HINDUTVA CANNOT BUILD NARENDRA MODI’S DIGITAL INDIA
By Harihar Swarup
Can Hindutva deliver development in the long run? Perhaps not. Let us examine this question in the context of BJP’s landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP’s staggering win in UP is supposedly the result of a message of Hindutva plus economic aspirations. Hindu consolidation by the Singh on the ground and economic aspiration embodied by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the winning formula. Modi in Delhi, Yogi in Lucknow is the slogan.
Three years back Modi ran a Hindutva plus development model in Gujarat for 12 years but as the Hardik Patel agitation shows, the state still suffers endemic unemployment. Academic Pranab Bardhan writes Gujarat welcomed capital intensive petrochemical and pharma sectors which did not provide jobs for the uneducated and semi–skilled majority in the workforce.
Modi’s economic model is about an efficiently run, apparently, incorruptible yet massively citizen monitoring state with Hindutava as its ideology base. In fact, Modi’s a statist with no record of rolling back government power. Schemes from Swachh Bharat to Skill India to Start Up India show big and controlling government imposing plans (no doubt well intentioned) dreamt up by the high command and imposed on citizens.
This leviathan state plays a crucial role in propagation of Hindutva. Just as socialism was implemented through state powers in some countries, now Hindutva is being implemented through state powers by BJP regimes. In Yogi Adityanath-led UP, the latest crackdown on ‘illegal slaughter houses”, setting up anti-Romeo squads or ban on wearing jeans by government officers, show that in Hindutva style governance ,there is little space for individual rights and free will. Yogi’s earlier assertion that women’s energies need to be, “protected, controlled and channelized” again reveals an ideologically purist, controlling mindset obsessed with maintaining Hindutva order. Given that the key challenge in India is job creation, an exclusionary ideology like Hindutva blocks rather than creates jobs. Slaughter houses after all provided livelihood to both Hindus and Muslims, as did the cattle trade.
The economic liberalization of 1991 showed that achieving high growth in the Indian context is not about asserting state power but rather about rolling back the power of state. A liberal economy generally doesn’t bear down on individual with a plethora of Rules, instead it aims back off from areas where it ideally should not meddle. The summary closure of slaughter houses is a triumphant example of brute state power and a strong man CM, but does such demonstration of executive authority create business confidence?
A rampaging state could after all flex its muscles anytime and order closure of any manufacturing unit that does not fit its required political-ideological crusade. When arbitrary state action becomes policy, then newer victims are needed every few months to demonstrate its power. After slaughter houses and meat shops, it should be chicken shops or may be fish markets. Who can predict when a new campaign will be launched by an ideologically saturated super-executive?
For now though the Hindutva plus development formula seems to be winning. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan won two and Raman Singh three consecutive elections in MP and Chhattisgarh. BJP continues to be dominant in Gujarat and Rajasthan and in Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje is moving robustly on development.
But how long will this formula hold? Nehru ruled unchallenged from 1947 onwards but faced dissent within a decade of his premiership in the Left victory in Kerala in 1957. Indira Gandhi was the goddess of India after 1971 but by the very next year, her authority began to eclipse and she was forced to impose emergency in the country in June 1975. Left Front rule collapsed in West Bengal because ultimately the leadership could not deliver. In just concluded elections, the BJP triumphed in UP and Uttarakhand but could not score well in Goa and Manipur. The party was trounced in Punjab by the Congress. BJP chief ministers say that water, electricity and roads do not discriminate between communities. But how about discrimination in schools, universities or restaurants? Witness the recent siege of Jaipur eateries by gau rakshak outfits. An official UGC report for 2015-16 shows Gujarat University has second highest cases against Dalits among central universities.
Hindutva with its rigid social hierarchies implies an assault on individual freedoms at different levels; the right to eat meat, the right to romance, the right to cultural interpretation or right of livelihood without fear of state action. When social harmony and individual freedom hang in balance and fear is instilled people, the optimum productivity suffers and in the process, development gets a jolt. (IPA Service)