behind the migrant exodus was a 21-day lockdown that he himself imposed with only four hours’ notice.

Helping those who have been abandoned by the state is now a crime, it seems, at least in the eyes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who went to great lengths in parliament to blame the Congress and other opposition parties for allegedly committing the “paap (sin)” of facilitating the spread of COVID-19. 

“During the first wave, when the country was in lockdown,” he said, “the Congress went to Mumbai railway station to scare innocent people. They pushed labourers to go back to their states and spread coronavirus. You pushed labourers into crisis.”

He then blamed the Delhi government for “going around slums in jeeps and announcing on microphones that whoever wants to go home, buses have been arranged.”

Infections, he said, then shot up in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab as a result.

Leaders of opposition parties have condemned the prime minister’s statements, and rightfully so. If sending migrants home was a crime then Modi seems to have forgotten his own ‘complicity in it’, for it was the Union government, after all, that ran special shramik trains to transport workers back home. 

Shramik trains started by the government in order to transport migrant workers. Representative image. Photo: PTI

The prime minister also side-stepped the reason behind the migrant exodus — a 21-day lockdown that he himself imposed with only four hours’ notice, thus leaving lakhs of daily wagers and labourers with no choice but to try and go back to their villages and towns.

The migrants didn’t want to go home, they had to, with no work and no money to or buy their food or pay their rents.

Those who saw with their own eyes hundreds of thousands of migrant workers walking down the highways, desperately trying to catch a bus or a shared taxi back home to their villages will never forget the sight. Images of exhausted children draped over suitcases being pulled by parents, labourers wearing plastic bags on their feet for shoes, workers getting beaten by police and sprayed with DDT on the highways moved concerned citizens everywhere to try and help the migrants in distress as best as they could.

But there were also those who simply couldn’t understand why the migrant workers had to go home. I remember losing my temper at a rich friend who asked me with oblivious innocence, “But why don’t they just stay in Delhi till the lockdown ends?” I tried to explain that not everyone has the security of a roof overhead, a healthy bank balance or the luxury of not being able to work for a period of time.

“Yes, but surely they can manage for three weeks,” he countered.  

Also read: Modi Speech Dodges Economic Distress, Rewrites Govt’s COVID Record to Blame Congress, AAP

It is very difficult, I have realised, to try and explain the problems of the poor to the well-to-do. But there are others who still have the milk of human kindness running through their veins. At the height of the migrant exodus, Zartab, an entrepreneur friend, messaged me at three in the morning and said, “I can’t sleep. I can’t see bear to see these families walking down the highway with kids. We need to help them.”

I told him I agreed. The next morning we sent out a WhatsApp message asking everyone we knew to help us hire buses for the migrants so they wouldn’t have to walk home. The response was overwhelming. Friends and strangers came forward and donated generously and over the next one month we managed to send close to 1,500 migrant workers back to their homes in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in hired buses. We called the project, ‘Destination Home’. 

Migrants on a bus home. Photo: Rohit Kumar

A friend who is a theatre personality donated water bottles for each bus journey and her friend, a Buddhist nun, provided freshly cooked meals for each trip. That blistering summer, we saw the very best of human compassion and the very worst of government apathy. 

Through it all, Zartab kept his rozas and did not eat during the days or touch a drop of water till iftaar time in the evenings. 

While seven and a half years of the reign of Narendra Modi reign have shown us quite clearly that the prime minister seems to have little understanding of the meaning of raj dharma or the duty of rulers, and seems to possess little (if any) empathy, for him to demonise opposition parties and others for trying to help the migrant population of India in their time of deepest crisis is a new low.  

The people of India need to seriously start thinking about alternatives to a political party whose actions and policies have repeatedly let them down in their darkest hours.

Rohit Kumar is an educator with a background in positive psychology and psychometrics. He works with high school students on emotional intelligence and adolescent issues to help make schools bullying-free zones. He can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.

Modi Speech Dodges Economic Distress, Rewrites Govt’s COVID Record to Blame Congress, AAP

The political messaging was akin to his emotive election speeches, rather than including any concrete evidence to counter the opposition’s allegations against his government.

New Delhi: In his over 1.5-hour reply to the debate on the motion of thanks to the president’s address on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lashed out at the opposition ranks, in what appeared to be his answer to critics for consistently raising issues such as the high inflation rate, unprecedented unemployment and alleged mismanagement of the pandemic.

However, his speech contained more blame-shifting, tongue-in-cheek attacks on the Congress and previous governments it steered. The political messaging was akin to his emotive election speeches, rather than including any concrete evidence to counter the opposition’s allegations against his government.

A point-by-point reading of his response would show that the prime minister used the parliament’s time to give yet another diatribe against the Congress, even while viewers waited to learn about the initiatives his government has taken to curb wide-ranging distress in India. His party, since 2014, has drowned all criticism by pitching itself against the Congress, in attempts to impress people with the notion that there is no real alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Modi’s Monday speech also turned out to be a similarly repetitive exercise, even as his government has had to face a near-united challenge from the opposition over the last few days in the budget session of parliament.

On inflation

Reluctant to speak directly on what had caused inflationary pressures on the Indian economy, Modi indulged in whataboutery. He spoke about how supply chain and logistics support systems across the world have collapsed, but stopped short of any elaboration. Instead, he quoted one of Jawaharlal Nehru’s statements on cascading effects of international factors on inflation to take a dig at the Congress. He said his government’s economic policies have made inflation its first priority, “unlike the Congress”, as the BJP is invested in the problems of the “common people”.

Also read: Rahul Gandhi’s Speech in Parliament Marks a Defining Moment

He compared his government with the UPA governments under whom the inflation rates were “in double digits”. He added that despite the pandemic and a high inflation rate of over 7% in the US and OECD countries, his government has controlled inflation at 5.2%, and the food inflate rate at only 3%.

While he charged at the Congress for changing the norms to calculate poverty levels during the UPA tenure to bring around “17 crore people” above the poverty line, he glossed over the fact his own government had tweaked the standards for calculating inflation in 2018 to make the figures look more friendlier.

On unemployment

On the important issue of increasing joblessness, Modi disregarded the opposition’s criticism that his government’s decisions over the last few years such as demonetisation, a flawed Goods and Services Tax regime, and lack of support to MSMEs were primarily responsible for precipitating the largest-ever unemployment rate in over 50 years.

Modi circumvented the accusations by elaborating on his government’s “vision” – something which he has explained many times over. Refusing to hold his government responsible for failing to create enough jobs, Modi said that previous governments had entrenched the thought that the government is the only “bhagya vidhaata”, meaning that only the government can make a difference to people’s lives.

“The thought has impeded Indian youth’s ‘kaushal’ (skill) and dreams. The political class has only encouraged such an egotistic thought. No, the government doesn’t have to do everything,” he said.

“We have to understand that India can’t remain in the clutches of 19th and 20th century thoughts. It has to change according to the needs of the 21st century,” he said, adding that BJP had emulated the 21st century vision in the path to India’s progress.

Aspirants block railway tracks during their protest over alleged erroneous results of Railway Recruitment Boards Non-Technical Popular Categories (RRB NTPC) exam 2021, in Prayagraj, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022. Photo: PTI

Modi, however, listed his government’s actions which have the potential to generate employment, although it is unclear how those steps would bring sustainable, quality jobs for two-thirds of India’s population who continue to be poor.

In an apparent response to Rahul Gandhi, who in his speech had spoken about the poor state of MSMEs in the current scenario, Modi said his government has given “necessary support” to the MSME and textiles sectors, cancelled more than 25,000 compliances, and simplified the tax structure to make it easier for entrepreneurs to set up businesses. “We have attempted to move towards our vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat and addressed the aspirations of 21st century Indian youth,” the prime minister said.

In one of the few concrete claims that he made during his speech, he said his government supported MSMEs with Rs 3 lakh crore which prevented 13.5 MSMEs from a complete collapse and saved 23 crore jobs. “Those parliamentarians who are connected to ground realities see the impact of our scheme for MSMEs,” he claimed.

In an apparent dig at the opposition for opposing the now-revoked farm laws, he said that his government took “big steps” in agricultural reforms that would have benefitted “small farmers” but the “opposition’s hate for them” prevented them, again indirectly alleging that opposition was responsible for an antiquated rural economy.

He went on to list a number of infrastructural projects that were paced up during his regime, even as he claimed that the number of start-ups has increased to over 7,000 from under 500 before 2014, and that India has the third-highest number of unicorns in the world. All such companies have the potential to become “multinational”, he said.

Over the last few years, the prime minister said, foreign direct investment has hit a record high and India is now among the top five countries in the renewable energy sector. He added that his government’s focus is on improving India’s manufacturing and service sectors, although the statistics say otherwise in both sectors.

Also read: In Fiery Speech, Mahua Moitra Raises Pegasus, Farmers, Slams Chair for Abruptly Cutting Her

Modi kept getting back to the theme of Atmanirbhar Bharat to say that India’s economic focus is now to manufacture its own defence equipment to make India stronger and also emerge as a global export hub of equipment in the future. Later, he spoke about the success of Mudra Yojana, although figures present a contrasting view. He similarly spoke about PM SVANidhi scheme – an incentivised micro-credit scheme for street vendors – although numbers indicate that only 11% vendors benefited from the scheme as of September 2021.

Summing up, he said that his government has made the private sector a stakeholder in India’s progress, and unlike the Congress, has encouraged entrepreneurs to lead India’s defence and mining sectors. Modi asserted that all such initiatives are generating employment across India. Whether or not he implied that the problem of joblessness is not as acute as it is being made out to be remains unclear.

On mismanagement of the pandemic

The prime minister’s biggest political spin-off was reserved for this section of his speech when he blamed the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party for catalysing the spread of the coronavirus in India’s hinterland. In his intent to attack the Congress, the prime minister accused the Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government and AAP government in Delhi for providing train and bus tickets for daily-wage migrants who desperately needed to get to their villages in the face of a sudden lockdown announced by none other than the prime minister.

“You people (pointing at the opposition benches) pushed the labourers into difficulties,” he said.

“The Congress crossed the limit. During the first wave, when we had lockdown, when WHO was advising that ‘stay wherever you are’… the Congress at the Mumbai railway station gave tickets to labours to go and spread coronavirus. In Delhi, the government used mics on jeeps in slums to go home, arranged buses,” the prime minister said, likening these actions to “paap (sin)”. He said that the virus spread in states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand also because of such poor decisions.

The claim belies the way most migrant labourers were thrown into a survival crisis after the prime minister announced a lockdown, only four hours before it was enforced. Not only was there a sudden commotion with people lining up at stores to stock up essentials but with the announcement also began one of the biggest migrations in independent India when daily wagers, stranded without jobs and shelter, began walking back to their homes hundreds of kilometres away. The prime minister may well remember that forced into such a crisis, not only the Shiv Sena-Congress-NCP and AAP governments, but also the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh and NDA government in Bihar arranged for buses to prevent additional commotion.

Migrant workers and homeless people queue to receive free food during a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ahmedabad, India, May 1, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Amit Dave

During his speech though, Modi made no reference to the severity of the second COVID-19 wave in India, which saw oxygen and hospital bed shortages and an extremely high number – as yet not properly counted – of deaths. All of this had pointed to the government’s underpreparedness in facing the public health crisis.

In his legitimate defence, he said that the government has ensured that no one dies of hunger during the pandemic by distributing free ration to more than 80 crore people. He also claimed that India is very close to achieving a 100% target for the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and remains close to 80% for the second dose. He also claimed that even during the pandemic, the government did not let the price of essential commodities “skyrocket”.

In what may be seen as a claim directed towards the poll-bound states, he said that the direct benefit transfer benefited crores of people during the time only because his government had ensured that the poor have a bank account. He also spoke about how his government ensured that there is a regular flow of fertilisers in the market to support farmers. He did not shy away from enumerating a list of projects that his government kicked off in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, as he made references to newly-built canal projects in the state, Char Dham corridor and reviving the Gorakhpur fertiliser factory.

However, much of his stress remained on mocking the Congress, even as he accused the grand old party of misusing a global pandemic for its own propaganda. When the opposition benches interrupted him to demand concrete answers, Modi, who has often been criticised of using the parliament for BJP’s political messaging, said that he was forced to adopt such a tone and tenor because opposition leaders have misused the platform of the “pavitra (pure)” parliament for propaganda.

Since the Congress has lost any interest to come to power, much of its focus is to fuel the British doctrine of “divide and rule”, Modi said, adding that this was why the Congress members are the leaders of “tukde-tukde gang”. “This may fuel separatism in India,” Modi, whose party is often at the receiving end of criticism that its politics of religious polarisation may lead to a possible balkanisation of India, said.

Also read: The Issues Rahul Gandhi Spoke of Are Vital and Can’t Be Allowed to Drown in the Din

Laced with one jibe after another at the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, Modi said the grand old party has failed India’s aspirations to advance its own interests. He went on to name Indian states which have not returned Congress to power since the last two or three decades.

In attacking the Congress in a speech that was meant to respond to the opposition’s concrete criticisms, Modi came across as defensive. Pushed to a corner in most poll-bound states over livelihood issues, BJP appeared to have fielded none other than the prime minister himself to steer the narrative in its favour.

Over the last few days, one opposition MP after another attacked the Centre on these issues, while the Union ministers could not come up with convincing responses. As has happened before in such circumstances, it appears that the BJP’s last-minute resort was to fall back on Modi’s ability to deftly sidestep important concerns by indulging in rhetorical calisthenics, even as his speech failed to concretely address any of the opposition’s questions.

Modi’s India Does Have Public Funding for Arts. But It’s All Going to Massive Statues.

The cost of installing the latest sculpture alone – Rs 1000 crore – is equivalent to one-third of the entire allocation of the Union government’s culture ministry for this year.

Just as the Mughal Empire was known for exquisite miniature paintings, to the extent that the ‘Mughal Miniature’ is a recognised art historical term, so too the Narendra Modi years will be remembered as the season of gigantic, unaesthetic sculpture, mostly made in China.

The 66-metre tall ‘Statue of Equality’ sculpture project (yes, that’s what it is called) costs Rs 1,000 crore (that’s roughly $130 million), all of which was raised, through donations, by the Sri Ramanuja Sahasrabdi Trust led by the Tridandi ascetic Chinna Jeeyar Swamy. It honours the medieval saint Sri Ramanujacharya, known for his contribution to the Vishishtadvaita school of Vedanta, and was unveiled by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself on Saturday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveils the Statue of Equality, a 216-foot tall statue of 11th-century saint Ramanujacharya, in Hyderabad. Photo: Twitter/@narendramodi

To get a sense of the scale of the costs involved, bear in mind that the Government of India’s budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Culture this year is Rs 3,000 crore. In other words, the cost of installing this sculpture alone is equivalent to one-third of the entire allocation of the culture ministry.

Do you know how much each edition of the Kochi Biennale costs? It’s roughly Rs 26 crore. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that you could fund 38 biennales all over India with the same scope and ambition as the Kochi Biennale with the kind of money that was used to set up this one ugly statue.

Interestingly, the proposed statue of the Hindu deity Ram, that is going to be constructed near Ayodhya, is slated to be 235 metres in height. If that statue does get built, it will be the tallest in the world, of course after the 182-metre tall ‘Statue of Unity’ Modi has already built at a cost of Rs 2,989 core. The proposed Ram statue will cost the Uttar Pradesh exchequer Rs 2,500 crore. That is $334,912,557. This will be paid for by the taxpayers of UP, as the statue is a state government project. That’s equivalent to the cost of roughly 93 Kochi Biennale-sized interventions in the art and culture infrastructure of contemporary India.

Also read: If Statues Could Speak: What Netaji and Sardar Patel Would Tell Narendra Modi

The Documenta is considered to be the most important event in the world of global contemporary art. The sanctioned overall budget of the last Documenta (which is paid for out of German federal funds, funds from the state of Hesse and the city of Kassel) amounts to roughly $44 million. Seven-and-a-half Documenta-sized festivals of contemporary art could be held in India for the price of one proposed sculpture of Ram at Ayodhya, to be built from public funds in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s third poorest state. In terms of size, all of Germany is just 1.47 times the size of Uttar Pradesh.

This is a good indication of the contemporary cultural priorities (in terms of what gets patronage and what doesn’t) in our society. This, frankly, in sheer quantitative terms, is what contemporary Indian art and culture means. All those involved with contemporary art in India – as artists, critics, curators and scholars – could, if they wanted to, spend some time thinking about this. The first thing that they should discard is the tired lament about there being no private philanthropy and public funding for art in India. There is. For this kind of art. That is a more disturbing fact than the fiction of the absence of patronage.

Remember, the intense density and gravity of a black hole eats up everything that crosses its event horizon. The reason why the infrastructure for contemporary art in India is in the state that it is, is not because of neglect and lack of funding. It is what it is because of the black holes that populate the cultural universe of contemporary India. Let’s face it, this is who we are, culturally. That is what the material evidence says.

I guess the art historians of the future will have to come up with a term like ‘Modi-Maximal-Masculine-Monumental’ (or ‘MMMM’) to signify, with brevity and candour, this regime’s necrophiliac obsession with the size of the idols of dead icons.

This article is based on the author’s Facebook post of February 6, 2022.

Shuddhabhrata Sengupta is with the Raqs Collective in New Delhi.

Exclusive: Khel Ratna Award Was Renamed Because of Modi’s Tweets – Not ‘Public Requests’

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has said it has no information on public requests – and RTI documents show that the ministry hastily issued a circular on the renaming after Modi’s tweet.

New Delhi: Amidst euphoria over the Indian men’s hockey team’s brilliant performance at the Tokyo Olympics in August this year, the Narendra Modi government decided to rename the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, making it the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. The first person to break the news was none other than the prime minister himself, when he tweeted about it.

But the decision soon sparked a row. While some alleged that it was merely a gimmick to insult the Congress and erase its achievements, others welcomed it as a mark of respect for the venerated sportsperson. Questions were also raised on the official renaming procedure that was followed, as well as the basis on which the decision was taken.

Although an existing sporting award is already named after Major Dhyan Chand, Modi claimed in his tweet on August 6 that he has been getting many requests from citizens across India to rename the Khel Ratna Award after the legendary player.

However, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has failed to furnish any documents containing details of the requests received to change the award’s name that corroborate the prime minister’s claim. In fact, The Wire has discovered, the ministry decided to rename the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award only after Modi’s tweet – and a circular was hastily issued by officials.

This information has come to light from documents accessed by The Wire under the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005.

The ministry has officially admitted that they do not have any documents regarding requests from the public to rename the award. Any letter addressed to the prime minister is transferred to the concerned ministry or department for disposal, based on its subject matter.

The Wire had filed an RTI application on August 8, 2021 where it sought to know how many such name change requests for the award have been received by the PMO. Copies of these request letters were also sought.

However, Shantha Sharma, undersecretary in the ministry and the central public information officer (CPIO), remarked, “There is no information in this regard.”

In fact, the ministry did not even consult concerned stakeholders before taking the decision, and the award was renamed merely on the basis of the prime minister’s tweet.

In other words, the tweet came first, and the official renaming of the award came later.

Major DhyanChand Award Files by The Wire

The haste with which the prime minister’s tweet was converted into a ‘government decision’ can be gauged from the fact that the file bearing Union minister for youth affairs and sports Anurag Thakur’s stamp of approval has several basic spelling errors and has clearly not been proofread.

The file concerning the matter opens with screenshots of a series of three of the prime minister’s tweets, based on which file notes were prepared for obtaining approval to rename the award.

During the whole exercise, the ministry officials were faced with another dilemma, as an existing award is already named after Major Dhyan Chand. Therefore, it was decided that the other award will also be renamed later.

On August 6, the day Modi posted the tweet, section officer (SP-IV) Surendra wrote while preparing the proposal, “It has been proposed that the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, instituted in 1991-92, will be renamed as Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.”

“It is also proposed that since the Major Dhyan Chand Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sports and Games was instituted in 2002, its name should also be changed. A copy of the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s tweet and Khel Ratna Award and Dhyan Chand Award Schemes have been attached with the file. Approval is needed for issuing a circular in this regard.”

Granting approval to the proposal, joint secretary Atul Singh and then secretary of the ministry Ravi Mittal signed the noting. Both the senior officers agreed that the existing Dhyan Chand Award should also be renamed.

Later, Mittal prepared another note to be sent to the sports minister seeking approval to rename both the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award as well as the Dhyan Chand Award. In the proposal, three suggestions were offered regarding the Dhyan Chand Award’s new name: to call it either ‘Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports and Games’ or ‘Milkha Singh award for Lifetime Achievement in Sports and Games’, or else decide later.

The Union sports minister, Thakur, granted approval to rename the Rajiv Gandhi Award, but the decision on the Dhyan Chand Award was kept for another day.

Modi pays floral tribute to Major Dhyan Chand. Photo: PTI/Files

It is clear from the documents that there was no consultation with the concerned stakeholders such as the states or union territories, National Sports Federation of India, Sports Authority of India, Indian Olympic Association, etc. in this regard.

The scheme related to the award was notified about the name change only about a month after the decision.

According to the revised scheme, the objective of the award is to recognise the spectacular and most outstanding performance in the field of sports by a sportsperson over a period of four years. Only one award will be conferred every year, to be given to an individual sportsperson.

A provision has also been made for the Union sports minister to introduce changes or exemptions to the scheme at will.

A three-time Olympic gold medallist, Major Dhyan Chand is considered the country’s greatest hockey player. His birthday, on August 29, is celebrated as the National Sports Day of India. On this day every year, the highest sports honours in the country, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna, and Dronacharya awards, are distributed.

Amid jubilation over the Indian men’s hockey team’s historic performance at the Tokyo Olympics, people reiterated the demand to confer the Bharat Ratna award posthumously to Major Dhyan Chand. But ignoring this popular demand, the Modi government instead decided to rename the highest honour in sports, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, even though another award named after Major Dhyan Chand had already been instituted.

The Wire had previously reported how the PMO had refused to make public the documents related to the matter. In a blatant violation of the 2005 RTI Act, the department claimed that the details sought are outside the purview of the definition of ‘information’.

The PMO instead claimed that the details sought by the applicant are ‘roving’ in nature.

Renaming was already being considered

The plan to rename the Khel Ratna award had been under consideration for at least the past two years. The idea was proposed by the committee for review of sports awards and special (cash) award scheme, constituted by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in February 2019.

The committee under Justice (retd.) Indermeet Kaur Kochar consisted of members like Shiva Keshavan, Ashwini Nachappa, Mohandas Pai, Rajesh Kalra and S.P.S. Tomar (deputy secretary in the sports ministry and in-charge of sports awards).

According to The Hindu’s report, the committee had noted that “Rajiv Gandhi has not been directly associated with sports, but the award is being given carrying his name for the last 26 years. Bhartiya Khel Ratna would be more appropriate.”

Eventually, it was unanimously decided that “there is no need for changing the names of the schemes of sports awards at this juncture.”

While the Congress welcomed the decision to rename the Khel Ratna Award after Major Dhyan Chand, it objected to renaming the cricket stadium in Ahmedabad after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It remarked that various stadiums in the country should now be named after sportspersons like P.T. Usha, Milkha Singh, Mary Kom, Abhinav Bindra, Sachin Tendulkar, Pullela Gopichand, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sania Mirza and Leander Paes.

Can’t Solve a Problem? Learn From Narendra Modi, and Just Pretend it Doesn’t Exist

One expects strongmen to thrive on confrontation. But in the face of hard resistance, this one folds, though he doesn’t admit defeat.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

If a problem is ignored, it solves itself in India.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act was passed 665 days ago, in 2019. India’s home minister promised it was the first element in a pincer whose second claw would be the National Register of Citizens. Between these two, India would squeeze the “termites” and deport them.

This did not happen. The CAA’s rules have not been framed, meaning that it has not been implemented. When will that happen? When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, Amit Shah now says, which could be never. Why, after the brave words, did Shah retreat? One reason was the brave resistance of protesters led by Muslim women, and the other was the world’s condemnation. India was unprepared for the severely critical motion tabled by European Members of Parliament and reports in India that it had sufficient votes to pass. The IFS cadre is untrained for censure of such sort and pretends India is pluralist.

Not being able to implement it, the government simply moved on from the problem. There is no talk of CAA or NRC these days, and there will not be.

The farm bills have met a similar fate. Produced with alacrity as ordinances in the midst of the pandemic last year, they were passed without allowing a division vote in the Rajya Sabha. It appears that they were both important and urgent. But the prime minister was unprepared (he is seen in some quarters as the most politically astute) for a protest of the scale that the farmers launched. The bills have come undone. Their implementation was stayed by the Supreme Court in January — it is unclear under what law — and they remain stayed. In December, the government accepted two of the farmers’ other demands, the repeal of the Straw Pollution Ordinance, 2020, which criminalises the burning of stubble, and withdrawal of amendments proposed to the Electricity Ordinance, 2020, which would end power subsidies and replace them with a cash subsidy.

Also read: Just Three Hours Away From Lakhimpur Kheri, Narendra Modi Still Says Nothing About it

In July, two months ago, Piyush Goyal’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs imposed a limit of 200 tonnes (wholesale) and five tonnes (retail) on the stocks of all pulses that traders can hold, except moong. This was to control inflation, but it killed the Modi government’s own law which repeals the Essential Commodities Act, allowing for hoarding. The farm laws are dead, as is obvious to all, and there is absolutely no move from the government to implement them. The prime minister has moved on, leaving the farmers on protest.

One expects strongmen to thrive on confrontation. But in the face of hard resistance, this one folds, though he doesn’t admit defeat. Looking away is good enough.

Where else does one see evidence of this behaviour? Ladakh. At the all-party meeting on June 19 last year, Modi said, “Na koi wahan hamari seema mein ghus aaya hai, na hi koi ghusa hua hai, na hi hamari koi post kisi dusre ke kabze mein hai” (No one has intruded and nor is anyone intruding, nor has any post been captured by someone). When this was shown to be demonstrably untrue, he did not reverse his position. He just erased it. On June 25, Modi’s official YouTube channels edited the video to remove the line denying intrusion in an attempt to move on from the controversy. The problem remains. Modi just doesn’t talk about it.

Two of his favourite phrases used to be “one bright spot in the world’s economy” (he used it in the famous demonetisation speech) and “fastest-growing economy”. He doesn’t use them any longer. The current finance minister came in when the ship was already beached. Her refrain was: “green shoots are visible”. She last used that phrase over a year ago, so far as one can tell, because none were or are visible. Nobody in the government speaks about the economy or jobs. They have other pakoras to fry.

Aakar Patel is Chair of Amnesty International India and author of Our Hindu Rashtra. His Price of the Modi Years is forthcoming.

Dear Prime Minister, Now Do You Believe That No Man Is an Island?

Narendra Modi has burnt every bridge, antagonised every peer and decapacitated every institution which could have helped him cross the troubled waters he now has to negotiate.

If Bal Narendra had spent some more time in school instead of rushing off to sell tea at a railway station which did not even exist at that time, he would have imbibed some wisdom from a couple of old adages: ‘Don’t burn your bridges behind you because you may need them again tomorrow’ and ‘Be courteous to the people you cross on your way up because you will meet them again on your way down’. These would have stood him in good stead in this hour of his biggest political crisis, when he and the country face a complete meltdown. For he has burnt every bridge, antagonised every peer and decapacitated every institution which could have helped him cross the troubled waters he now has to negotiate.

Modi’s destruction of India can be divided into three broad phases – demonetisation, 2019 and COVID-19. In the first one he knocked the bottom out of the economy with demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, and intimidated the media into a subservient silence. In the second, after winning another term, he demolished federalism by pulling down as many as nine elected state governments and rewriting our relationship with Kashmir, putting the goal of the Hindu rashtra on the front burner with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens, and extracting the Ram Mandir judgment from the Supreme Court. In the third phase he put parliament in the freezer along with the vaccines he never bought, upgraded the Hindu rashtra to a Corporate Hindu Rashtra by ramming through the three farm laws and amendments to the labour laws, quietly acquiesced to Chinese occupation of our territories, and made a horrendous mess of the management of the pandemic.

These phases overlap, of course, but running through them is a malevolent common thread – of subjugation of constitutional and regulatory institutions, gross misuse of enforcement and police agencies, undermining of the judiciary, politicisation of the armed forces, an overbearing arrogance and insensitivity to public opinion, ruthless crushing of dissent and false propaganda and image building on a Goebbelsian scale.

Modi and his fawning cohorts, who still wear their N-95 masks over their eyes instead of their noses, consider these phases as great achievements and milestones in the establishment of a majoritarian state. But they are now discovering that it is precisely these “achievements” which have defenestrated him and have made him unfit and unable to govern this nation any longer. He has systematically blunted the tools of governance and now finds he has no arrows left in his quiver with which to confront the apocalypse facing the nation right now. He can blame no one but himself – and his hubris and insatiable appetite for power – for this.

Also read: RSS Played Down Bhagwat’s Criticism of Modi for Letting COVID Guard Down but Damage is Done

He talks now of everyone giving up their differences and standing behind the government to fight the pandemic as one united nation; this would be ironic if it were not so hypocritical. He has spent the last seven years in doing just the opposite: fragmenting the nation along religious, caste and regional lines, simply in order to accumulate more political power. His government has gone after every sub-set of society with a vengeance – students, farmers, intellectuals, journalists, scientists, blue collar workers, voluntary organisations, academia, even social workers and activists. There have been repeated nationwide strikes against his disastrous policies – 250 million workers in November 2020 against the new labour laws, one million doctors on December 11, 2020 against the licence given to Ayurvedic doctors to perform operations, one million bank employees against the policy of privatisation of public sector banks; the farmers’ strike and the OROP protests continue unabated. But he has remained adamant and intransigent. He has said not one word about the misery of the migrant labourers. And he now expects these disparate groups to unite behind him?

Take federalism, or in his own dissembling words, “cooperative federalism”. He now expects that the opposition parties should not criticise his mishandling of the pandemic and should support him. That’s a bit rich, considering that his loudly stated objective is to wipe out the opposition totally, a “Congress-mukt” India and a “One Nation One Party” future. In pursuit of this he has used the CBI, NIA, ED, Income Tax department and friendly police forces to target leaders of political parties; the thousands of crores in the opaque electoral bonds have been gainfully utilised to pull down democratically elected governments in nine states, elections have been customised to suit the BJP’s strategy.

Modi has made a mockery of federalism, he is genetically unwilling to share power, just as he cannot share the credit for anything. Time and again he has maliciously encroached on the jurisdiction of states, whether it is by passing legislation such as the farm laws or the GST Act or the law that makes the Lieutenant Governor the “government” in Delhi, showing utter contempt for the 20 million residents of the capital who have twice booted out his party in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party. He has changed the terms of the latest Finance Commission to siphon off more funds from the states’ share of central revenues, he will not give them the promised GST dues, he uses the NIA, CBI and ED to thwart the state police forces from pursuing investigations that may embarrass his government or party. He completely usurped all powers under the pandemic Act to deny the states any role or policy making in combating the pandemic, whether it be lockdowns, SOPs, vaccination production, sale or distribution. It is only now, when his gross incompetence and arrogance has blown up in his face, that he is making desperate attempts to throw the ball back in the states’ corner. And he expects the states to “cooperate” with him on these terms?

He expects the opposition parties to cooperate with him, but when a former (and much respected) prime minster and Sonia Gandhi write to him with specific and sensible suggestions for fighting the pandemic, he ignores them with the haughtiness of a Kublai Khan. Even worse, he gets his underlings to reply to them in despicable language and to issue press statements accusing them of conspiracy and worse. He mocks a woman chief minister with cat-calls. And even after all this, he is trying to portray himself as a victim of the opposition’s non-cooperation! One can’t get any more delusional than this.

Also read: Behind Narendra Modi’s Pseudo-Nationalist Mask

He has calcified the institutions which are meant to guide and advise the government, to act as circuit-breakers and watchdogs, as bridges between the ruler and the ruled. Parliament has been made dysfunctional, the Supreme Court has been brought to heel (even though some high courts are still holding out), the Election Commission is now just another subordinate government department, the Information Commission blocks more information than it releases. The whereabouts of the Lokpal is one of the biggest mysteries of the decade, bodies like the NHRC and the Minorities Commission simply issue notices which no government agency bothers to reply to, the CAG spends more time redacting his reports than on auditing, on papering over the government’s misdemeanours (and worse) than on highlighting them.

Even the Union cabinet is a window dressing for decisions taken by the PMO, and all reports indicate that ministers count for nothing, which is why they have all gone into hiding during this terrible phase of the pandemic. Secretaries to the government are not expected to contribute to policy making, they are required to simply carry out the PMO’s orders. The best brains no longer come to the Central government, they prefer to stay in their states. In effect, therefore, Modi’s reliance is only on a handful of bureaucrats (predominantly from Gujarat) who pass muster on the loyalty quotient but have little else to recommend them. Under the chief of defence staff, General Bipin Rawat, even the defence forces are gradually moving to a dangerous point – “political” control instead of the constitutionally mandated “civilian” control.

To conclude, Modi has locked himself up in his echo chamber and lost touch with reality. He has no ideas or instruments left to fight the pandemic with. The machinery of state has been made dysfunctional, the judiciary will take a long time to reassert its oversight role (if ever), the mainstream media lacks all credibility, vast sections of the people have been alienated, the opposition has reason aplenty to believe that cooperating with him is like hitching a ride on a tiger, the scientific experts have been sidelined in favour of Coronil and dark chocolate, people are finding it increasingly difficult to trust him, either in word or action. He is no longer seen in battle and the pandemic is more or less running its course. It will peter out eventually, and the prime minister will emerge from the debris and dust of Central Vista to take credit for it, but the corpses floating in the Ganga will be telling a different story this time.

Every party, institution, expert, state or service which could have helped Modi combat the pandemic has been deliberately bent, twisted, hollowed out or contemptuously discarded in his dispensation and rendered useless, and the prime minister is now like a general with no troops or weaponry. His vanity had convinced him that he could, like Icarus, soar to the sun alone, with no help from anyone. Like Icarus, he is now finding out that he should have heeded the advice of Daedalus. He may very well win again in 2024 with the help of his behemoth party, unlimited funds, undoubted oratorial skills, misuse of official machinery and an opposition more fractured than a shale oil-field, whose leaders prefer to hang separately than to hang together. He will probably continue to rule but his quiver is empty and he has lost the capacity to govern. That, and not just the pandemic, is our collective tragedy.

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer. A version of this article appeared on his blog and has been edited by The Wire for style.

Modi’s Gamble, and How Many Lives It Will Cost

Modi did not want only to prevent a second wave; he wanted all the credit for stopping COVID-19 in its tracks to go to him and him alone.

In her heart-rending description of her desperate search for oxygen to save her father’s life, the celebrated TV news anchor Barkha Dutt ascribed his death to three features of governance that have defined Modi’s India: complacency, callousness and incompetence. She could have added a fourth – an insatiable, almost suicidal appetite for risk born of a compulsion to keep reinforcing an already swollen image of himself.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has displayed this penchant half a dozen times in the last seven years: his personal announcement of  demonetisation before the new currency notes had even been printed; his imposition of the Goods and Services Tax with immediate effect, denying India’s 71 million small manufacturers time to set up the required accounting systems; his sudden  confrontation of the Chinese at Doklam in Bhutan without consulting Thimpu, and his equally sudden removal of price and marketing protection from farmers without even a rudimentary examination of how it would affect them.

His appetite for risk surfaced yet again, within days of being told that the first wave of India’s COVID-19 epidemic had peaked in September last year. Of the 50 lakh Indians who had been infected until then, 81% had recovered. Some 10 lakh patients remained under medical care, most of them at home. A little over 84,000 people had died. The mortality rate of 1.68 % was about the lowest in the world and the envy of other nations (notwithstanding fatality undercounting and underreporting).

But everyone involved in the actual fight until then knew that it was too good to last. Scientists always knew of the danger that the ‘original’ virus could mutate into more dangerous forms. Second ‘waves’ of COVID-19 had already developed in the summer and autumn of 2020, spreading through parts of Belgium, Iran, South Korea, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain and the US.

When researchers in the UK reported the B.1.1.7 variant in December 2020, the country’s government immediately extended its existing lockdown. The variant was found to be more infectious but no more dangerous than the original. Within weeks, scientists reported two more ‘variants of concern’, from Brazil (P.1) and South Africa (B.1.351), in addition to numerous other strains and mutations. P.1 and B.1.351 have been found to be able to partially evade the human immune system, endangering prospects of vaccines being developed at the time.

Also read: Narmada, Modi’s Showpiece Tourist Centre, Is Reeling Under a Terrifying Second Wave of COVID

Therefore, every government took the risk of a second outbreak seriously from the start. By early January 2021, the B.1.1.7 strain had been detected in samples in Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore. All of these countries took quick precautions, imposed lockdowns and/or stepped up their vaccination schedules.

There were only three exceptions – all in large democracies with insecure but ruthless leaders in power: Brazil, the US and India.

India’s scientific and medical establishment, and its health minister Harsh Vardhan in particular, were fully aware of the threat that later strains of the virus could pose. Vardhan had overseen the last phase of the polio eradication campaign during Prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s tenure, so he had an experience of disease control that no one else in the government did.

But from the very first days of the pandemic, the Modi government developed two conflicting aims. While the administration wanted to chart a course of action that would minimise the risk of a second wave, the political establishment – headed by Modi himself – was concerned only with extracting every ounce of political advantage from the crisis.

The conflict emerged in the very first week of the March 2020 lockdown. In speech after televised speech, Modi reminded his audiences that just as the Pandava had won the battle of Kurukshetra in 18 days, he would win the battle against COVID-19 in 21 days. He thus turned the lockdown into a personal battle between him and the virus.

As the days passed, and the number of new cases increased instead of declining, Modi began to look for something, or someone, to blame. Conveniently for him, the Tablighi Jamaat conference in New Delhi gave him just the scapegoats he needed – foreign religious clerics belonging to a religion he detested and had targeted to attain power. The strictest possible lockdown was therefore imposed on the entire Nizamuddin area of New Delhi and criminal cases filed against the organisers – despite the fact that the conference had ended two days before the government imposed the first travel restrictions on foreigners, on March 14.

But new cases continued to mount long after the event’s conclusion, so Modi sought help from the occult. To invoke the gods to come to his aid, he asked  people to turn off their lights and beat thalis at preordained times and used the Air Force to shower flowers over Delhi.

While he was monopolising TV time, his administration was setting up 11 empowered groups under the National Disaster Management Act, to deal with the material aspects of the forthcoming challenge. One of them, within days of being set up, warned the government in unambiguous terms that a second wave was likely and provided detailed recommendations on how to prepare for it, should it happen.

Among its most important recommendations was that India immediately import 60,000 tonnes of oxygen and upgrade 150 district hospitals – mainly by supplying them with 162 pressure swing adsorption plants to isolate oxygen.

The 162 plants were expected to cost Rs 200 crore. At the time the empowered group made these recommendations, the PM Cares fund, which Modi had set up to fight the pandemic, had already received Rs 3,076 crore, mostly from public sector companies. So Modi had the money he needed, in abundance.

A COVID-19 patient on oxygen support waits to be admitted at Patna Medical College and Hospital, during the second wave of coronavirus in Patna, Friday, May 14, 2021. Photo: PTI

But Modi did not want only to prevent a second wave; he wanted all the credit for stopping COVID-19 in its tracks to go to him and him alone. So when the  first wave peaked in September 2020, his propagandists immediately  proclaimed that Modi’s harsh lockdown had defeated the outbreak and saved India. From then on, it was business as usual for Modi, and business as usual had  only one goal: to wrest West Bengal from Mamata Bannerjee and the Trinamool Congress, no matter the cost.

In Modi’s highly centralised, PMO-centred decision-making process, this shift of attention sowed the seeds of today’s disaster. The government’s first act was to wind up five of the 11 empowered groups and discontinued the meetings of the group tracking the virus’s spread. The programme to upgrade district hospitals went into limbo – as did the plan to create an oxygen reserve by  importing 50,000 tonnes of oxygen.

Genome sequencing, which is essential to determine which mutations are spreading in which population, took the back seat. It was not till December 25, 2020, after B.1.1.7 had already arrived in India, that the health ministry created the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG) – a chain of 10 laboratories to sequence and analyse virus samples.

By March 24 INSACOG had tested 10,787 samples and found 771 instances involving three of the eight ‘variants of concern’ the US Centres of Disease Control had identified. Of them, 94% were of B.1.1.7.

This should have set the alarm bells ringing in every office in the PMO – but four state elections were imminent and Modi could think of nothing else but the stentorian speeches he was preparing to give in the 23 election rallies he intended to address in West Bengal and Assam.

In fact, the absence of any sense of urgency in the government after September was so complete that it took eight months, until November 2020, just to invite tenders for the oxygen plants. As a result, on April 18, 2021, only 11 of the 162 oxygen plants had been installed.

Also, none of these had been funded by the PM Cares fund. In fact, it was not till April 15 that the PMO coughed up a measly Rs 100 crores from its corpus to complete the construction of 59 more plants and bring the number up to 80 by the end of May.

There was a similar departure from responsibility  in the vaccination programme. From January 16, the government concentrated on vaccinating frontline and healthcare workers. Vaccination for those above 50 years began on March 1, but with that private interests and preferences came roaring back into play.

Pfizer was refused permission to sell their vaccines in India. The Centre also failed to strike advance purchase agreements with vaccine-makers and grossly overestimated Indian manufacturers’ capacity to satisfy the domestic demand for doses.

Also read: A Report Card on the End Times Brought Upon Us by Hindutva

The government also forced Covaxin, an ‘indigenously developed’ vaccine, on government hospitals before the latter had completed its crucial phase 3 trials. As a result, vast numbers of eligible persons refused to take the vaccine, slowing immunisation still further.

Despite this rampant irresponsibility,  Modi’s luck held for five months after September. Through these winter months, the number of active cases continued to ebb. When it reached a minimum in the week of February 11, 2021, there were fewer than 138,000 patients under treatment and a hundred or so deaths a day. The country heaved a sigh of relief. Markets, restaurants and malls began to function again and life was returning to a semblance of normal. But by then, the seeds of the second wave that is now ravaging the country had been sown.

The second wave

The first warning came, almost unnoticed, in late-February when the number of new cases daily began once again to exceed  recoveries, causing the number of active cases to start rising.  This was slow at the beginning: the first doubling of active cases, from 137,000 on February 14 to 273,000 cases on March 18, took   32 days. But after that, and within six days of INSACOG’s warning, the speed tripled and each doubling took only 11 days or so.

The number of active cases breached the 1 million mark on April 10 and the 2 million mark on April 21. Not until then did it register on Modi that there was something more important happening in the country than the West Bengal and Assam elections. But by then he had already addressed 10 million persons in  23 rallies, where neither he nor anyone in his audiences wore a mask.

Modi’s utter disregard for the consequences of his actions emboldened lesser leaders in his party to follow his lead. The chief minister of Uttarakhand not only refused to cancel the Kumbh Mela but put out advertisements to draw more devotees from around India.

When a special leave petition to the Supreme Court pointed out on April 16 that “there is no protocol in place to ensure that devotees who get infected do not go on to spread the virus when they return”, he retorted that “nobody will be stopped (from attending the mela). We are sure that faith in God will overcome fear of the virus”. As a result, an estimated 28 lakh persons attended the mela, took holy dips in the Ganga, jostled with each other in the crowded, polluted waters of the river, and then dispersed to all parts of India to spread the virus.

Devotees gather to offer prayers during the third Shahi Snan of the Kumbh Mela 2021, at Har ki Pauri Ghat in Haridwar, Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Photo: PTI

Therefore, to Modi’s surprise – and perhaps only his – there were three and a half million active cases on May 4. Hospitals were full to bursting, doctors couldn’t even reply to anxious calls from infected patients, helplines were overloaded and distress calls received no answer. An acute shortage of oxygen killed patients by the scores every hour.

Although the data has not been released, and may never be, I speculate from personal experience that more people have probably died because of the lack of oxygen than from any other single cause. In fact, the shortage of oxygen is therefore the one issue on which the world needs to hold the Modi government, and Modi in particular, criminally responsible. For there is not a shadow of an excuse for the shortage that has developed.

In a report submitted to the Lok Sabha in 2020, a committee headed by MP Ram Gopal Yadav pointed out that the country’s oxygen production capacity was 6,900 tonnes a day; that at the peak of the first wave the demand for medical oxygen had reached 3,000 tonnes a day, but as the wave subsided it had fallen to 1,000 tonnes a day. This allowed the remainder to be diverted for industrial use.

So in March, when INSACOG identified the B.1.1.7 strain as the main threat to the country’s population at the time, the government could have diverted at least 2,000 tonnes a day of oxygen back from industrial centres with a single stroke of the pen. But at the end of March, Modi’s fixation on winning the West Bengal and Assam elections was so complete that he ‘forgot’ to make that stroke of the pen. And by the time he ‘remembered’, it was April 19, and  people were dying in their cars and as their relatives took them desperately to one hospital after the next in search of oxygen.

Modi has been a gambler all his life. His entire career has been built on forcing his way through one organisational or moral barrier after the other, and brazening his way forward until he could turn it into a success. This time his gamble has failed and, if an estimate by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is to be believed, India could see a staggering one–million deaths from COVID-19 by August this year.

Watch | Seven Years of BJP: PM Modi and His One-Sided Communication

Modi has held only one press conference in the last seven years.

In 2014, Narendra Modi became the prime minister of the country, after which he started the Mann Ki Baat programme in October 2014. Around seven years have gone by, through which Modi has established one-sided communication with the people. Not only that, Modi has held only one press conference in the last seven years.