Exploring the “Achievements” of Modi Rule

EDITORIAL

The Narendra Modi-led BJP Government at the Centre has completed three years and the party leaders are busy projecting their dispensation’s “achievements” in these three years.

The real “achievement”, of course, is in the sphere of social relations. A deliberate endeavour has been made for the last three years to turn our secular, pluralist country into a majoritarian Hindu Rashtra. Remember, how Mohammad Aklaque and Pehlu Khan had to lay down their lives before savage attacks by the cow vigilante groups! Such depredations are continuing even now.

O n  May 2 3,  2017 a notification was issued on new rules to regulate livestock markets under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 (PCA). After a thorough study of the notification The Hindu editorially observes:

...it is evident that cattle—a category that includes cows, buffaloes, bulls and camels—come under a slew of special restrictions which, when effected, could have an extremely serious impact on the meat and livestock industry, not to mention the livelihoods and dietary choices of millions of people...

If estimates that 90 per cent of slaughtered buffaloes are bought and sold in animal markets are correct, then the trade will be crippled. The Centre must address the concerns of the trade as well as of those who suspect the notification is a part of a Machiavellian plot to influence and curb food choices....

Several State governments, notably those of West Bengal and Kerala, have openly assailed the notifi-cation of being violative of the federal principle as no discussion was held by the Centre with the States before issuing it. Public opposition to it has become widespread. Significantly a couple of BJP members in Meghalaya have resigned resigned from the organisation attacking the party’s policy on beef and cattle slaughter. 

Meanwhile on May 30, a Special CBI court in Lucknow charged top BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati and others with criminal conspiracy (Section 120B of the IPC) behind the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992. The questions now agitating the public mind are: would this bring the curtains down on BJP patriarch L.K. Advani’s political career? Would this witness Uma Bharati’s exit from the Union Council of Ministers on the ground of propriety?

There is no gainsaying that the battle-lines between the secular forces and those subscribing to Hindu communal extremism have clearly been drawn today (even as the offensive from the latter records a definite rise). Simultaneously Kashmir remains on high alert as the mass agitation persists there braving all attempts to suppress it. Isn’t this another major “achievement” of the Modi rule?

June 1 S.C.