By Rajdeep Sardesai
With prime minister Narendra Modi, expect the unexpected: unpredictability is an offensive armour for a crafty leader who likes to keep his opponents constantly guessing. Which is why two weeks since he rather dramatically came on national television on Guru Nanak Jayanti to announce that he was withdrawing the contentious farm laws, no one is still quite sure yet just why the prime minister finally relented. His army of supporters have even suggested that the ‘apology’ was a Gurupurab festive ‘gift’ to the farmers that reveals the prime minister’s large heartedness. But those who have observed Mr Modi’s politics closely over several years now will recognize that repentance has never been part of the leader’s well cultivated strongman image. Truth is, this isn’t about a change of heart but a change in strategy.
For seven years as prime minister and twelve years as Gujarat chief minister, Mr Modi has never been publicly apologetic for any of his contentious actions: the idea of remorse is seen as a sign of a weakness that is anathema to his macho persona. Then be it the failure to control the 2002 Gujarat riots or the misery caused by the sudden decision to demonetize currency, Mr Modi’s strength is seen as his unwillingness to bend before his critics. Which begs the question: why did Mr Modi allow a farmers agitation that was primarily limited to three states of north India to force him to publicly retreat?
The most obvious and plausible explanation lies in the fact that as an astute politician, Mr Modi recognized that the farmers protests could prove electorally detrimental ahead of a string of assembly elections, especially in the politically critical state of Uttar Pradesh. Elections are Mr Modi’s oxygen cylinder, a tonic that seems to invigorate him each time. Even as prime minister, he has relished plunging into every electoral battle with the same zeal that he once showed when riding pillion to stick posters at night in an Ahmedabad municipal corporation election in the mid-1980s. The late New York governor Mario Cuomo once referred to ‘campaigning in poetry and governing in prose’, but Mr Modi is perhaps the closest you can get to a leader who blurs the lines between campaign and governance: almost every action is part of a year round campaign aimed at maximizing voter eyeballs.
But while election concerns might explain the timing, they don’t quite reflect the manner in which the prime minister appears to have personally acknowledged his failure in not being able to push through the farm laws. After all, Mr Modi could easily have got any of his cabinet colleagues to step up and take the blame for misreading the mood of the agitating farmers. If Dr Harsh Vardhan was made to pay a price for the Centre’s failure in anticipating the second Covid wave, agriculture minister Narendra Tomar could have been made the scapegoat for the farm law debacle. That Mr Modi chose to accept the blame himself reveals a strategic shift, howsoever momentary, in leadership style: from imperious Supreme Leader to actually appear humble and take responsibility for failure. It’s almost as if the seemingly indestructible Big Boss is trying to re-brand himself as an occasionally fallible leader if only to remove the sting from his opponents prime criticism of being an arrogant autocrat. Recall how the previous ‘suit boot ki sarkar’ critique might have influenced the demonetization decision in 2016 and restored the prime minister’s credentials then as an anti-corruption crusader.
This time, the ‘apology’ can be seen as a tactical move linked to refurbishing the prime minister’s self-image as a protector of the ‘gareeb-kisan.’ Go through any major Modi speech on the campaign trail and he will almost always refer to his commitment to the ‘gareeb-kisan’ or the ‘g-k’ of his political vocabulary. Mr Modi could afford to antagonize India’s wealthy with his demonetization gambit; he could even anger the middle classes by allowing fuel prices to climb. A large section of India’s rich and middle class can after all be lured by a promised Hindutva haven that taps into a sharp religious identity based on lingering fears and resentments. The epithet Hindu Hriday Samrat (Emperor of Hindu Hearts) was coined specifically for a post 2002 Gujarat electorate to polarize ‘neo-middle class’ Hindu voters.
But for the wider national constituency of the poor and farmers, the prime minister needs to be seen as a caring and benevolent ‘vikas-purush’ above all else. Ahead of the 2019 elections, the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi was seen as a conscious attempt to woo the farmer with a minimum income support scheme. But this pro-kisan image took a hit when farmers were barricaded at the Delhi borders with iron spikes and barbed wires. The government’s response was to try and demonize the farmers as ‘anarchists’ and ‘terrorists’, a toxic campaign that only invited a backlash, especially amongst the farmers of Punjab. By the end, the battle was no longer about the nitty-gritty of the farm laws but about the optics of being perceived as ‘kisan virodhi’ or anti-farmer, something which the prime minister could ill afford.
This is where the viral video of protesting farmers being run over in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri by a speeding jeep on October 3rd, was arguably the turning point. The alleged involvement of a union minister’s son in the gruesome incident was a major embarrassment, far greater than the government’s media managers would care to admit. In an age where news knows no geographical boundaries, it angered farmers in areas far removed from the original conflict zone. That a Rakesh Tikait like figure was now attracting sizeable crowds even in Maharashtra showed that the Modi government could no longer afford to take the ‘andolan-jeevi’ farmer protestors for granted.
In a sense, the government, secure in its massive parliamentary majority, has paid a price for an unbridled hubris that led it not to take the farm agitation seriously enough for way too long. By the end, all the prime minister could do is cut his reputational losses. Not because there is a sudden change in heart towards the farmers but quite simply because in politics, there is always one inner voice that no leader can ignore: the sound of the election bugle.
Post-script: Just days before the farm law repeal announcement, a senior minister and an RSS leader had reportedly met the prime minister to ‘persuade’ him to reconsider his stand. Then, Mr Modi had allegedly brushed aside their concern by insisting that the new laws were a matter of conviction for him. What suddenly changed may seem mystifying to Modi watchers but often ideological conviction in Indian politics must cede ground to electoral expediency.
(The writer is senior journalist and author. Mail: [email protected])