Narendra Modi: 'Hero of the Masses' or 'Villain', as liberal English media have portrayed him for 17 years?

seek10

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
The answer to the question is obvious after the recent elections. But, what about the accusations made against him all this long as if he is the "Most Vilified Indian"ever by media (particularly liberal English media).

I want to address this question in this thread along with "how majority of Indians looks at him", his non-political, less than modest past, his temperaments, his creative development schemes that inspires everybody, image of anti-corruption crusader and much drummed up role in 2002 Godhra riots in Gujarat.

There are innumerable names thrown on Modi since he was air dropped into the chair of Gujarat Chief minister since 2001. At this time, he never "Hero of Hatred", "Mass Murderer", Aurangajab ( Mughlar ruler who was anti-Hindu) , dictator, "Divider in-chief", "Bigot". To add little comedy to the list, here is one tweet from Modi's right hand man and current Home minister Amit Shah in 2017.
Yamraj ( Hindu mythology "death of God") , Maut Ka Saudagar ( King of death) , Ravan ( Villian of Hindu epic Ramayan) , Gandi Nali Ka Keeda ( fly of dirty stream) , Monkey, Rabies Victim, Virus, Bhasmasur ( Hindu mythological Villain who has the ability burn any body instantly) , Gangu Teli( racist comment on his "Oil-presser" caste ), Goon etc. The list goes on.

Nothing stopped him. He became 3 time Gujarat Chief Minister. Each time every body expected him to lose, but won for every body's surprise. The more media vilified him, more development he showed and inspired more folks across the nation, that lead him to become prime minister in 2014 and second time in 2019 with majority on his own. This is a rare event in Indian politics of diverse identities and conflicts where "Anti-incumbency" plays a major role.

Origin of the discussion in my mind:

While watching Indian election results as I posted here. Host of "India TV" Rajdeep sardesai ( Known to be Modi critic) awed by the results threw the comment, This is "Moditva". One panel member asked what do you mean by it. he mentioned it is combination of "Development", "Toxic Hindutva" and "Nationalism". This followed one more immediately asked "What is meant by Toxic?. Being a Hindu, Toxic?". Well, for my surprise, Rajdeep, simply dropped the Word Toxic.

I thought 'WoW', here is a supposed to be top-class host that drops the word "Toxic" so fast after all these years.

Obviously all point it in Modi's supposed role in "Godhra riots"( they didn't have any thing else since 2002), any nut case statement by any Sangh Parivar , any Cow vigilant violence became a reinforcement of the "Modi is Villain" narration. It doesn't matter whether BJP claims 110 million membership. Any body or any thing this 110 million say or does is Modi's Fault and it is a validation of how evil he is. It doesn't matter how many people were arrested, convicted in Godhra incident or Cow Vigilant deaths and that news doesn't trickle to that english media.

There are lot of words and arguments that are flowing all over the place. "Ram", "Gandhi murderer", "Ram Raj", "Hindu", "Hindutva", "Nationalism" , "RSS", secularism, riots, Lynchistan, stupidity over Cows, and Minority Insecurity etc. All are directed at one man who is at the top of the Chain - Narendra Modi as if he is responsible for all of it.

I will be posting on these topics.
 
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Origin of the discussion in my mind:

While watching Indian election results as I posted here, Host of "India TV" Rajdeep sardesai ( Known to be Modi critic) awed by the results threw the comment, This is "Moditva". One panel member asked what do you mean by it. he mentioned it is combination of "Development", "Toxic Hindutva" and "Nationalism". This followed one more immediately asked "What is meant by Toxic?. Being a Hindu, Toxic?". Well, for my surprise, Rajdeep, simply dropped the Word Toxic.

I thought 'WoW', here is a supposed to be top-class host that drops the word "Toxic" so fast after all these years endlessly trying it.
Small correction, Rajdeep sardesai is "India Today" host not "India TV". In fact, origins of this topic goes back to many years in my mind based on some observations, opinions, controversies and past cautions.

As I told else where, I wasn't watching watching much Indian politics until his 2014 elections. Most average person feel disappointed with politics before. Some thing changed in 2014 with Modi's candidature, but most are doubtful.

first time I was surprised, when Modi rejected WTO deal ( quote from Modi Doctrine)
At the multilateral table of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Modi Doctrine has attempted to maintain India’s traditional role as an aggregator and spokesperson for the collective interests of developing countries, while also not wishing to be seen as obstructing or blocking progress in negotiations. In July 2014, the Modi government displayed early combativeness by refusing to ratify a WTO deal reached in Bali in 2013, and arguing that countries of the Global South have a sovereign right to protect their poor by retaining agricultural subsidies. Exasperated at being accused in the Western media and policymaking circles as a spoiler, the Indian prime minister posed the dilemma on eliminating food subsidies as, ‘There are efforts to isolate India over WTO. But tell me: do we choose feeding our poor or getting good press worldwide?
He looked man of his own convictions, irrespective of media or other politicians( his party or other parties) noise. After wards, It became a norm to pull out one scheme or other that not only bring it to public attention about topics that no other politician gave a dime (except in a election rhetoric), getting out on the streets to promote it. ex: Swatch Bharat (Clean India) sweeping the streets.These things may be basic expectations in the Western world, but they are not so in India. These issues are not easy to solve due to entrenched for decades old poverty/corruption/negligence . All this comes with accusations of public stunt,token signs etc. BJP claimed some thing like more than 150 scheme's in 5 years. It is reasonable to assume all didn't work as expected.

Another big moment is Demonetization decision. The Western press looked at it in terms of physical conveniences at the bank, reckless decision, unplanned show-off , means to control public or outright meaningless disruption. But on the ground, average Indian looked at it completely opposite. "Here is a man, wants to cleanup the endemic black money and bribe problem in all parts of the society(that emanated from post independence License Raj), has the courage the do it". People can accuse him of many things, but not "as corrupt" after being 3 times chief minister and 1 prime minister election in a country you can't even get done any thing without influence( money or acquainted govt. employee or politician).

When things started going south, He took to the media openly declared "Give me 2 months, if things doesn't go well, Punish me". Well, whether one call it crude belligerence or suicidal, things went OK. Media as usual published sensational news like big ATM lines, few instances Bank officers redirecting the new notes to their powerful local big shots, while giving lip service to the How many arrests were made. In the Western world, if you feel threatened, you call police, you can trust that Police will do some thing to the accused after doing their some-what impartial inquiry and if they are convinced. But, in India, police used to arrest whoever is least influential, so most of the people will not even go to the police. But, all this has changing.

I have many friends who visited India during the time, standing in the hours long ATM lines, borrowing from relatives whatever they can, but still absolutely happy with the move. There is a entrenched hopeless feeling with the corruption among the public for many decades. The same with my relatives there.

Why am I writing this?

Whatsapp is popular app in India and Indians outside and whoever have a smart phone tend to multiple whatsapp groups either college friends, work colleagues etc. I have one group with 30+ people, there used to be constant arguments. Out of 2 people anti-Modi and 5 or 6 those who claim nuetral. Any video critical of Modi were gleefully shared and any thing positive tend to be contested. I watched them to understand what is going on and the curiosity led me to search what is going on. The biggest problem is any body who supports Modi immediately blamed as 'Modi Bhakt', "Anti-Muslim", "Racist", "influenced by Modi IT cell" etc., while others protest saying " We are not Pro-Modi, Congress ruled for 60 years and screwed it, he is doing good, Let's give 10 or 15 years and see what he does".

Personally, I felt that he is saying all the ideals, pulling all the schemes, constantly running here and there in his 20 hrs a day schedule, boldly ridiculing political correctness ( Politics of minority appeasement), doing his own politics. But, all the criticism originated from his perceived role in 2002 Godhra riots. Given his life long RSS pracharak background every body took it as assumed that that he was behind the riots. What ever he said to defend himself is considered it as a validation of his role.

For most Indians, Riots were there for a long time ( given that Muslim rulers ruled for more than 600 years and British did their divide and Rule), often the origins of riots tend me LOT more complicated than "Majority killed Minority" simple narration, though that also happens. One book that gives insight into it is MJ Akbar's first book called 'Riot after Riot' which is a compilations of articles related to 15 riots(sample) happened in 80's. Lot more goes on behind the scene before a riot even starts, like changes in social hierarchies, leaders belonging to supposed conflicting groups coordinate to create the riot, complicity of varying groups in the crime, political leadership changes etc.

For India's liberal left English Media, Modi-bashing, Minority Lynching is their favorite part. Couple of months back, some body sent a video of events happened in 2002 riots and What Modi did to handle riots(english subtitles are mine).
It looked, Modi did LOT more than any other politician had done in the past to control the riots. But, all are ignored while trying to extract apology from Modi at every possible turn until he became PM. To validate the claims, I looked for sources of events of the 2002, but couldn't find much other than usual "Gujarat Hitler" , "Hero of Hatred" , "Mass Murderer", He did it because he made a statement that "should have handled media better", he is Anti-Muslim because he don't want to wear Muslim cap etc.

To makeup my own mind, I opened another book called "Narendra Modi: A Political Biography" (published in 2014 when he was PM candidate). I read it some years back, but not paid too much attention to Godhra details. Having seen many riots, I even considered the possibility of Modi's complicity in it. But as I started re-reading the book where he addressed accusation after accusation and with the advantage of seeing 5 years of rule at the center and watching many interviews he said/did and how Media tried to break him for 17 years, I have no choice except to accept that He is not even responsible for Godhra event. In fact, he did every thing in his control or went beyond his means to control it. I will detail it another post. In the process, his temperaments becomes much more clearer and gives some insight into his demonetization reasons.

I know it is a mute point now, particularly after last month's victory, though it raises a question of why English Media went with it so long despite Modi consistently blaming them all these years.
 
I haven't come to this thread though I wanted to write. Problem I keep facing is rather confusing narration going on all over the place. One end, Modi's popularity is astronomically high, and He is solving 70 years old countries pain points( corruption, influence in law and order, Kashmir issue, Muslim poverty issues, basic needs to the poor, inspiring the populace, setting his own agenda's, setting limits on many abuses, bringing order, population control etc) as if there is no tomorrow, but Anti-Modi Media has always something to cry about as if nothing else exist.

As I tried to understand the situation, I am finding listening to the politicians like Modi or Amit Shah speeches directly is more useful than reading the articles. It is a bizarre, but that seems to give more information. I watched Modi critics to see any points that Pro Modi outlets missing for many years. But, I was founding more holes in the Anti-Modi narration than Pro-Modi(leaving aside mass hype that comes with ring wingers).

I went with my 30 year old impressions of Indian Media. While growing up there, I used to like "India Today" for their weekly magazine analysis, that goes deep into behind the scene dynamics which is not covered in other media outlets. They expanded massively, so I assumed they are biased to some extent.

My interest is how to reconcile his popularity without going into pro and Anti Modi drum beats. It is easy to like Modi if one has exposure to India's pain points since independence, At the same time, one has to be cautious with the nuttiness of blind right wingers and their opportunistic politicians who make sensational statements to whip up frenzy.

Generally, populace has enough of this circus. Every body abused the power. so, what way Modi is different and why masses are crazy about him? This is the question that bugged me. Modi runs his agenda as if all of this doesn't matters and masses cheer crazily.

To cut short the chase of who is who I searched google for Pro/Anti Modi outlets, this is what comes. I should have done this before, but I didn't because I was not suspecting this much bias.


Republic, Zee News, India Tv, News18 India, TimesNow, Wion - BJP

NDTV, NewsX, Mirror Now, India Today, ABP News (Anand Bazaar Patria) - Congress

Now Listen
— e.g. Aditya Birla owns Aaj Tak and India Today. So what they do is put one channel pro BJP and one channel anti BJP. That way they are safe.

Same goes with bennett coleman group- they have put Times Now pro BJP and Mirror Now Anti BJP.

Same goes with Network18 (Ambani) who put CNN IBN and New18 India as pro BJP and FirstPost as AntiBJP.

The reason Rajdeep Sardesai ‘left’ CNN IBN is because when it got owned by Ambanis, they couldn’t afford the anti BJP narrative hence this so called journalist was asked to step down.

Aaj Tak was pro Congress but now a days they have changed their narrative especially since Anjana Om Kashyap’s husband was promoted as CVO by Rajnath Singh.

Also please remember there is nothing as BJP and Congress, it is always Left and Right. BJP= Right and Congress = Left.

Here is one more with more details

In short, Media is on sale for a long time, Some simply wearing left/right ideological mask to hide their misdeed, some betting on both sides, some switching to whoever is giving better deal.

Here is a fascinating 2014 video( Before Modi became PM) that exposes the darker side of Indian media circus with paid news, blackmail, political journalists becoming politicians, media, film journalism relationships, nexus between corporate and sports reporting, Radia tapes saga ( exposed the largest scam in Indian history: 2G scam in 2011 that worth of US $26 Billion in congress rule where nexus of lobbysts,media,corporates,politicians of different parties conspire to choose a minister who gives 2G license to few companies for free ), power brokering etc.

At the end he summaries "It seems, Paid news is no longer the cancer in the system, Cancer has taken over the whole system" . Illegal money in swiss accounts from wealthy Indian estimated as of 2008 : 71,00,000 ( Approx. US $ 1 Trillion+ ). Now, It is $US 1.5 Trillion


 
In this post, I want to address the Anti-Modi media players and their connections. While the world media still talking about Kashmir, Indian officials arrested high profile congress leader former foreign/home minister P. Chidambaram who considered specialized in converting black money to white.
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Couple of days back, I came across a video with a title #NDTV Frauds. After watching this, my curiosity lead to more videos and reading couple of books by the same author( NDTV Frauds V 2.0 and C-company) which goes into real life example of rabbit hole of corruption in India. This is only one example.

NDTV Frauds 2.0 Book:

In the NDTV Frauds 2.0 book covers NDTV promoters ( household name Pranoy Roy and his wife Radhika Roy) involvement in financial crimes like stock manipulation, tax evasion, money laundering using complex shell companies, political drama's that involving false accusations of sexual harassment to derail tax investigations, suspension/transfer to remote areas of honest tax commissioners, role in major congress govt. scams like 2G scam ( $26 Billion) , coal scam ($20Billion), Court cases , corruption , unlawful bribes etc. List is very long list. Conspiracy Hub is a right word to describe NDTV. Western scams like #RussiaGate pales in comparison and this story has all components of deep state scams with a minor difference. Here, the Indian intelligence agencies are subordinate to the politicians, rather than blackmail material wielding controllers. When Mr and Mrs. Pranoy roy tried to leave the country on Aug. 9th, Indian govt. blocked them from leaving the country.


This author Sree Iyer is saying NDTV is only indian channel in available in the Western countries he visited. If that is true, It is NDTV that sets agenda around the world about India, with its operational links with people like Rupert rupert murdoch around the world and they are the channels that are visible in major countries. They have a number of money laundering operational links with companies like GE. They are a power broker between the corporations and politicians( many scams Congress UPA faced during 2004-2014). Tax investigations by a honest commissioners ( S.K Srivastava and others) unearthed up to half a billion dollars worth of unaccountable amount of money channeled through dummy fake companies etc.

- The most of the anchors currently run the show under different media outlets are started their career from NDTV. NDTV hired people based on the political connections and most of them are household name anchors even to day.
  • Rajdeep Sardesai was a relative of a Doordarshan program manager, who gave big contracts to NDTV at the expense of Govt. money in 90's. He later moved to other channels and staunch Anti-Modi and currently India To day anchor.
  • Bharkha dat : She is another anchor who was caught in the 2G scam red handedly. She is co-consiprator in many of the NDTV money laundering operations with setting up one man operations in the foreign countries and flow it as a investments into indian company NDTV. They used this method launder around US $450 million.
    • Process of converting Black money to White money: They use illegal Hawala operators to give money in Indian Rupees ( large sums of bribes) and their representatives in places like Dubai, Mauritius, UK convert it dollars and deposits them in foreign banks.
    • This money is moved to India in the form of investments to avoid the taxes from Tax havens like Mauritius. So the money becomes the White money.
      • NOTE: If one looks which country invested most in India since 2000, you will find tiny country called Mauritius that contributes for 32% of the total ( $US 420 billion). India has agreement with Mauritius for not asking sources of the incom ea and not doing the double taxation etc.
    • Investments are promoted on their channel to increase their stock price.
    • This is just one example and there are many variations. Since they facilitated these type of operations, they have the information of who else used them for this operation, can become the subject of blackmail.
  • Other connections:
it is relevant to mention instances of proximity of NDTV personnel to the UPA – Sonia Singh is the wife of R P N Singh (Home Minister of State). Nidhi Razdan has been talked about as being close to Omar Abdullah (ally of Congress and Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir). NDTV Group CEO - K V L Narayan Rao (son of former Chief of Army Staff Gen K V Krishna Rao) etc., was in the IRS (Income Tax Dept). Now the latest, Sarah Jacob (who hosts We the People post Barkha’s exit from NDTV) is the daughter in law of Montek Singh Ahluwalia. One can clearly accept and fathom how the “privileged access party continued” for so many years.

- India's largest private bank ICICI bailed them out from financial trouble under dodgy circumstances.
- Involvement in many scams in during 2004-2014 congress lead UPA-1, UPA-2 period including 2-G scam.
- Tax fraud: When one honest Tax commissioner ( S K Srivastava ) did the investigation to expose him, he was sued by 2 of her juniors tax officers ( Ashima Neb, SHUMANA SEN ) for sexual harassment. Based on those allegations, he was harassed over a time of 7 years in the form of sent on leave without payment, suspension etc. This commissioner pulled out the details of these 2 junior officers relation with NDTV and finance minister P.chidambaram. NDTV paid these officers in giving costly apartments, yearly foreign trips to the worth of US $150K, jobs to their relatives etc . None of them filed these in taxes. He also found that these females officers have sexual relations with P. chidambaram and it is speculated that these officers are blackmailing chidambaram on the behalf of NDTV.
The list is long with all sorts of proofs pulled with official investigations, court documents etc. So I leave it there.

It is NDTV ( like minded) that claimed to be champions of free press, minorities, liberal left are fore front of Anti-Modi campaign. The virtue signaling causes they claim are just a mask to hide real crimes. When asked why they are Anti-Modi, they claim 'we have to be Neutral' as if they don't know the difference between objective truth and propaganda behind the neutrality mask.

Ridiculous part is the details of these well known corruption cases are covered in the media. But, they cover in the complete opposite way with minimal details, not connecting the dots, hiding the real culprits.
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About the Author Sree Iyer

Author of NDTV Frauds V 2.0 and C-company Sree Iyer is an California based businessman turned blogger/writer has been documenting the corruption in Indian Stock market and corruption in Indian politicians like P. Chidambaram, well known media channel NDTV and their connections( for looting) for few years and details in his works are so rare that those are used as weapons in the Indian Parliamentarians. What he wrote are investigating finding of few courageous Indian bureaucrats, who had been witch-hunted for more than a decade and connecting the dots makes the conspiracy and loot clear.

Sree Iyer has the guidance and support of well known BJP politician and 6 times Member of parliament called Subrahmanya swamy . Swamy is well known for making tabloid style accusations followed by taking it to court system and is a big challenger Congress's political correctness and its corruption.
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P. Chidambaram

Former Union finance/Home minister of the Congress govt. P. Chidambaram was arrested for corruption charges was the highlight of the last week news while the world is talking about the Kashmir. This is a very high profile arrest by CBI (Indian version of FBI) for corruption charge. In other countries, this may be normal news, but in India arresting a powerful person like him itself is a big thing. he was arrested for a small case, if one has to arrest him for all crimes, they will have to arrest him 1000 times at least. His hand is in many of the scandals rocked congress Govt. from 2004-2014 that involved big multi-nationals like GE and runs into 2 or 3 digit billions etc.

Cases against P Chidambaram:
  • INX Media: Receiving overseas funds of ₹305 crore ( US $50 Million) in 2007. He was arrested for this case
  • Aircel-Maxis case: Received kickbacks in return for ensuring FIPB clearance for the ₹3,500 crore deal
  • Air India deal: Purchase of 43 aircraft from Airbus and 68 from Boeing for ₹70,000 crore in 2007. The purchase order was cleared by an empowered group of ministers headed by Chidambaram when he was finance minister.
  • NSEL ( (The National Spot Exchange Limited) case : NSEL sued P. chidambaram for $10,000 crores( US $1.5 Billion) for their role in destroying NSEL. NSEL was India's first electronic commodity spot exchange.
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Book: C-Company

Here, "C" means Chidambaram and his Cronies( media and bureaucrats etc.). This is a story of visionary entrepreneur called Jignesh Shah. He was responsible for creation of many world class stock exchanges in India and Abroad. The story is about how he was witch hunted and shutdown this projects by C-boys misusing govt powers to eliminate the competition and maintain their interests in their stock exchange (National Stock Exchange).
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What is Modi's take in all this corruption:

Here is one video (dated before 2019 election) that is in Hindi. I will put approximate translation.
During previous government of UPA, there is one more big scam happened. This is done to the nation's banking system. That is Phone Banking Scam. i.e. One phone call goes from Delhi, some exceptional people gets the lakhs of crores loan( 1 Lakh Crore Rs = $15 Billion) . Situation is that similar phone calls are made to get the new loans pay the interests on the previous loans. At the end, how is that possible?

Since Independence to 2008, 18 Lakh crores ( $ 270 Billion) were given. during 2008-2011, that increased to 18,52,000 crores ( $278 billion) { it was not clear he means to say 278 billion in these 3 years or only 8 billion in 3 years. Most probably it is 278 billion in 3 years given the state of banking system }. This scam has the capability of destroying the nation's economy forever.

During the last 5 years, our government in coordination with RBI, private and public companies rescued India from Phone banking scams. Now no body can sit with Bank's money. India created a constitutional law and system called IBC ( Insolvency and Bankruptcy court), whoever takes loan from Bank, they have to return it. Now, it is not possible that one can file bankruptcy on company and sit on other companies. these people should clean their hands with all their property.

you might not have seen in the media. Many people ended up washing their hands. Because of this law, Karodpati( millionaries) are on streets, because they are enjoying with Bank's money. This govt. had shown the courage to this. It had not been 1.5 years since IBC is formed. Due to this, Bank were guaranteed to get back 3 Lakh Crores ( $45 B). You should look at these $45B too. I know how much pressure I was under when this law is being created. These people know what types of troubles they will be under after this law is passed. I am happy that this law is passed, this gave the banks new life and strength.

Borthers and Sisters, See the fate of the people of the who run away to foreign nations after taking the bank loans. One person who took loan of Rs 9000 crores and ran away, ended up loosing Rs 14,000 crores of property through siezure. How is it even possible. Because our government made a constitutional law to seize each and every property of that person. What ever the foreign properties that person has, those will be auctioned too.

War against the corruption can't we won with small, small decisions or battles. It is needs drastic decisions.

Modi's appeal lies in big decisions and followups that no body thought even possible. His strategy is always creates law and enforce it in such a way law takes its own course.

The same thing happened in the P. Chidambaram case. He allowed the law enforcement who was battling with him for more than decade, gave the tools and run with it.


One can assume that lot of money must have flown out of swiss bank by now.
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Tax Terrorism

How media will spin it is evident in recent media created word called "Tax Terrorism". when I heard the word, wondered what it is?.
short version of the story: A man called V.G. Siddhartha ( often mentioned as India's Coffee king) who owns more coffee shops than starbucks in India by 1000 or so. He is son-in-law of former BJP Chief minister of Karnataka. He has vast wealth in stock market, software company Mind tree, owns 10,000 acres of family's coffee plantation and revolutionized the coffee industry to export to outside world.

This conscientious man with inspirational background committed suicide by jumping into river, because he was struggling to make his Coffee business profitable. He wrote in his letter, tax authorities blocked using the profitable money from software company to use it, as they linked it pending taxes. for last 2 years, stock market challenges all the businesses have tough time for rotating the money.

Whom to blame for this?. If you guess it correctly, it is Narendra Modi. He is chief Terrorist of all the tax terrorists (enforcement authorities).

Though they confess we have issues of students committing suicide because they didn't achieve perceived grades or not. With large young generation, competition is intense and ambitions are high. It doesn't matter it is estimated that India lost 21 Trillion US$ since 1947 for corruption ( video in the above post). This how media spins, which common man doesn't give hoot. This is the narration what gets trickled out to the world.
 
After reading the book NDTV Frauds and DD video posted above, any minuscule faith that i had before in Indian Media is dead. I grew up in a countr( in 80's), the state run media (that is covering majority of the region) what state wants, private owned regional ones did their bidding of their owners. This quote from this Sott article looked appropriate for Indians( just like Russians) too those days.
"It's very simple: in Soviet Union, we don't believe our propaganda. In America, you actually believe yours!"
Investigative journalism in 'India Today' magazine and listening to BBC radio (for news that needs more validation) are exceptions in those days.

These readings not only explain the feeling that bugged me "some thing is seriously off" in their analysis. I shouldn't have surprised of all of this having seen this in the West during the last 20 years. I thought opposition voice will have some truths if not all, but their journalism is just like in West - SJW/liberal left/minority mask to hide the misdeeds of Indian Swamp (under the UPA regime) that is kicking and screaming for survival with Modi's popular rule.

NDTV Frauds books made me thinking who else were involved in with NDTV, only to realize that I should be asking "who else was not involved". Here is one 2010 article from a blog called mediacrooks. Interesting part is how, all these anchors and their loyalties changed over time. The same blogger writes (before 2019 election) why opposition journalists are wrong in their analysis of Modi or his analysis.

On January 1, 2014, I wrote the prologue “Good Vs Evil” on the prospects of the outcome of the LS elections and why BJP and PM Modi should win for “good” to prevail. They say a week is a long time in politics but five years have flashed by in supersonic speed. We are now into the last mile of the race to the new LS and the new govt at the Centre. The ModiSarkar has some fantastic achievements to its credit, a few failures and many missed chances. It is only the first time a CM of a state had graduated to PMship and would be completing a full term. That itself is unusual for India as the PMs were usually from the Delhi Belly of politics or more accurately, the Lutyens circle politicians.
...
As I stated, people don’t sit around with poll ratings or IMF ratings or “Tom Moody” ratings or any other ratings. They don’t know and they don’t care. They also don’t care about the GDP or the GDP growth. They feel “development” in their guts, in their homes and in their lives. They feel it in tangible ways and in their experience. Better gas supply, better transport, a better bank balance or a better/improved house. They know development in those terms. There is no denying a vast population has been lifted above the poverty line. Many of these families maybe gainfully employed and their children pulled out of labour and into schools. And ModiSarkar has contributed to and impacted all of such issues and many others. Thus, the communication of the excellent work has to be done in their terms. And Modi not only has excellent skills in that, he has to make his other campaigners follow that strategy and the tactics involved.
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There is an enormous balance in the performance account of ModiSarkar. Many fantastic policies, schemes have been implemented with aggressive speed. In particular, infrastructure and transport domains have performed well. Add mass insurance, cheaper medicines and direct transfer of subsidies. Even the economy on the whole is better than the scam-infested rule of the Congress.

In the end, the division and polarity that western media is talking about is between Indian Media, not the Indian population.
 
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I came back from 15 days trip to India to handle some personnel items.

During the trip, I had the opportunity to visit 6 states ( 3 in transit). Since i have visited India after 12 years, I had the opportunity to see the change more distinctly(Mostly due to Modi, some may not be related to him) . I will focus on Modi topic. Even though, all the topics are interrelated, I will split my observations in to the categories. I am sorry for this post being long.

It took couple of days of shopping to identify what suits my eating habits(gluten free and other preparation needs) needs during the stay. Not much organic in stores, my relatives still use aluminum, mostly vegetarians. Since my brother lives in Tier 2 city with 70K people,I ended up visiting nearest cities around 1M people for shopping, that needs travel and opportunity to talk to different people. I ended up with lot of butter, regular chicken with vegetables and rice as my relatitves are OK for me to cook and store in the refrigerator.

I used the opportunity to travel to northern state of Uttar Pradesh( I chose 28 hrs of train travel as Indians had a habit of making train their home during the travel- i.e. talking as if they are at home, discussing( even arguing) about politics , movies, news, food sharing, etc. and i can see the country side) to accompany my father and BIL to be part of voluntary ritual of mixing ashes (of my deceased sister) in a place called Triveni Sangamam in Allahabad. This is the place where 3 rivers Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswathi that merge there. Often, Hindu pilgrims visit Allahabad(birth place of Nehru and Indira Gandhi, called city of Prime Ministers) also visit 4000 year old Varanasi( happens to be Modi's Parliamentary Constituency) which has very prominent place in Hindu religion. During the travels, I hired different means of transports ( cabs, 3 wheeler Riksha's, Ola ( Indian version of Uber) bikes etc.) . I engaged these lower ranks( Majority of Indians belong to this) with a simple question- "What has changed?". My impressions are based on these conversations.

Swatch Bharat (Clean India): Spitting on the streets, throwing things on the streets, Open excretion used to be part of Indian scenery. Now, Every where, roads, streets are LOT LOT more cleaner. This needs centuries old attitude change across population of diverse identities and social backgrounds who naturally cared about their needs. Every where, walls are decorated with painting of Clean India picturing MK Gandhi with messages like "My city, Cleaning my responsibility"etc messages. Message is all over and same on currency notes, airliner announcements, message boards.

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The interesting part is people responded to it irrespective of location and made it ingrained in themselves and mostly followed. One of cab driver mentioned to me while driving through country roads between the villages "Before, on these roads, we can see lot of people pooping at night in line. Now, you can't see a single person on the roads". Things changed. But this change itself needs cleaning up the nuts and bolts of the entire system itself. - providing means like toilets, money, controlling endemic corruption in the system,pride, accountability of distrubition , enforcement and most importantly people's serious participation.

- It needs Lot's of money. By sending the clear shocking message with demonitization, he commanded the attention of the folks. By consistent followup and innovative enforcement, he made it clear that he is not backing down. After 70 years of the getting used to bribing the officials for the accounting rigging or no accountability, it is not easy to convince the masses at different levels with different agendas ( earner, accountants, enforcers at different levels, politicians). Still, people will do all types of tricks to avoid the taxes, but he persisted. Normally, this type of events trigger a reaction of anger that takes the form of Identity politics.

The result is India's Tax payer based increased from 3% to 8%. It is minuscule % when compared to Western standards. He auctioned the items like cell phone bandwidth, coals and many sectors, which were given freely before to the their business masters. All this money channeled and rotated to these programs. It is expected that $200 Billion is spent during the first 5 years. Almost all of it went directly to lowest ranks in the society. Some in the form of small loans, which will be collected back by officials, some in the form of free money for toilets, some free money ( up to 2 Lakhs) the house construction. Each inspected by the officials at every stage.

- It needs to be transferred to right person efficiently: India is a hierarchical society. It started with caste in Hindu religion(with Aryan Invasion thousands of years back), but got transferred it to Politics. Any benefit that the needy has to get, go through political system that consumed 90% of it and gave the remaining 10% their own party people. By enforcing the Aadhaar card ( US equivalent of SSN) that is linked to their address, By opening the bank accounts for the poor, linking that to Aaadhar card, gave money directly to their accounts. No Middle man in it., only officials making sure requirements are met before and after.

Well, Officials can be bought as before and false accounting can be manufactured. There are other means to enforce it. One of my relative mentioned a case how tightening happened. This relative was a retail shop owner in a small town. People sold what ever the things in demand, even banned items just by paying percentages to enforcing officials. Item in this conversation is Gutka, a highly addictive carcinogenic product that was banned. But people sold it even though it is banned. Initially officials ignored it. but under some higher official pressure, some officer arrested few sellers, they showed other people who are selling that banned items and other officials who are taking bribes. Situation became so untenable, every body stopped selling banned items and giving bribes. A chain reaction of events for the positive. This man is happy that he stopped the selling as it is not worth the risk.

I haven't heard a single person showing anger towards Modi, despite narratives of demonetization, GST ( new centralized tax system) being rough initially. People can complain of demonitization done in hurry or GST raised the cost, hurt some businesses, but they are appreciative of Modi for doing this.

How does one even knows banned items are sold?. It is easy in the computer age. Accounting at any junction from manufacturing of raw material to product to distribution can easily identified and pressure applied on the enforcing officials to show the results. The end results is screws are getting tightened on the corruption at all levels.

The result is cleaner roads, sense of responsibility to their actions. Once one had to have the taste of cleaner roads, they will think twice of the spoiling it. One exception is one can see cow dung on the streets though. It looks cow business is booming with Modi wants to make cow dung main ingredient for converting Indian agricultural sector to Organic. Here is one video about how far Cow business went.

Here is one today's news item on Swatch Bharat Mission
Modi also declared India to be an 'open defecation free' (ODF) country. "I am satisfied that on the occasion of Gandhi at 150, we are witnessing the fulfilment of his dream of 'Swachh Bharat'. I feel lucky that on this occasion, when India has successfully stopped open defecation, I'm here at the ashram," read the Prime Minister's message in the visitor's book at Sabarmati Ashram here.

"Today the whole world is appreciating and awarding us. Providing toilets to more than 60 crore {600 million} people in 60 months, building more than 11 crore{ 110 million} toilets, the whole world is amazed by this," he said.

"Today rural India and its villages have declared themselves open defecation free," he said.

He also vowed to eradicate 'single-use plastic' by the year 2022. "Sanitation, conservation of environment and animals, all these things were dear to Gandhi Ji. Plastic is a major threat to all of them. So, we have to achieve the goal to eradicate 'single-use plastic' from the country by the year 2022," said Modi.
Lot of national mobilization happened with LOT of creative means with has multi dimensional aspects ( I don't mean hyper-dimensional here). Here is one tip of iceberg.

Young Generation: Wherever I saw young people ( I mean in 20 and 30's) all over the place, making me wonder where does all these old people gone - Air ports, shops, streets. There is huge difference in Work attitude. A change from " License Raj mind set of leisurely roaming,expecting bribe" to "Do the Work for the salary" attitude. This is a huge change. This may not be totally Modi's making, but they are the major voter base of him and they don't care of the old hierarchies.

When I asked this question of where does older generation gone, I heard 2 comments.
  • Now people have money and they spend it, that means keeping parents from working or sending it to Adult homes.
  • Technology has taken over. Any body who doesn't know how to operate computer or cell phone or drive, can't work
I think it is related to neutral adaptations to the change in financial circumstances. 70 years back, families are big and lot of childhood deaths, then came in family planning in 1970's that encouraged ( not enforced) people limit to 2 kids, over the time older generation disappears. Even the population growth is limited to few states for which Modi already declared some plans to control.

Infrastructure: Lot of national highway (NH) constructions that reminds me of Western nations. After seeing one NH way that was much better here in US between southern state of A.P, I asked folks, they say it is like this all over the country wherever central govt. constructing. Interestingly, newly formed state of Andhra Pradesh cancelled all the projects of previous government and no improvements in the state roads- over budgest, percentages in contracts etc.

In Allahabad ( Northern state of Uttar Pradesh), When asked about the change, people looked at me with some strangeness (as if they are asking me 'Don't you see it'). It looks this city that is called 'city of prime ministers' completely transformed under the rule of Modi hand picked chief Minister yogi Adityanath( don't get put off by the word Yogi or his saffron dress). Roads cleaner, long road dividers that doesn't allow india's notorious hap-hazardous criss crossing, traffic junctions replaced with nice , decorated circles with statues, police enforcing rules with cell phones, municipal workers really cleaning the roads, flyovers that make the traffic smoother. I was told that there is amazing change in just 2 years, Govt. employees has to login to office in time and out( before no body cared of any thing before), shooting deaths common before are rare, corruption is much less. English Media's image of yogi Adityanath is hateful, intolerant Hindu Rowdy. Here is one video on Yogi Adityanath.

During travel between Allahabad and Varansi,we saw lot of flyover constructions with 100's of fly over polls. Interesting part is this $300 million project conceived just 2.5 years back has rapid progress in a country where single gear of government moved with out the grease of bribe.

In Varanasi, one can see lot of posters of Modi (as it is his parliamentary constituency), the usual ganges river that used to be littered with all sort of debris including human cadavers is LOT LOT cleaner. River was flowing at dangerous levels, so all boating was put on hold. I only spent on the pilgrimage area that are very crowded and much cleaner than usual. Common Indian 2D critters are usual like cows, stray dogs and occasional monkeys trying to steal from people's hands.

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Tolerance or Intolerance? : When asked about intolerance against minorities, one rikshawala in Allahabad said it is BS or another said it was totally under control, after initial issues. Any way, estimate is 45 killings out of which only 30 related to cow ban over the span of 5 years, which is an increase of 10. This northern state and adjacent states are where it was mentioned that cow vigilante deaths. I heard similar story in my state Andhra Pradesh too. In fact, I have seen so many TV channels dedicated for their own religions- Hindu's, Christians and many Muslim channels. Where does these intolerance comments keep popping up in newspapers fits in? It is only useful for Identity politics. If the Hindu-Muslim divide worsened in a country ( as opposition, Anti-Modi gang claims) where every village/town/city has both religions, the entire country would have been in flames.

I happen to visit a book store near the famous Vishwanath temple in Varanasi and had conversation with leftist (based on his book recommendation) store person and engaged him with a question 'did any thing changed under Modi'. with some sort of hesitation, he said lot of good things happened since then, but he doesn't like his rheteric ( political correctness), but he understands the need of them for mass appeal.

This is the pattern you see whenever this leftist type (can be elitist in India) tries to express their opinion of Modi- they have to say good about him if thye are honest and they want to, but part of them don't want to say good about him , so the hesitations with the if's and but's. Same with sandeep Gupta of The Print, India Today hosts like Rajdeep Sardesai etc leaving aside hardcore anti-Modi NDTV types. But these are minority, english speaking city dwellers with letist ideals who looks to West for their moral guidance but financially well off to control the narration of english media. So you hear Alpha male, gender neutrality, women participation etc. Any way, there is LOT more woman working every where - airports, shopping malls, city buses etc. Even the traditional male jobs like city bus conductors which needs collecting the ride fee wading thorugh crowded bus passengers, I saw more women than men.

Interestingly, Modi-bashing Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's books (in english) are prominently featured in airports and this book store. So the audience for these books are very small in a country that 45% of people rely on agriculture and most live in rural areas. If you read, Shashi Tharoor's arguments, it looks he is trying to impress the left leaning Western audience rather than to average Indians. Any way, don't get surprised if he switches to BJP and change the tune as BJP's next target is his home state of Kerala.

Media: I haven't watched much TV. When I was in Allahabad, i skimmed through channels some pro-Modi channels were drum beating his Howdy Modi event in Austin (as if it is the greatest thing ever, though this is first time in the history, US major political parties competing for attention with him and US president cared to be part with Indian PM in a event that is aimed at Indian diaspora) and Anti-Modi channels also promoting the live telecast portion of the event as if they dont want to be left out.

Banking Sector: My brother is a bank manager of a medium size private bank in his tier 2 city with around 100K people. We had interesting conversations on the events.
  • Demonitization: There are differing views about how it was implemented, whether it achieved stated goals or not. It was mentioned that Long lines, wealthy employing poor to convert for a percentage, Corrupt Bank officers converting to new notes for % of commission etc., temporary slow down of economy, Accounting of all the currency the are shown as indication of the failure of the move. But, the situation is LOT more complex than that.
    • What ever the tricks people did to convert Black to White is part of the system for 70 years. By identifying the people whose bank account balances rose dramatically and asking for clarification and taxing them,putting them in the watch list, he not only recovered some taxes and sent a clear message.
    • Fake currency notes: Before demonitization, It is known that there lot of fake currency notes. One known example is that 6 times more RS 100 notes in circulation than Indian Government ever got it printed. Suspicion is that the British company that was printing Indian currency also print the Pakistani currency too. So there is lot of suspcision that lot of Indian currency is channeled through pakistani source, illegal hawala traders funding terrorist activities and many Indian politicians are compromised. Modi only targetted Rs500 and Rs1000.
      • One opinion is Modi shouldn't have introduced Rs2000 while banning Rs1000 as the Black money holders transferred made money to white Rs2000 through many illegal tricks. According my brother, the moment Rs2000 notes released, they disappeared from the banks, they tend to reappear in the banks before elections, as the black money holders fearing of banning Rs2000 tend to put it in the banks. It looks to me, war on black money is NOT simple one step clean up, it is the fear factor to transform existing the nuts and bolts of the population.
  • Banking crisis or Non recoverable Loans: This is another big issue as businessmen, politicians, bank officials at different levels are in cahoots at their own levels since 70 years. Instead of pumping the money into black hole of banks, he is merging banks before cash infusion, Aaadhar linking to every thing, linking person's(even relatives) other assets to the loan, establishing new enforcement units with clear cut time-bound targets to close the pending items, he is tightening the screws around these thiefs. Locking up of high profile politicians like P.Chidambaram, going behind Gandhi Son-in-Law, locking up fugitives like Lalith Modi, Vijay Mallya and auctioning their other properties is only few messages he is sent to all others to reform. Slowly and steadily things are changing and businessmen are realizing that old tricks will not work and coming into line.

Weather: Flash floods became very common in all places i visited and I kept hearing comment that 'they have never seen this before'. Almost all rivers are overflowing including Ganges in Uttar pradesh flooding low lying areas in Allahabad and in Varanasi. Here is one picture from Allahabad ( see the electrical polls and top banner of the submerged Hanuman temple) .
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Technology: In line with trend in the world, every where people use mobile App's for every thing, Google for all sets of information including maps, Whatsapp as a authentic means to identify the person for customer service in the banks etc. They even have app's that allow to pay all types of bills from single App using services like paytm( like paypal). They even have a app to complain of open defecation with picture that directly goes to the Central government.

Indian traffic police used to be notoriously easy to bribe to get away. It is estimated 30% driver licenses are fake. Even that has changed. When I was cab at a crowded traffic junction, one biker crossed the line, traffic police immediately jumped in front of this bike with a camera and took the picture of the license plate. Puzzled,I asked what will happen. It looks with 2 hours, the person of the vehicle will get notification of fine to be paid on his cell phone. If he doesn't pay, next time he was caught, the punishment will be much worse, so people simply pay the fine.

Recently, Federal government released new rules for enforcing helmets with severe fines. Obviously, there will be news of 'too much'. For a chuckle, here is one video how people handle the situation when they were on the verge of being caught.

Caste based Reservations: I heard multiple times that Modi is planning to remove the Caste based reservation and replace it with financial status based reservations. If that happens, It effectively removes caste from public affairs. The saga of caste started with Aryan invasion 5 or 6 thousand years back, went through many transformations - Advent of Buddhism and Jainism in 600 BC in response to Brahman excesses, Adoption of Buddhism by Mauryan Emperor Ashoka around 300 BC to make it official policy to spread it, Later reinvention of Hinduism with rewriting the scripts and promotion of Hinduism by Hindu kings for more than 1000 years before India fell to invaders like Muslim rulers and British rulers, who kept Hindu Caste hierarchy as it is, Gandhi's struggle to unite all castes and religions against British, Caste based reservation system that supposed to be last only 30 years after Independence but got expanded to more than 50% due to Identity politics etc.

If he can manage this successfully, he will become one of the Indian LEGEND.

Trust in Modi
: Trust in Modi is extraordinarily high even in the south Indian states like A.P where BJP can't even manage any seats despite the challenges with demonetization and GST. Being Parliamentary democracy, winning election seats still needs large base of dedicated political cadre, supervising politicians in line with him as people generally voters tend to focus on local issues. This takes some time.Modi had already done in Indian North East, Eastern states like West Bengal, Odissa and eyeing on Southern state of Kerala. A.P is next in pipeline and probably southern Indian state of Tamil nadu will be a hard nut to crack.

Promise of Basic Needs: 'Roti, Kapada aur Makaan' ( Bread, Clothing and House) is famous political slogan of every political party since Independence. Since that goal is never met, slogan continued to be echoed. I find this new paper article from The Sunday Tribune( dated Sept 1946- year before independence during the formation of Interim government) displayed in the Allahabad museum interesting.
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This gives the context why people believe the Modi's word when he says he did some thing no body did since independence w.r.t toilets, housing, infrastructure etc.

Lot more I can write, I will end it here for now.
 

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Thanks for your report, seek10.

I don't follow Indian politics very closely, even though we have a lot of Indians living here in Australia. Because of that I haven't really been able to make up my mind about Modi, so you have added a piece of the puzzle. I have only every been to India once (Kerala - which is considered 'India light', as most of the people I worked with were from there), it was a short, albeit interesting experience.

So again, thanks fro your insights.
 
Kashmir seems to be coming back to normalcy slowly than initially said. There is no bloodbath as it was feared, though now left media says it will materialize once all the restrictions are lifted. In my view, if the passions are so high, curfew will not be sufficient as it happened many times.

On the other front, Modi govt getting ready for another show down. This time this is related to Ayodhya temple- masjid saga. Today is the last day for the Indian supreme court to conclude the hearing. Govt. imposed section 144 ( No more than 4 people together in public places) in Ayodhya and the final verdict will be announced any time although they say it's next month. One good thing is all parties wants to rsolve it, though there are some schism in Muslim side representing at the talks. when asked the question of whether all parties abide by it or not, Home minister confidently said "They will". But they are not taking any chances.

Here is short version of timelines that skips the important events happened around 1990.

Below is one long video that goes into detail of what happens when passions aroused with masses involved. Watch it from 27:30. First part is more or less about host trying to ask about the differences in muslim groups representing and try to make it sensational.

Note: this presentation that starts at 28:00 ignores the Gene bottle Rajiv Gandhi naively opened by interfering in the Supreme court decision in Shabano case in 1985. Divorced woman Shabano wants alimony from her ex-husband, went to supreme court and got agreement with them. But Muslim religious boards don't want supreme court overriding them. To appease Muslims ( for muslim vote bank), Rajiv Gandhi changed the constitution to allow Muslim boards to have more power than supreme court.

so, Hindu parties made noise, to appease them, he opened the Gates of Ayodhya Babri Masjid for the Hindu's to pray as they consider it as birth place of Rama. At this time itself, for most observers, Congress stopped being Secular party.

In theory, he thought he can get both votes, but that cornered then young BJP who took it next level by saying 'they will construct temple there'. This sleeping issue that awakened by Rajiv Gandhi polarized the entire situation led to many Rath yatra's( Chariot procession) across the nation by BJP founder LK Advani and led to many arrests. More the arrests, more mass gatherings and situation completely got out of control by 1992. These events in 1985 to 1992 that drove the identity politics from 1992 to 2014.


Modi changed the dynamics by passing of Triple Talak bill ( i.e. Muslim man can't simply say the word 'Talaq' 3 times to get divorced and has to go through the entire divorce process in the court) few months back. Now he is preparing for the reactions when Supreme court delivers the verdict on Ayodhya issue.
 
I came across a book that goes in detail 'How' Modi changed the state of Gujarat ( people, society, economy, outlook and politics). While reading the book, it became obvious that he is doing the similar thing at the national level (of course that is the expectation of the voters too). This 2014 book ( Centrestage: Inside the Narendra Modi Model of Governance ) written by India Today Journalist. After reading this book, I realized that what he did in the first 5 years in Delhi is only trailer and his talk of 5 trillion dollar economy, double the farmer income and 'New India' by 2024 looks very achievable. I am going to summarize it here from the book as short as i can.

Challenges before he was airlifted to Gujarat to make him CM in 2001: State has serious electricity problem for household and agriculture, water scarcity - for drinking, agriculture, low ground water level, serious drought, suffering from 2001 Bhuj earthquake that killed 20,000 people /180,000 displaced, ; most of public sector units are in losses, state can't even function without 15 to 20 overdrafts from RBI( Reserve Bank of India). In the process to address to these basic issues, how the entire state itself transformed including the people itself.

By the time he moved to Delhi in 2014, state's budget grew 10 times, All public sector units are in profit, some as much as 10 times more profit, All the households has 24 hrs electricity, 8 hrs power for agriculture, massive education enrollment, state is in the top list for FDI, GDP, only state that interlinked all the 22 rivers ( 1960 national plan) to supply even drought prone areas which is a massive project ( by creating 350 Km canal and smaller streams), water table levels was replenished and continue to be maintained, all villages are interlinked by roads and internet, agriculture grew impressive 12%, farmer income doubled, massive reduction in former suicides, improved female-male ratio and many significant improvement in almost all measure.

This model is subject of study for top universities in Indian and after it is successful implementation. Modi said "Hard work trumps Harvard" about his governance in Gujarat. One top management institute (IIM) report said:
The spectacular agricultural growth in Gujarat in recent times has been the result of well-thought-out strategy, meticulously planned and coordinated scheme of action, sheer hard work and sincere implementation of programs, political will to take bold decisions and commitment to economic policy reform by the state government. As such, there is nothing magical or incredible about this growth story. It is reasonably replicable in other states and regions if the firm determination exists'.

Holistic Vision: Modi is a man of vision, which his own bureaucrats who implemented them couldn't realize it until the results came out. It is not a just high level vision but it is at each level from every angle- water, electricity, roads , production, employment training, employment, creativity, pride in what one does, sports supply chain, sales , self sustainability, tourism etc. Often, it is this holistic vision, with examples of the achievements that makes his events very popular. But Anti-Modi calls it spellbinding and mesmerizing and other fancy words to hide the Vision and practical plan to get there.

Bureaucracy: Leaders can have vision, but it is the bureaucrats who has to implement it. First, he trained them in Good governance(which is rare in India) and next he made sure these bureaucrats from different ministries are together planning, monitoring, implementation and collective goal. This is the reason Modi's "good governance" can tackle issues from so many sectors at the same time while constantly battling with media, politics and electoral considerations.

Modi's Core governance- replete with milestones

what actually makes Modi stand out as a ruler is his holistic vision. On coming to power Modi made a quick study of the basics of governance with respect to people's basic needs - Water, electricity, education, medical facilities and roads. And after precise assessment, he unfolded his priority before the bureaucracy. Then for more than one year he ran unique exercise in the form of inter-departmental meetings for one department to understand the needs of the other department for better coordination and curb overlapping. there after came his Panchamrut vision in the form of Jal Sakhti(Water Power), Gyan Shakti (Knowledge Power), Urja Shakti(energy Power), Raksha Shakti ( Knowledge Power) and Jan Sahakti( People'spower). This gave holistic vision to bureaucracy in terms of their comprehension and priority and was followed by Chintan Shibirs, a 2 -day annual brainstorming session of all IAS and IPS officers {top cream of Indian education systems} where they shared their ideas with ministers one-by-one in keeping with goals set by Chief Minister as a part of Panchamrut Yojana. During the session, each officer is called up on to present his favorite scheme that he would implement in the coming year in his jurisdiction.

This is a very big thing in a country like India where politicians didn't care any thing except their pocket, worked in silo's, only benefited their identity constituency(mostly top layers), fought among themselves.

By effectively using the technology, he can track the development , by making his ministerial strength to small number, he was able to track it, intervene it and modify it in time when needed. This is one of the reason why he can achieve more despite he is using the same bureaucracy. contractors of the same previous govt.

Says Senior gujarat IAS officer and State Energy Secretary D.J.Pandian who has played a significant role in realizing Modi's vision: 'Modi is blessed with jeweller-like eyes when it comes to finding precise people for different tasks. That is a great quality for a ruler'

He stopped making political appointees to public sector units that made political interference in their performance. This helped to bring them to huge profits at the same time providing the services they should be providing like electricity.

People: Pride is important component in influencing in Modi governance. It is not self aggrandizing blind pride( identity politics), but researched achievements that one can be found in any local population. It is Pride based on local culture, festive mood intermixing with development are common theme in Modi's meetings nationally and internationally that makes waves. He used similar method in 2014 elections( first time he was campaigning outside Gujarat) by giving unique solution to each state( according to the local issues) he has visited. That gave the confidence to the local people of his vision and acceptability. It is this same variations that he used to higher education enrollments in villages, improving the girl boy ratio, sports promotion, encouraging buereucrats to do more than routine work, improving tourism etc. I heard similar comments from some unemployed drivers saying " We don't want to emulate West" during my recent trip.

It is this Pride component labelled as religious extremism by Anti-Modi media. In a nation of 1.3 billion, one can expect some excesses. the news of how these culprits are arrested doesn't get that much coverage, but the noise of excess goes on for weeks. They may throw the words likenToxic Hindutva, Moditva or Majority Hindu bias , brand modi, fashion modi, Modi phenomenon or whatever they can come up to explain away Modi success with his audience. The nation that is under outside rulers for 800 years has lot to tap to transform centuries old pessimism to self confidence. This may be the reason( probably it is simplistic) behind his good relations with foreign nations - Obama/Trump, Iran/Saudi Arabia or Palestine/Israel.

Building on people's pride is his main weapon

Modi's strongest facet as a ruler which plays a key role is his success in his ability to generate pride among the people on the basis of past achievements of these society and of the great men of the region they belong to. He then links this to sense of national pride. He is able to achieved this through various ways like speeches and well-organized exhibitions backed by documentaries on occasions like republic day and Independence day. Exhibitions and short films narrating the history of particular region is common thread in Modi's Programs. For instanced, during his district level Sadbhavana mission in 2011 which he undertook to spread his message of communal harmony, each of his district visit marked by exhibition demonstrating the geographical strengths and history of that district. the district exhibitions focused on its achievers, natural resources, and struggles against the British in the pre-independence era, saints and important figures.
...
The most significant innovation how ever from Modi when it comes to generating pride is his historic and unprecedented decision to celebrate Independence and Republic days not in State capital , Gandhinagar, but in a new district every year. ... With this master stroke he has succeeded in creating a wave of pride among the people of every district which has no parallel every where. It has spurred remarkable development in every district spurred by a sense of oneness and unity that Modi has been able to create by focusing on the history and achievements of that district in his speeches. Each such celebration is accompanied by launch of some development project, cultural program based on nationalist fervor, and colorful exhibitions focusing on the achievements of the region.

The result of this initiative has been phenomenal indeed. In many districts, for example, the celebration has seen local civic collections god up as hithero non-cooperative people have begun to respond positively to tax collection drives in appreciation of the good work done by local officers in terms of civic amenities to mark the celebration.

Fiscal Management:

Significantly, there are certain golden rules which Modi Government has framed and followed with great commitment which in turn reveal one of the secrets behind the fiscal success. For example, almost as a rule, Government doesn't give its land without an auction when the previous governments had a record of giving away land for ostensible 'social causes' at low rates or even free of charge.

Says former Chief Secretary of Gujarat Manjulaben Subramaniam, one of the most honest and efficient bureaucrats that Gujarat has ever seen: 'He has what one may describe an allergy to subsidy and freebie culture because he believes that Government funds shouldn't go waste. In fact he has stood like a rock against the culture of distributing government largesse at the cost of the State exchequer. I must also admit tat we never faced any interference from his office when finalizing tenders.
..
A political jargon that Modi has repeated at public meetings since 2008 when he started to emerging as a developmental icon,underlines its non-populist meaningful underbelly. Modi often tells people in public meetings: 'Just survey the area around you and you will find that at least development project or work with a deep bearing on your area is going on in 20-km radius. Older people often ask as to where this boy Modi brings funds for such projects. My reply is that this money was earlier going into the pockets of corrupt or being frittered away by poor planning. We are now using it for public good with our focused and principled governance.
Modi seems to have spent $US 200 billion during his last 5 years (nationally) on housing ( 12.5 million), sanitation ( 100+ million bathrooms) and infrastructure ( 150,00 km road itself), electrification ( 26 million household) etc. without even taken any IMF loan or any serious investments from outside. simple addition of his auctions ( 4G spectrum, coal etc. which Congress govt gave it free ), elimination of ghost subsidy cards and companies, other numerous changes can easily add up to the funding of his development.

Lot more was written regarding reforms in sectors like Education,Water, Electricity, Technology, Tourism with details like origin of Idea to implementation with challenges with budget, politically risky decisions etc with very good results. The theme is Same, Vision, innovative ideas to address local challenges, detailed meticulous planning. political non interference, rallying up the masses with local shows,pride buildup to make people partners, development partnership, not bowing to the pressures and using pressure when needed( like people stealing electricity, Opposition political noise etc.)

How did he handled incessant Media Pressure? Once Godhra event happened in 2002, Media is all over him. As is common in many of these riots , Hindu's ,Muslims, BJP, Congress, Right wing groups like ( VHP, Bajrang Dal etc,) all sorts of people do the dirty work in the dark and dump it on some body.

Modi went for a tour ( called Yatra) of state to each constituency and giving speeches. 180+ in total in span of month or two. It is exhausting and security risk, but it is very effective way of communicating to population, who normally doesn't get any official visits and get the feedback. Next assembly election in 2002 results showed him he can bypass the media with direct reach out. All his schemes are designed with a intention of direct reach out either through development programs, schemes, festivals etc. This worked well for him.

It is interesting to see the same dynamics play out at the bigger stage since he moved to center including clueless media.
 
It looks it will be an eventful day tomorrow in India ( 9.11.2019- day.Month.year format used there ).

1. Official opening of Kartarpur Corridor- Tomorrow: Sikh religion( blend of Hindu and Islam) founder's birth place is 4.1 km from Indian border in Pakistan. There is demand for allowing sikhs visiting the place since independence. A fenced corridor was proposed was implemented for last 20 years. Lot of drama around the credit and mutual suspicion over this corridor. Initially there were issues with $20 fee Pakistan introduced which India agreed, then Pakistan agreed to remove the fee for the opening day. There are some controversies related to including Khalistani's (Sikh separatists) in the Pakistani promotional video.

All sorts of political clamoring going on for Sikh votes.
  • Tomorrow, this corridor will be opened by Modi but he will not cross the border, will have lunch with the pilgrims.
  • The entire Punjab govt. will be in the first batch of visitors. I guess they are too confident of their security against the insecure Pakistan.
First batch of pilgrims
First batch of 500 pilgrims includes several dignitaries like former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Akal Takht jathedar Harpreet Singh, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, former CM Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Singh Badal and Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, who was invited at the inaugural ceremony by Pakistan PM Imran Khand, will also be part of the batch as he has been given political clearance by Centre to visit the shrine but only as part of the first jatha.​
SGPC members and all the 117 MLAs and MPs from Punjab including ministers are also part of the jatha.​
Punjab Minister Tript Rajinder Singh said that all members of the first batch have been asked to reach by 10 am.​

  • The case of Cricketer turned Navjot Singh Sidhu is interesting. This cricketer turned politician who initially with BJP, later switched to congress, got in competition with Congress CM of Punjab and squabbled vigorously over the credit for the opening. He became controversial for hugging Pakistan general and for not listening to his chief minister. This turned into cry for disciplinary action against him, but then Congress chief Rahul Gandhi rescued him. Initially it was said it is Imran Khan - Sidhu deal, but it was said it was Pakistan army chief suggested this to Sidhu before Imran Khan even became chief minister. Being a member of legislature, any MLA/MP needs govt.permission to go outside the country. In a usual war of statements, Pakistan gave Visa to Sidhu, but Modi govt. took some time to give permission giving the importunity to for lot of belligerent statements. Govt. finally gave the permission yesterday.
Lot of distrust issues still abound

2. Ayodhya issue: Normally Saturday is off for India's Highest court - Supreme Court. But, they decided to release their verdict on Saturday. This is a big event given that Indian govt. said it will implement it and this issue simmering for 70 years, whose origins goes to 500 years back. All sorts of precautions were taken.
What is interesting is, Modi wants these events to coincide on same day, despite the risks.
 
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Finally, Supreme court (SC) decision came. No body expecting it the way it came. SC decided to give 2.7 acres disputed land for Ram Temple , separate 5 acres land for Muslim board for the Masjid in another Ayodhya prime area. There is some confusion w.r.t 67 acres that is linked to the disputed land. SC seems to be saying in 1000+ page verdict , both parties doesn't have clear documentation to say it is theirs. It looks like this decision is view of future rather than past.
  • All parties called for peace.
  • Whoever few Muslim political voices left said they will respect the decision though SC can be fallible.
  • Even Congress party, that opposes every thing Modi does, asked for peace and haven't complained about it yet. they realised their pro-minority stance (often called minority appeasement) is not taking them anywhere, so decided to go along.
Addressing the nation, Modi highlighted the same with the theme of "Past is past, focus on the future of "New India" ".
  • He reminded the citizens that it is not easy to resolve family issues.
  • Nov 9th is the day Berlin walls is teared down and people of two thought process merged and committed to live together.
  • He also mentioned Kartarpur as a example of "Unity in Diversity".
  • Past generations might have impacted by this issue, but New generation should put their effort to create "New India".
  • If you have any reservations in your mind, it is time to get rid of them. There is no place for negativity in "New India".
  • Congratulating Supreme court for its decision and mentioned that the difficult situations can be resolved under constitution, even if takes time and needs courage. Have the confidence in the justice system.
  • Reminded the citizens of their increased responsibility to create New India, respect the others views.
This is the most volatile explosive issue in India. Interestingly it haven't yet created any protests or riots or untoward incident yet. May be people are still in shock or digesting mood. It is too early to say about the reaction. This lays the stepping stone for Modi's next move - Uniform Civil Code.
 
WSJ published a article comparing Modi with Trump, with their so called lens of liberal moral taste buds, accusing him of destroying minotrities, destroying the economy, abusing nationalism so on . In my view, it lacked some basic understanding of the ground reality of India.

It has been 5 days since Ayodhya verdict came out -giving controversial site to Hindu's and separate 5 acres for muslims as a compensation. Lot's of protests/riots/media outcry should have broken loose by now. Having seen weeks long curfews, constant protests of the period ( 90-92), I expected that. But, No protects or violence or simply none as if nothing happened. Given the history, passions aroused and how it is politicized for 30 years this is a EXTRAORDINARY achievement. Some murmurs here and there by one or two local muslim politicians. It is this issue that collapsed the center government in later 80's , created years of communal protests, violence at each level (villages to cities) and drove ideological divide for at least 25 years.

Issue is not so much of who got what, It is the ability to bring consensus of this highly politicized charged issue. Hindu's got it, so all Hindu fundies are silenced for once for all. If it was given to Muslims things will been there for decades. If Hindu fundies does it again, Modi stick will there. Will Modi do this type of thing?. I don't think he will do it because of his life's experiences of last 17 years.

One has to keep this in mind that it’s not the land, but its people that make the nation. To carry all the people along is a collective responsibility and the most important role here is that of the government.

A representative of one of the parties to the Babri issue, late Hashim Ansari, used to say that even if he won the legal battle, the construction of the Masjid would not begin till he won the hearts of his Hindu brethren of the land.

There is a message here for the people of India. Triumph or defeat, take the people along, but is anybody listening
?

There should have lot more noise given that Modi was accused of being the man behind the 2002 Godhra incident, day after day for 17 years. What happened to all that "MSM/Opposition/Self declared social activists/Minority proponent noise" of "Modi as the mass murderer" when he did the worst thing Anti-Modi gang ever can conjure up ( giving the site to Hindu's)? It is not about just ordinary people thinking 'let it go' , the other elements like politicians and other vested interests represents them. Obviously some thing is not adding up, if one has to believe the Indian liberal media and some body has to be wrong.

. Not one event ,at one time, All the things Modi did until now contributed for the peace. It is very very difficult to have the trust of the diverse set of masses, which Modi was able to cultivate and maintain.

Here are some thoughts on the topic which I think summarizes events that contributed for the calm. I am sorry for being a long post.

He gave some thing to every body( I mean most of the people who deserves and needs) according to the Rule of Law, what they want well before this verdict came out. This built the trust in govt., law agencies and courts. I don't mean to say it in total, but even in partial, rest filled with hope. In the process, he proved that all his opponents are wrong. At the same time people are not blindly following the BJP as the recent assembly elections in 2 states showed.

Poor people wants basic necessities :
sanitation, roads, subsidized food, cooking gas, cheap energy efficient bulbs, cheap loans, education less corruption without consideration of their identity. Farmers with loans, price guarantees, farm insurance, pension schemes, help in choosing right crop for the land etc.

Muslims and Minorites Trust: He gave massive educational , vocational training , removing triple talaq bill for women etc. Some body asked a Arif Mohammad Khan, who was union minister in Rajiv Gandhi Govt and resigned after his overriding supreme court decision in Shabano case in second half of 80's . He said on Triple Talaq popularity "Women welcomed it for sure, but every man is also son or brother too". He means every body welcomed it. But, Modi's biggest achievement is influencing the right wing hindu fundamentalists/politicians and putting them in their proper place and making them accountable for their actions under the law. He has been doing this for many years in his own ways (silence or stick of law and order or other means). This removed most of the volatile provocations. When he asked people to not to celebrate it, people didn't for most part. Those few who went to social media to make noise, were sent notices. Well, people may say it is free will violation, but the rumors have done so much violence in the past, people don't mind occasional clamp down in India.

With promulgation of "Banning Triple Talaq" bill last year ( but he couldn't make it pass in Rajya Sabha), there are many reports that muslims stopped going to the muslim controlling body - Wakft boards. By the time he made this bill passed in Modi 2.0 era, the role of traditional muslim buerocracy( in mean unofficial) is very weak and the factors that fuelled the division.

Mafia/Hawala/Politics: This is a bigger factor in this issue. That is Role of the Mumbai mafia, Hawala trade, Politicians, fake currency and Pakistan connections. India's most wanted fugitive is Don of Mumbai Mafia named Dawood Ibrahim , who also overseen the hawala operations. He used to be king pin of Bollywood industry and we grew up reading news of bollywood bigwigs lining up to his parties in Dubai. Before demonitization, It is estimated that 3000 crores ( per year) of fake indian currency that is printed in Pakistan , legitimized by Dawood's Hawala operators. It is estimated that Pakistan earns 500 crores per year from this operation that feeds the terrorist operations in India. It is the same operators that move the black money from Indian wealthy( politicians or media or celebrities ) to foreign nations/banks. Terrorism in the name of religion flows through its structures. It is well known that Post-Ayodhya Mumbai violence (that killed 350 people ) is works of the Dawood Ibrahim and congress faction leaders like Sharad Pawar.

With demonitization, these operators got a big blow. funding dried up instantly terrorism in many areas Naxals in south and central, North East separatists, Kashmiri and other factions. Even if they can start doing these illegal things after that, but now Govt. has lot of gathered information to closely track and control it. . Now, LOT of investigative notices are going to Dawood's links that includes bollywood celebrities and politicians and businessmen. At the same time, he is not locking them all either. He made laws and allowing the law to take its own course, making it faster with intervention , promoting it as his Govt. Achievements. He did disappointed a lot of folks not locking up former finance minister Chidambarm in the 2G scam, but he did it in another case, his bail application going in circles.


Historical Signifiance of the event : Having lived in 600 years of Muslim rule and around 100 years british rule, there have been reactionary complaints of Hindu conversions to Muslims and Christianity. Some took anti-British flavor. But, Independent India is creation of British educated barristers lead by MK Gandhi and his disciples like Nehru and Sardar Patel etc. It's Congress party's dictator MK Gandhi's ( those days, dictator means "who dictates" - not the post WW II meanings) enormous popularity drove the events. Hindu factions like RSS, didn't have any popularity or support to the point they couldn't dare to contest in first elections in 1952. though the country is mostly hindu.

But, it is Nehru that kept nation united on firm secular footing until blunder of his grand son Rajiv Gandhi in late 80's that triggered the raise of the BJP. But how BJP made it as a mass movement is interesting. They asked all Hindu's across india build a brick with their own hands with Sr Ram name etched in it and carry it to Ayodhya for temple building. Because of the rural nature of the country, high density, caste nature of employment and group living and economic challenges, there is always undercurrent of friction, politicians of all colors used it once in a while . India only started to have taste of Television around this time, India's 1984 world cup cricket victory and popular TV serial Ramayan, replaced and broadened the appeal of TV. We had heard rumours of so and so went and his adventure tales etc. ( I,e, protests, riots, police actions etc.)

The timing of BJP mass appeal (late 80's) is such pushed the "Ram" from the private space of household prayer room to streets of Countries Politics. But, they couldn't convert it to their governance with full majority in parliament until Modi came along( though BJP ruled 1999-2004 on the same congress economic policies - if it is working, why to change ). Even in 2014, No body thought( even the veteran BJP leaders themselves) this local CM will get full majority at the center except one man. That man is Modi Himself. how he did it i wrote it in the previous post.

By the time, Modi won in 2014, these Hindu proponents thought they can have field day and it has been a centuries long wait ended for them . But the Sangh Parivar, an umbrella organization of Hindu front is a loosely coupled, disciplined organization of Myriad wings. Though Modi came out of RSS, Modi had serious fight with Sangh Paravar in the Post-godhra incidents and their leaders.

Lessons from Godhra event: After Godhra incidents, Modi accused foreign hand. There investigative agencies that identified increased flow of money from Dubai to mosques and increased phone calls with Karachi during before and during Godhra incident. Modi immediately called it External Terrorism, But, that is branded it as a another diversion for the crime. Any thing and every thing viewed with the lense of being the culprit, leftists/activists/opposition jumped on him.

Having been thrown under the bus after Godhra incident by every body Hindu fundies ( like RSS, VHP, Siva Sena ), opposition (Congress, communists etc.) and Minority , Modi created his own path of connection directly to the masses with his development agenda and structural reforms under the drowning noise of liberal media. In the process, he removed lot of traditional BJP local heavy weights from the power and replaced it with bureaucrats and his own people. Modi didn't even give any protection to any body irrespective of party ( BJP or RSS or VHP or congress or communists) in the post-Godhra priod and let the law do what ever it needs to do. This created a strong hatred of him in the political circles( who backed each other behind the scene in the crimes), but they could do nothing as long as he is winning elections. Modi spent more than 20 years as a backroom strategist, traveled extensively across the nation, made lot of connections, had the natural talent for reading the pulse and impressing every body ( beggar to bureaucrats, business man to heads of state) with his grand vision, meticulous detailed planning and always taking it to new levels. There is nothing any body can do as long as he is winning.

Why Godhra narration was promoted so long: India is 12 times denser than US. Communal violence in close proximity creates instant Amygdala Hijack, simple rumor can become warning bell in the listeners mind and passions go up rather instantly and will spread like wildfire. Given gruesome nature of live burning of 60 + hindu's, inevitable passions that will raise and Modi's lifelong RSS association instantly made him the suspect. Nothing else mattered. Every thing he said or did is a proof of his guilt. Obviously it suited well for opposition parties, local politicians ( of both aisles) who come out to show their leadership or scoring their past issues in this type of incidents. It's all Modi and no body else. This incident is like a 'Bone to the dog' for the congress during the Mandir-Mandal era( 1990's to 2014) and their liberal media.

Women: child infanticide, rapes etc. With his myriad practical programs under "Beti Bachavo, Beti Padaavo" ( Save the daughter, Educate the daughter) , "Selfie with daughter", severe punishment for the rapists , making police accountable , speeding up the legal system, he was able to make change in the environment it self. For the last few years, the speed with which culprits are getting apprehended comparable to western standards. But, Media will not promote that. It came out that Haryana the male to female ratio grown 1: .7 to almost 1:1 in 5 years.

Average Middle class: Jobs, corruption, pessimism, Law and order, meritocracy/reservations etc. : Jobs may be a issue ( nothing new, it had been a issue for generations) and there is no way government itself can give for half a billion people. Every body know methods of unemployment numbers calculated are not in line with reality. One can see reduction in corruption and pessimism, improved law and order. Jobs stats are rather hard to measure or come by. But, Inflation was very very low and confidence on the Govt. extremely high. Interviews with people before the recent Haryana election, people are saying unemployment is a big problem, But, only Modi can solve the problem.

Businesses: There are myriad flavors with Business env. Small shops to multi national companies, short term, long term, sector wise, date wise etc. Demonitzation that reduced property prices by 30%, whether it is good or bad depends on the observer. But one thing is clear, every body knows, Modi is listening to all the noise and reacting to it as much constructive it can. Pundits can complain of saying "Modi knows nothing of economics" and complain of his achievements have some holes or economy slowing down. Sure, he is not perfect.

Young Generation: India's 65% of the population are below 35 years of age. These people either were not born or may not have memory of these events. This makes it much easier to put a closure to the events. Modi is enormously popular with them.

Opposition parties and their media: Biggest losers of his rule. They can rave and rant whatever they want, as recent MAY elections showed, Modi does what he is doing for 17 years -winning elections and people term after term. In fact, opposition realized that Modi bashing is only going to backfire.
  • Those bollywood super stars like Amir Khan that gave speeches to leave the country few years back, turned around and take selfies with Modi now.
  • Those opposition leaders like (West Bengal CM Mamata Benerjee) who went on instinct tirade in front of cameras for hearing 'Jai Sri Ram' and turned around giving the donations to Kali puja's and posing giving tea to the strangers in street corner shop.
  • Those called themselves as a champion of minorities (Congress Party) for generations gave up their championship. They can claim it is Hindutva, ignoring the simple fact that 80% of Hindu's are secular and they have done nothing to Minorities to deserve their patronage except propagating "Fear of Majority". Now they simply go along not to lose Hindu vote.
  • Congress has their own problems: Gandhi BIL is under investigation for corruption and Prince Rahul Gandhi will be coming under Radar about his properties in UK, Former finance minister Chidambaram in Jail, Liberal media moghuls like NDTV, counting their days in India as they can't run away, Mafia maharajas of Mumbai industry ( real estate, finance, bollywood) are getting investigation notices over the finances.
These people have every reason to create trouble as they had done so many times. If few high profile serious communal violence happened during Modi's time, Things would have instantly turned against him. But None. At best they can show is some rogue lynching incidents as the fact of life, while people go along the life.

Arguments over Temple/Masjid and communication: By making it as a daily hearing after failed mediation and giving clear deadlines, he allowed every body to let out what they want. Arguments are abound. Hindu's say , "Archaeology found hindu structures, you are not praying and you have 25 to 35 masjid's who nobody goes in Ayodhya alone" etc. Muslims say we are praying, it is not about this structure, we have around 700 to 2000 structures like this, we don't want this to be precedence for them". There is a constitutional laws passed in 1991 to make it illegal to destroy any structure without the due process. But Ayodhya structure happened after it. But they are politically turbulent times.

In fact, Modi removed many illegally constructed Hindu structure in Gujarat during his rule to pave the way of public roads. Similar things happened recently in his Varanasi constituency. There is governance hierarchy for it.

Bringing consensus is a biggest achievement and every body is feeling sense of relief. This process itself, created a trust factor in Muslims to let this go and move on. By silencing monkey Hindu fundies, the trust is only enhanced.

Reactions to Other decision in Modi 2.0: Modi was able to do controversial things his party said for 30 years. Issue is not about doing it, handling the reactions- most often explosive.
  • When the talk of Article 370 came up , Kashmiri leaders bluntly said "Blood will flow". There are cautionary measures exist which are not pleasant, but nothing serious happened after 3 months. - few apple trader killings and encounter killings. In fact, Post-370 block level elections in Kashmir , the voting is as good as 98%. True, BJP didn't have big success in Kashmir valley, but people came out elected their own leaders, which itself is great success.
  • When the topic of "Triple Talaq" came , Muslim politicians ranted "What does Modi think of himself to remove Triple Talaq". Sure, it 's gone. There is nothing they can do except calling him "Hitler"?

Hitler: Interestingly, Indians doesn't see "Hitler" with the same lens as the Western population see. That doesn't mean they are racists or "mass murderers". There is a historical Pre-Independence dynamics to it. There are opposing views w.r.t how to get independence during those days. Some wants to do with Violence, making friendship with British enemies and popular one is with Gandhi Ahimsa. Gandhi's Ahimsa won the people's heart. For MK Gandhi, the worry is more about keeping the country united. i.e. peaceful coexistence of the diverse set of people after independence. For him, "Poverty is the worst form of Violence". But, he couldn't do much on Poverty front except burning the British clothes and making your cloth with your own labor. He set a firm example towards the communal co-existence, which India couldn't achieve even to this day. There is a guy called Subhas Chandra Bose who continue to make news even today. He is a solider, who thought it is good idea to go Germany and talk to Hitler with a hope of defeating the British, died in the WW II . I was not clear how he died. so some how "enemy's enemy is my friend" narrative still lurks.

Coalition Politics and recent Assembly elections in Maharastra and Haryana: These two states over overwhelmingly voted to Modi in May parliamentary elections in May 2019. But in October 2019 Assembly elections, they couldn't perform the same feet, despite Modi doing the campaigning. In Haryana, their tally reduced to 40 from 47 in 90 member assembly forcing them to have alliance with unlikely caste based party.

In Maharastra, the story is different. BJP and another extreme right wing Hindu party Siva Sena fought in the elections together and won majority together. But, they couldn't form the government over Chief Minister sharing dispute, despite 7 or 8 weeks constant media noise of accusations. BJP( got 105+ seats in 290 seats assembly) don't want to share CM post, But Siva Sena ( got 57 ) wants the CM post half of the time. BJP don't want to share CM post.

Siva Sena is one of the hard core Hindu organizations, started as regional party with Anti-Tamil stance( Against Tamilian control of Marathi state and business operators) in 60's, changed their focus in 70's to make themselves Hindu right wing party since then. Since the impasse, all sort of attempts were made to have coalition of Siva Sena, and their ideological enemies (Congress, their another split away faction NCP). But, they couldn't agree on the terms( as of yet), thus forcing imposing President Rule. Interesting part is Siva Sena accused Modi as "Hitler" during this time and said 'Let Ayodhya verdict come and we will talk about the coalition '. But, Ayodhya verdict came and gone, but no noise from Siva Sena except to forget about it.

This is one simple example of how the "Politics of Religion" goes. It is not as simple as "Majority vs Minority".
 
Modi's latest big ticket reform was released couple of days back and stirred some serious protests in some regions . Other big ticket items ( Banning Triple Talaq Bill , abrogation of Article 370 that gives special status to Kashmir, resolving Babri Masjid space issue) didn't produce that much local public protests as this one .

India 's North Eastern region struggled with various forms of illegal migrations( from neighboring countries - Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mynamar, Nepal, Bhutan etc), resulting economic challenges, local revolts against the migrations and and extremist violence that comes with it for 4 decades at least. It is the tough part of "Unity in Diversity" in democratic nation.

New Delhi provided basic development needs like connectivity( roads, bridges, water ways, high ways etc.) and other basic needs to this much neglected region in par with rest of the country during Modi 1.0 and was rewarded in the May 2019 parliamentary elections. They want to address this COMPLEX problem of who is citizen and who is not with a set of rules. If you want to details, you can watch this video. it is complicated and most probably will confuse you.

It is called CAB - Citizenship Amendment bill. This bill gives special provisions for naturalization ( of Indian citizenship) of specific religious groups from specific neighboring countries. Notable exclusion is "Muslims". Muslims will not get that provision for naturalization but Hindu/Jains/Parsies/Buddhists/Christians etc. will get it. The reasons are obvious, they don't want large economic migrants and hard to filter out who is extremist and who is not. Being these countries being muslim, they will be muslim migrant. Current Govt. thinks they should give shelter to persecuted Hindu migrants not muslims( as those governments are muslim govt.). Sure, it is not politically correct, but right wing parties don't care about political correctness.


WHO GETS THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP?

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill proposes to grant citizenship to the non-Muslims Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhist, Jains and Parsis -- from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who arrived in India before December 31, 2014.

In other words, the CAB paves way for Indian citizenship to lakhs of immigrants, who identify themselves with any of the given religions, even if they lacked any document to prove their residency. It also means that any immigrant who does not belong to the said communities would not be eligible for Indian citizenship.

Also, as per the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, any illegal immigrant from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who belongs to these said communities will not be deported or imprisoned if they are not carrying any valid documents for their residency in India.

Earlier, the duration of the immigrants' residency was 11 years. The amended bill has reduced it to five years. This means that immigrants from the three countries and from the mentioned religions, who have entered India before December 31, 2014, would not be treated as illegal immigrants.

CAB has been brought solely to address the persecuted refuge-seeking minorities from Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan –– Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jain, and Parsis.

Who is protesting for What?

So-called Secular opposition :
Congress and so called secular forces accuses govt. of discriminating in the name of religion about who gets Indian citizenship and who doesn't among immigrants. Hindu nationalist BJP thinks, most of the immigrants are from the neighboring muslim majority countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan where Hindu's are minorities and they are persecuted. They have no where else to go except India. For BJP, it is 2 headaches addressed with one bill - blocking economic mulsim refugees and political non-muslim refugees. For opposition, it is discrimination in the name of religion. Well, lot had happened in the name of secularism during last 70 years and nothing is straight forward as a "ideal" seems.

Neighbouring countries: As usual Bangladesh protested for Indian acknowledgement of migrant issue in the name of minority persecution. Pakistan can't keep quite , Imran Khan tweeted to say "International human rights violations" and "fascist Modi" Hindu Raj expansionsim ( which may work well on Western mind, but not in India - Not because they were brainwashed, because it has lot of nuanced history and politics for a century)

"We strongly condemn Indian Lok Sabha citizenship legislation which violates all norms of international human rights law and bilateral agreements with Pakistan. It is part of the RSS 'Hindu Rashtra' design of expansionism propagated by the fascist Modi government," Imran Khan wrote on Twitter.

People on the ground: The real protests is from the people on the ground in the 7 sister states of remote North Eastern region. There are army deployments in some places, looting in few cities, shutting down the social in some districts to prevent the rumors and block the organization of protests ( including violence )

They are protesting for is legalization of immigrants ( irrespective of Hindu's or Muslims or any other religion ). Their Aim is simple and they don't want outsiders taking up their resources, jobs etc. How they are already organized is varies from State to State. Some states More muslims and less hindus, some places more tribes and in some places it is 'indigenous' people.

Govt. is appealing to the people that they are not going to lose any thing. It looks Modi govt. under-estimated sentiments of insecurity of local people that is fuelled decades of violence in that region.

US government body: Among all this dizzying diversity of people fighting to retain their way of life, US government body ( The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) ) issued statements to impose sanctions on the India 's Home minister Amit Shah ( Most probably future PM after Modi) which India protested.

In short, it is complex multi-dimensional issue of insecurity ( local/indigenous/tribal/religious) than simple religious line division that some parties complaining of including US.
 
In short, it is complex multi-dimensional issue of insecurity ( local/indigenous/tribal/religious) than simple religious line division that some parties complaining of including US.
It is interesting to note that it has been a more than week, protests seems to grow, subside and spread at a different location and subside etc. It is strange that these protests lasted so long, given the "Weak" context of this specific issue.

Depending up on the news website , one can see the intensity varies. For example, if one sees liberal 'India Today', you get a feeling that nation is burning, but if you see others like 'Hindustan Times' ( I don't know this is liberal or not) ,you see the reporting, but that intensity is not there.

If one see's the locations where these protests are coming from and add the norms of the identity politics, it makes sense. But, when ever' rebellious Student' factor is included, it is hard to get the predictable pattern - Students are in between the ages of the logic of survival of adults and impulsive emotions of the kids with the infusion of hormones of the age.

As of now, Protests subsided in NE state of Assam. Student protests in Jamia Milia Islamia (JMI) University, Delhi seems to have subsided, but the sporadic protests seems to pop up. Whoever is responsible for some visible city bus and other random vehicle burning, seems to have awoke good amount of response from other student bodies. It looks it is as if some body coordinating to keep the topic in lime light. But, it is nothing new in the noisy Indian democracy.

Talking to AajTak, Home Minister Amit shah confessed that students from 22 Universities protested out of 300 odd universities. He mentioned that there is violence in only 4 universities. He was responding and downplaying to the criticism that the entire country is burning. He justified the Police action to go into the Jamia university when some miscreants burnt buses and ran into university as it is the police duty. He put out some very good arguments to point out the Vote Bank Politics of the nation:
  • This bill doesn't effect Indian Muslims. So, there is no reason for being panicky for Indian Muslims.
  • The decision to only give the citizenship for Non-Muslims ( mainly Hindu's and Sikhs ) is a decision taken in late 1940 by then Congress leaders Nehru, MK Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Even the constitutional bills that Congress enacted in that direction in 2004, 2009 is also in this direction. His argument is clear 'If BJP enacts them they are communal party, but if Congress enacts them it is 'Secular'?. He asked 'Did Congress enacted them over the last 70 years , just to ignore them?'
  • Students haven't read the bill or discussed about it. If they have read it and thought though it, they wouldn't have protested. So they are instinctively reacting it as a 'Communal'.
All political parties got caught off guard.
  • BJP underestimated the reaction. But they are sticking to their position.
  • Congress: They try to spin it as "religious discrimination" tagging on to the violence. Most of these bills are created by them not BJP
  • West Bengal Ruling TMC rulers: The West Bengal CM who was on the street against Modi, couldn't make her MP's to vote against the Bill. That tells her confused stance.
  • Parties in Assam : Those local parties (AGP) that were part of the bills created by Congress in 80's, who were now part of BJP govt. them selves confused. They supported BJP when the bill is passed and when the protests came out, they distanced themselves from BJP.
So the issue of contention is the argument that "BJP made it communal", but it is silly argument, given that is the stance of every body since 1947 when the country was then divided on the communal lines. Modi Govt. has a stance that they won't keep the country's borders open and won't make every body citizen without rules. If the Indian Muslims are unhappy, the hell should have broken out when the Babri Masjid resolution came out. But, nothing happened.

All this noise seems to surround the "Solidarity with University Students", who were attacked by Police. So, Govt. is bad. What is strange is Modi is extremely popular with young voters and students as is shown recent election and polls. This makes me wonder what is going on here?

Some possibilities:

1. Some body coordinated violence: This can happen, but it won't last long as Modi Govt. demonstrated many times that it has firm control over this type of things.

2. Liberal value sets of central Universities: The young generation of city central universities tend to have some liberal component of "equality". Delhi's JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) tend to be hotbed of the liberal utopia and it tend to get the more than its proportion of coverage in the news - often due to student wings of the conflicting political parties fight with each other and make a scene for the liberal media to propagate it. Probably some discontent is brewing below the line, but there is no protests from JNU on this issue. Students got carried away by the events, which opposition using it for its advantage.

3. Some thing in the Air?: After looking at all the possibilities, I started wondering whether students are feeling some uneasiness ( which they can't name it) as is the case going on the other parts of the world.
They ( opposition outlets) say Economy is not doing that great. Govt. reduced the GDP growth to 4.5%. They say, unemployment is bad. Well, Unemployment is issue for a many decades. I doubt GDP number really reflect the people's conditions or unemployment numbers reflect the discontent.

These are the thoughts as of now.
 
If some body looks at the Indian news today and viral video's, it looks the country is in 'Civil War'.

3 or 4 people were killed when protesters gone out of control and police shoot out etc. But there are many video's where journalists asking the protesters what are they protesting for? - Some body brought them to the street ( opposition parties like Congress, TMC etc), Some body said it is religious discrimination, so they thought it is true. Often, they don't even know what is CAA (Citizen amenment act) or NRC ( National register of citizen - True, India doesn't even have complete record of its citizens or people in the country as of now ) etc. , how it impacts muslim etc. Some body said it is anti-muslim, so it is in their logic. Even the opposition leaders who are marching and even asking United Nations to intervene couldn't find which clause in the bill that is religious in it, but they can march on, burn stuff and media picks it up. Simple chart floating around in social media.

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Indira Gandhi's take on the Refugees in 70's:


Nation, inclusiveness , religion and morality: Current protests and passions sounding like liberal meltdown, using the violence as a means to justify their stance. Nothing new in India, but Students got railed up and the deaths gave rare opportunity to opposition parties who got through beating in the May 2019 elections and stream of issues he resolved after the recent victory.

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One video on the topic explained in concise way.

 
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