Monday will be another test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the government he heads. The INDIA BLOC is organising a massive demonstration in the national capital, close on the heels of the anti-CEC protests by the Cockroach Janata Party that was thwarted through massive arrests on Saturday. The action by the Opposition on Monday as well as the protests organised by the CJP with involvement from the AAP and some leftist youth movements, is obviously targeting the Modi government, not just the CEC. This guarantees that repression by the security forces as seen in the national capital on Saturday, will not suffice for the NDA dispensation to emerge unscathed. That some 50,000 police personnel at sensitive points in the national capital on Saturday, following the arrest of CJP leaders, a few former chief ministers, journalists, and ordinary protesters, proves the desperation of the Modi dispensation. Its image was badly bruised in the NEET-related offensive started by the CJP youths and followed up by the Congress-led opposition. The government could ill afford another embarrassment. But the means adopted by the government under the supervision of Home Minister Amit Shah were draconian. This reminds us of the Emergency days.
Clearly, the opposition and the CJP-led youths are bound to join forces. The call for CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation is bound to resonate across state capitals in the following days, where the Congress and regional opposition forces forming the INDIA Bloc will unleash their full might. The peace of the Modi era since 2014 is a thing of the past. Since this was his main credit for political survival, the PM is now facing the wall. His governance has been in slow mode, dissipating the mass appeal it enjoyed for several years. The hit Modi took in the 2024 elections should have been a wake-up call for him to come up with bold new steps to catch the nation’s fancy. Fact is that, through his nearly 13 years of governance, Modi has little to show on the progress card – other than ending the special status for Kashmir, erecting a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, or building a new parliament house. For the rest, governance took the normal course. The pity of this is evident from the fact, among other things, that India’s share in global manufacturing rose just a bit —from 2.4 per cent to 3 per cent in over a decade. This, as his chief economic adviser himself has claimed from the rooftops. The anger of the youths evident repeatedly in the streets today is directly related to this paralysis of national growth under the Modi dispensation. The stored, unexplored energy of youths was waiting to erupt. It found an outlet in the NEET-related offensives. An outpouring of this negative energy is perhaps unstoppable. The Opposition’s complacency over the past many years gave Modi a long rope to survive in his chair. Having erred repeatedly on multiple fronts, he stands fully exposed now.