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Elections 2024: Cats among the pigeons...

...and the unlooked for spectacle of the all-powerful BJP scrambling in defence | Elections 2024

By Prem Panicker
New Update
Elections 2024

Elections 2024 | Cartoonist Satish Acharya’s take on Modi, in his recent interview with Arnab Goswami of Republic TV, walking around with a laptop tucked under his arm

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Elections 2024

MUCH has happened since my previous post, but what has fascinated me the most is this clip of an interview ANI’s Smitha Prakash did with KT Rama Rao of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.

Where to begin? Maybe start with Prakash’s opening gambit — that there is Modi, but no alternative.

This ‘TINA’ trope has been a constant during the ten-year rule of Narendra Modi, and I personally find it baffling that so many people are so willing and eager to buy into it.

What does ‘TINA’ actually mean? 140 crore Indians (or at least, those among the population who actually turn up to vote), elect 543 Members of Parliament. Of this, the party or alliance that attains a simple majority has a minimum of 272 MPs. Are we so ready to believe that in this country whose virtues we constantly shout from the rooftops, there is no single person — other than Modi — in a minimum of 272 elected MPs with the talent and ability to lead this country?

Have the proponents of ‘TINA’ considered the implications of what they are saying about the country they are so shrilly proud to belong to?

PRAKASH’s insistence on a name to set against Modi is a manifestation of the BJP’s need to create a mano-a-mano contest, preferably with Rahul Gandhi as the opponent. A couple of days earlier, Amit Shah during a rally in Telangana had said as much. This is a Rahul Gandhi vs Narendra Modi election, Shah declaimed, though no Opposition party, least of all the Congress, has projected Gandhi as the PM face.

In passing, it is worth noting that Gandhi has consistently said he has no desire to be the PM. He said as much, as far back as 2013, again in 2014 in the run up to the elections, even more recently in 2018, and he also said the same at the start of this latest electoral campaign.

I’d written about why the BJP wants to make this a one-on-one contest here— what is significant is that as each successive phase ends, the BJP gets increasingly desperate to frame the election to its advantage.

Amusing though it is to see Prakash tying herself up in knots trying to justify the “versus who” question (which militates against the fundamental premiseof Parliamentary democracy), the most telling comment on the BJP was made by the ANI boss herself. Watch from 3:04:

Prakash says that people (unnamed and unnumbered) are not saying they will vote against price rise etc, they are voting for who they think will solve the problem. And then, quote (emphasis mine):

For this, they will vote for Samajwadi Party, or they will vote for DMK, or they will vote for Modi… they are voting for people

Two of the three names she invokes are parties, not people. And therein lies the problem. The SP, the DMK, BRS, CPM, RJD, TMC, AAP, Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (Sharad Pawar), Congress… these are all parties, with an ideology (that you may or may not agree with, but that is another argument). The electorate is not just voting for the candidate but for a party, and for the ideology t

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