• Prakash Pohare

In an effort to present a unilateral challenge to the country’s democracy, the entire BJP and its parent organization, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have exerted their entire might with full force. Organizations like ED, CBI are strangling the leaders of opposition parties. Consequently, as our democracy is being pushed from majoritarianism to pluralism, Shri Rahul Gandhi’s nationwide padayatra continues. Shri Rahul Gandhi has accepted this tough challenge while being portrayed as a historical party in Indian politics, but is being called weak in today’s scenario. Given all of this, his self-confidence has to be respected. In a way, there is no objection to seeing this visit as an attempt by Shri Rahul Gandhi to address the potential threat of unilateral and uni-central rule facing Indian democracy.

To understand the background of Shri Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, one has to first review what has happened in the country in the last eight years. By showing the youth pipe dreams of employment and development, Shri Narendra Modi tried to burnish his and his Party’s image by making an election manifesto on this issue taking advantage of the incidents of rape, corruption, price rise and most importantly Congress rule for a long time. When the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi entered national politics, the BJP started propagating an idea that Smt. Sonia Gandhi is the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of Rs.200 billion. Along with this, the wealth figures of many Congressmen and leaders of other parties were circulated on social media. Along with this, he gave false evidences of many scams like coal scam worth 1 lakh 76 thousand crores, 2-G spectrum scam worth 1 lakh 20 thousand crores. Then, a large number of youths were attracted by the Anna movement.

The event manager named Prashant Kishor managed the event to spread the Modi wave across the country by defaming the UPA government and curating related issues. An IT cell with immense promotional skills was created to continuously handle Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms. Simultaneously, BJP started campaigning that Congressmen have hidden huge black money in Swiss banks and after Modi comes to power, this money will be brought to the country and distributed among the people. 15 lakh rupees will be deposited in the bank account of every citizen of the country.

In fact, to create a special ‘identity’ of Modi, ‘Hansa Publicity’ agency was given Rs. 700 crores during that time for Modi’s ‘make over’ and branding. Paresh Rawal taught Modi dialogue delivery for 8 months and in return he was given the membership of Parliament. This is also a topic that no one knows about. It was a very well-planned operation. But the problem was Shri Rahul Gandhi, so he was systematically presented to be the ‘Crown Prince’ of this empire, rather apparently ‘Pappu’.

Then the 2014 Lok Sabha elections started. At that time a young man who had completed eighteen years of age was going to vote for the first time. This young voter got attracted to Modi because of the propaganda like ‘Vikas ka matlab Modi’ and ‘Modi ka matlabvikas’. Unaware of the divisive ideology of the BJP, the fake ‘Gujarat model’ of the Sangh and Shri Narendra Modi, and the well-planned propaganda of Shri Narendra Modi by the country’s media, this youth fell prey to their misconceptions.

What is the situation today after 8 years? During the UPA government, no minister went to jail in the coal scam, 2-G spectrum and other scams raised by Modi and the BJP. The court said that there was no scam. The allegation that Smt. Sonia Gandhi is the owner of Rs. 200 billion worth of wealth also proved to be false.

The BJP, which talks about the wealth of the opposition parties, has accumulated as much wealth in just eight years as the Congress could not accumulate in the last 70 years. Today’s official bank balance of BJP Party is Rs. 2278 crores and assets are Rs. 13,000 crores apart from the immense wealth of the leaders. On the other hand, Congress has a bank balance of Rs. 178 crores and the assets collected by the offices in 70 years is 575 crores apart from the assets of the leaders. The interesting thing is that during the last 8 years, 15 lakh rupees were not credited into anyone’s bank account. Black money wasn’t brought from abroad, but India drowned in double debt! It is a different thing that the big industrialists who had defaulted on loans worth lakhs of crores, the Modi government officially waived off their loan worth lakhs of crores. Anyways, BJP has accumulated a lot of wealth in the last eight years. Nirav Modi even said that he had duly come to the court of England by paying money. In the last 8 years, 12 crore people lost their jobs. There is no area where people have not been robbed! The country’s wealth has gone into the hands of a handful of people!

In the last eight years, there have been ‘Acche din’ for cow vigilantes and beef exporters, BJP leaders and industrialists like Mallya, Ambani, Adani, Choksi, but ‘bad days’ for the common and poor people of the country. Interesting fact is that Shri Narendra Modi reached the Parliament with slogans like employment to 2 crore people, Rs. 15 lakhs, guaranteed price to farmers, respect to women etc. But instead of fulfilling the promises he made, he decided to run the country on issues like Cows, Pakistan, Ram Mandir, Smart City, Bullet Train, Metro Train, Aadhaar Card, Toilet and especially on ‘Mann Ki Baat’ and for this, he completely ignored the promises made to the new voters, so that the intelligent citizens of the country do not pay attention to these things. Then a new concept of nationalism was created in the country by raising issues like ‘surgical strike’, India-Pakistan, India-China. In order to make this effort successful, he tried to sow in the minds of the people something that never happened through mainstream media and social media, bypassing the real history and he was successful to some extent.

The sudden demonetisation by Shri Narendra Modi was hailed by some supporters as ‘an instant of corruption in the country’, but as soon as the Reserve Bank announced that more than 99 per cent of the money had been recovered, the government and its supporters fell silent and immediately turned to another topic for discussion. This government made a systematic attempt to defame Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi by filing sedition cases against some students of Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi, so that the general public does not have to pay attention to their disturbing actions. The problems of the country’s poor, unemployed students and loanee farmers were ignored. Not only this, the farmers’ movement was termed as Khalistani agitation and the farmers were maligned as ‘Agitators’.

To ensure that no opposition party is left out, BJP leaders threatened the opposition with an ED and CBI probe. Some were even sent to jail. In such a situation, the question about the alternative of Modi cropped up? However, for the last one month, people have started seeing a ray of hope in Shri Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’. People have also started appreciating this yatra as its entire energy flow is to unite India which was divided by Sangh-BJP. What if the ‘Godi Media’ does not pay attention to Shri Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’? People from villages came and started talking, watching and taking serious interest in it. IT Cell had to take notice of Rahul Ji’s T-shirt and shoes, despite being ridiculed by BJPites as ‘PappuPadyatra’. Perhaps it was surprised to see that the Sangh Parivar, the parent organization of the BJP at the Centre, has started giving the impression that we too are ‘Bharat Jodo’ people. They were seen holding meetings with some ‘religious’ and four-five ‘pensioners’ with beards. The head of the Sangh Parivar visited select madrassas and mosques and unexpectedly earned the title of ‘Father of the Nation’.

Thus, Shri Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party have started the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ from Kanyakumari on September 07, 2022, with the objective of increasing the spirit of secularism among the Indian masses, solving the problems of daily life and understanding the problems of the masses. People are joining this journey most organically. This yatra will cover a distance of about 3500 kms to reach Kashmir. The yatra will run for a total of 150 days and the minimum daily journey is going to be 25 kms. Yes, it is the same Shri Rahul Gandhi, who is seen walking everywhere with the crowd of lakhs of people, whom the BJP has not only called ‘Pappu’, but has also maligned his family to the best of their capacity. Now through ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, voice is being raised on sensitive issues like inflation, unemployment and Chinese intrusion. Public awareness is being created about who has actually developed in the name of development of the country in the last eight years? As it is clearly visible, BJP spokespersons and their scared leaders are criticizing this padayatra. The way Shri Rahul Gandhi is tearing apart the Modi government at the Centre, it seems that he has undeniably shown that he and the Congress have the ability to fight the bigoted and hateful politics of the BJP better than any other leader; which no one has ever seen before.

One may or may not like Shri Rahul Gandhi as a person and a politician, one may or may not disagree with his leadership ability, but it is significant and positive that he is being seen on the streets in the interest of the people against India’s move towards one party rule. Democracy now wants to shift from majoritarianism to pluralism. It doesn’t matter whether their leadership shines or not! Although the detractors are apprehensive, yet it is necessary to hope that some change will definitely be there. Whether there is definitely a complete change or not, but we can still expect some change.

(The writer is Editor-in-Chief of Hindi Daily Rashtra Prakash)