A leader on defensive, with a lot left unsaid

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s January 1 interview to the news agency ANI is likely to fill the country with dread. If the Supreme Court gives a clear direction on the land dispute in the Ayodhya mandir-masjid case before the coming parliamentary elections, the PM hinted that his government might promulgate an ordinance to enable the Hindutva outfits to start building a temple.

Given the timing, this could trigger political and emotional upheavals akin to what was seen after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and serve as political propaganda for his party and government.

On the whole, the interview revealed a defensive leader who appears to have drawn few lessons from the massive policy errors that cost the nation dear, and continues with his earlier trajectory of being harsh on critics, especially his principal political opponents, the Congress Party leadership.

Toward the end of his five-year term, the Prime Minister appears to live in the past. There was the usual self-appreciation, and the Modi-style propagation of “facts” which fail to stand up to fact-checking.

For instance, the PM said that the farmers’ loan waivers announced by the Congress state governments were sheer propaganda as most farmer debtors had taken loans not from banks but from “sahukars”, or moneylenders. The Nabard data of August 2018 negates this claim. It shows that 52.5 lakh farmer households are in debt and 42.5 per cent of this group took loans from banks to meet farm needs.

Apart from misreading the farm situation, Mr Modi strongly defended demonetisation and his government’s faulty GST implementation, and said his government had helped the middle class in a big way by making LED bulbs accessible and opening medical colleges. There was nothing about the absence of tax relief or the very high petrol prices despite the low international prices. On the crucial question of unemployment and loss of jobs — which affect all sections — not a word was spoken.

The PM said he disapproved cow-related violence and deaths, but asked rhetorically if these had occurred only after 2014. The facts are again unambiguous. Of all the cow-related violent acts since 2010, 90 per cent are post-2014. At any rate, the Modi government failed to crack down on the violent groups.

On the deeply controversial Rafale jet deal, Mr Modi was content to say the Supreme Court had given his government a clean chit. This is misleading as the court has been pulled up for citing wrong facts, with the government itself asking it to make corrections in the judgment. Mr Modi also said nothing about why he had taken with him an industrialist to Paris as he was about to forge a fresh deal with the Rafale manufacturers while leaving the defence minister behind. It wasn’t a weighty interview.