The Lutyens believes their visceral hatred for PM Modi gives them the ticket to use any means to destabilize the country in order to weaken Modi. But in spite of all the attempts by this syndicate, Modi has successfully managed to bring in transformation that India much needed.
India@75: The New India
A New India started taking shape under the leadership of Narendra Modi. An India that came out of the cusp of indecisiveness and apathy, to a New India testified by the spirit of change.
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The Congress has always confused their lottery election victories with legitimate earnings. Their governments have repeatedly offered boring, tendentious and venal repetitions of familiar indifference. UPA II with its sordid saga of scams, policy paralysis, economic stagnation and failure to deliver on public welfare initiatives, eroded not just India’s global image but threw its citizens into darkness and decline. Fortunately for India, the coming to office of Narendra Modi has reversed this decline. Narendra Modi opted for pragmatic solutions instead of static discussions. He provided visible and meaningful change. Modi succeeded because he rejected the politics of pessimism. The politics of cynicism that had held the country back in the past decades, prominently because of the lack of political will, had been broken. Once empowered by the political establishment and unconditionally supported by it, the morale of every man in the society was boosted. Narendra Modi transformed the mood from despair to optimism about the future. Narendra Modi paved the way for a New India.
Modi offered hope, not merely as a promise that politicians are accustomed to making, but on the strength of what had been achieved by him when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Under Prime Minister Modi, the paradigm changed to proactivity and anticipation. A New India started taking shape under his leadership. An India that came out of the cusp of indecisiveness and apathy, to a New India testified by the spirit of change. Modi is creating an ecosystem of opportunity for people and enterprises to succeed and become global champions. He inspires and guides every Indian to move forward with such willpower, that the feelings and aspirations of 138 crore countrymen are reflected in the making of this New India. Modi has transformed the mindset of the country. He became the lightning rod, the catalyst that exponentially boosted the self-confidence of the people and taught them to believe in themselves. Today, India has evolved into a country with significantly more ambitious expectations for itself, and a confidence in its ability to fulfil its aspirations. Propelled by the ambitious canvas that its prime minister was painting on, and the headline markers he was setting for the country, India began to defy the very soft bigotry of low expectations that had defined it thus far. Modi altered the idea of being Indian.
While previous regimes had a cowed down approach while meeting leaders of powerful foreign nations, Modi’s “hugplomacy” exudes confidence of a New India. The Modi doctrine has made the world realize that India is far too big and far too important to be ignored and has largely helped India to consolidate its own interests.
The New India is now confident and assertive. It wants a seat at the global centerstage, and is open about its love affair with Israel and Russia. It wants to identify with the strong and the successful. It talks about being Aatmanirbhar, and is tired of slowness. It wants development built on speed. It has no patience for complex negativity. This New India is tired of being third rate and third world. It does not want to side with those it has defeated, and it sees them as an impediment in their aspirational story. This New India is not a western concept, but a cultural civilization. This New India is clear that this is the time for it to grow and grow exponentially, to achieve its rightful place in the future world. It is nationalism and ideology that drives it, not the money. This New India will never bend its knee in front of China. It will seek to subjugate Pakistan, but at the same time will show its humanitarian competence by rescuing Pakistani citizens from war zones, or by issuing medical visas to those in distress. As citizens, we want to win. This mentality is the real success of Modi, because it has altered the grammar of our culture. A new generation of Indians has risen while the Congress and its Lutyens elite were busy being corrupt, nepotistic and dynastic. That is why the Lutyens see the New India as a threat to their hold over the estates they have controlled.
It was only to be expected that the ousted Lutyens cabal would then leave no stone unturned — including cynical alliances with foreign entities — to attempt a comeback. They produce wretched performances by holding protests and use falsehood to create narratives. When protests like Shaheen Bagh fail to materialize, other mutinies are manufactured: artists are made to return their awards; historians are made to write open letters denouncing a climate of intolerance; so-called journalists write a searing op-ed in a newspaper that despises Modi; Arvind Kejriwal calls the prime minister a psychopath; Rahul Gandhi questions the Indian air strikes in Balakot, deep inside Pakistan. The outrage artists may have a busy calendar but they will have to be determinedly countered. The New India cannot afford to be bogged down by the silly criticism of the Lutyens vested interests and opposition parties like the Congress.
The Modi Government is on the right track and its efforts must be complemented with responsive cooperation rather than selective confrontation. Professional naysayers and habitual Modi-baiters, critics of the Modi government must give up knee-jerk anti-Modism. Every time we come across an anti-Modi narrative, we must take time to stop, take a breath, and consider if yet another false narrative is being created. We must listen to the experiences of ordinary people and not of those who scream the loudest. We should pause and remember that the loudest voices may not be the most representative ones.
India cannot develop and prosper only because of what Modi does. There has to be a citizen initiative. We can achieve tremendous results if we harness the latent energy of our citizens. We need to take on the whole culture of cynical defeatism — New India needs politics of optimism. Nothing about this politics of optimism needs to be naive. We can anticipate setbacks and failures, disappointments and mistakes. We can freely admit the profound difficulty of the work yet to be done, even the possibility of total failure. We can freely acknowledge the tremendous struggle ahead of us, and yet choose to remain decidedly optimistic, and to work from a fundamental belief in the possibilities of the future. Positive politics is not about using a rose-tinted glass to look at morbid truths. It is also not about turning our eyes off from governance gaps that need to be filled. Positive politics is about forward-looking, pro-active and constructive political action, rooted in well researched understanding of issues. When we do that, we liberate ourselves from some of the burden of despair and powerlessness that we had all been saddled with in the past. Our politics must look ahead and invite people to craft a narrative of India’s future, a future that each one of us can park our aspirations in. Much has happened, much more will happen as we find our way to the vanguard of the New India, but Modi remains the best vehicle to reach our destination.
Something significant is underway under Modi’s leadership. Ever since Modi’s ascent to national level power, it has been evident that his aim is not to be just another footnote in history, but to transform the country with positively disruptive policy decisions that would reach way beyond the dry arithmetic of politics. Modi wants to lay the foundation of a new nation, tapping into the aspirations and nationalistic fervor of its people. Indeed, the coming decades will be shaped in no small part by the choices we make as we seek to rise to our long-lost potential. This will require us to remain optimistic, and shun the temptations of pessimism as we set sail towards a New India. A single article doesn’t allow one to document everything Narendra Modi has done. But, down the line, when posterity examines the Narendra Modi imprint on governance and public policy in India, the assessment will be that the Modi years have been transformational.
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