Apprehension of Modi’s return to power is scaring all

The hard-earned balance achieved by the founders of modern India, including Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and Ambedkar, is under threat. Balancing ethnic sensitivity, religious antagonism, or regional conflicts has not been easy for the leaders who succeeded them. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rightly expressed it in his letter to the voters of Punjab

The battle of the modern Mahabharata is over. A sense of fear is also in the air. Indian elections have been quite different from elections in other democracies. Unlike in the US or UK elections, no one can predict the outcome here. A huge market of pollsters has emerged in India. However, it is hardly able to decipher the real trend of polling. Most of the opinion polls have proved to be inaccurate and far away from the real picture.

The poll scenario has also undergone a qualitative change. The main difference between the earlier and present trends is that there is no way to expose the malpractices. In contrast to the earlier poll reporting, the present media does not report about the use of money and muscle power. The media has abandoned reporting local problems and the performance of public representatives. Personality-centric coverage has given rise to a new style of reporting where local leaders do not matter.

The new style of reporting too is disproportionately tilted in favor of Prime Minister Modi. The media has become such a narrow space for others that even BJP leaders of some stature do not get the coverage they deserve. A look at the data on rallies, road shows, and interviews reveals that Prime Minister Modi has addressed 206 rallies and given 80 interviews. The data on airtime used by the Prime Minister only indicate that he alone consumed almost 80 percent of it. The channels run his long interviews at least three to four times a day.

The same channels met him again and again, with almost the same set of questions. His entire campaign went live. Amit Shah did not consume less media space than the Prime Minister. Others in his party remained far behind. The national stature of Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge did not earn better coverage for them in the media. If we measure their coverage in regional media, they were even far behind their regional counterparts. Modi and Shah dominated the regional media.

The capture of media space should not be seen in isolation. No domain was spared. We know how political funding for opposition parties was narrowed or blocked through electoral bonds. If the reference to Adani-Ambani in a public meeting by Prime Minister Modi is logically decoded, it only indicates that he is unhappy with corporate funding for opposition parties. He seems to have sent a message to industrialists that they should refrain from funding opposition parties.

There are other reasons, too of the fear of his return to power is mainly associated with the capture of institutions. Political parties have reconciled to the limited media space. They hardly bother about how much space is available to them in the media. They are bothered by the return of a rule that is bent upon decimating the opposition parties. They have seen how almost every party has been broken with the help of various investigative agencies, including the ED, the CBI, and the IT department. They have seen how stable State governments have been toppled. During their campaign, Modi and Shah have been issuing direct threats to opposition leaders as well as the sections of voters supposedly opposing them—the Muslims. No one is ready to buy assurances from Prime Minister Modi that he will not change the Constitution. They are also not ready to accept his allegation against the Congress party that it wants to change the Constitution to abolish caste-based reservations and introduce religion-based reservations to benefit Muslims. The duo used the media and public rallies to issue such threats. A compromised media and an inactive Election Commission allowed them to run their campaign the way they wanted.

The vicious campaign we have witnessed during the 2024 elections is unparalleled in every aspect. Prime Minister Modi tried his best to use every single cleavage to divide voters. Since he does not inherit the legacy of nation-building in India, he can freely abuse the process of forming a federal democracy. His ideological predecessor was away from the freedom struggle. They even supported the British and joined hands with the Muslim League in its crucial phase. How could he know the pains of bringing together a diverse country to establish a modern democracy? How could they know that the south and the northeast were assured fair treatment by the center at the time of independence? How could the BJP understand why Kashmiris decided to join India? The Hindu Mahasabha and its leader, Savarkar, were supporting Maharaja Hari Singh, who wanted independent statehood.

The hard-earned balance achieved by the founders of modern India, including Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and Ambedkar, is under threat. Balancing ethnic sensitivity, religious antagonism, or regional conflicts has not been easy for the leaders who succeeded them. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rightly expressed it in his letter to the voters of Punjab.

“India is standing at a crucial juncture. In the impending last phase of voting, we have one final chance to ensure that democracy and our Constitution are protected from the repeated assaults of despotic regimes trying to unleash dictatorship in India,” he says.

The former Prime Minister describes, “I have been keenly following the political discourse during this election campaign. Modi ji has indulged in the most vicious form of hate speeches, which are purely divisive in nature. Modi ji is the first prime minister to lower the dignity of public discourse, and thereby the gravity of the office of the Prime Minister. No Prime Minister in the past has uttered such hateful, unparliamentary and coarse terms, meant to target either a specific section of the society or the opposition.”

Singh has also clarified how he has been misquoted to spread the lie that Congress wanted to give away public assets to Muslims.

“He has also attributed some false statements to me. I have never in my life singled out from the other. That is the sole copyright of the BJP,” he says.

(The author is a senior journalist. He has experience of working with leading newspapers and electronic media including Deccan Herald, Sunday Guardian, Navbharat Times and Dainik Bhaskar. He writes on politics, society, environment and economy)