Faced with odds, retreat from a stated position is not a new characteristic of the Narendra Modi Government. Yet, the withdrawal of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan from the Union Cabinet on Saturday caused a major loss of face to the dispensation. People’s power triumphed. The Government had remained ambivalent in its responses to the student offensive for weeks. It ultimately relented and accepted all the demands of the students protesting under the banner of the newly crafted Cockroach Janata Party (CJP). There was no other go. The Government could not afford to keep the national capital paralysed for long. A fear of the unknown was palpable. With Metro Stations shut and Internet-linked communication suspended for several days, the Government also faced a huge embarrassment in Parliament where it could not conduct business for a full week. International media began questioning the Prime Minister’s carefully cultivated image of unassailable leadership strengths. In a jiffy, such images got deflated like a hot air balloon.
By Saturday, the RSS thought enough was enough and began openly expressing its disquiet. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi warmed up and threatened to challenge the Modi dispensation’s arrogance of power, through protests at the national level. The Prime Minister took the easy way out – making a scapegoat of his Education Minister after dismissing several ‘errant’ National Testing Agency officials failed to tame the fury in the streets. The students were resolute. The ranks of the protesters began swelling. Lathi-charges produced the reverse effect, turning the youth more aggressive. The BJP found its main support base – the middle class urban voter – eroding. Some 2 million mostly urban families had faced the brunt of the NEET fiasco. Their children were out in the capital’s streets in strength. CJP gave them the platform to take on the Government while established political parties and their leaders had vacillated and proven their impotence. A 30-year-old youth had to fly down all the way from Boston and a climate activist from Ladakh to take the fight straight to the enemy’s den. History was made in a few weeks.
This is a big lesson and a loud warning to the shameless breed of hand-in-the-honeypot political class that fails to take up people’s issues. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi himself was found wanting, but he ably warmed up at a decisive phase of the student protests. His direct entry in the midst of the action added a new energy to the cause and helped the movement achieve success. Many think now that this is the beginning of the end of the Modi era. His weak attempt to distract attention from the hit his leadership took was evident in the release of a video late on Saturday, “highlighting” a “proud moment for every Indian”—citing that an entity from Uttar Pradesh “entered” the UNESCO World Heritage list. Millions who tuned to the video in the hope that he would speak up on the student unrest were disappointed albeit not surprised over its outlandish content. Even in the pathos of a misadventure, Modi has not lost his penchant to remain oblivious to the big realities on the ground.
