India! 2024!
When Opposition MPs were disqualified from Parliament en masse, they said: “well, when you disrupt (are stubborn) like that, what can the govt. do?”.
When important bills were rammed through without discussion, they said: “what value do the Opposition MPs bring any way?”.
When Rahul Gandhi decided to take a walk, they mocked: “… he will stop it midway, or will go to Thailand soon”. They tried their best to stop the walk, but he ‘kept walking’.
When Mr. Kharge was made the President of the INC, they said: “he’s too old”.
When Ms. Mahua Moitra was thrown out of parliament, they said: “in politics women don’t wear large dark glasses, nor carry expensive bags”.
When the I.N.D.I Alliance was announced, sitting in studios and homes, they sneered: “they couldn’t even find a name that does not have the letters N, D and A”.
When the Congress decided to partner the AAP (personally I disliked it too) in Delhi, they said: “now even the Gandhis cannot vote for the Congress - historical low!”.
When the election was made to be about saving the constitution, they went: “this will not connect with the masses, rather it will deflect from issues of daily living”.
Whenever Rahul Gandhi spoke, they said: “he needs a speech writer”. (But many of them went ‘mum’ when the prime minister no less, continued to speak unsavoury language).
When Rahul Gandhi decided to contest from Rae Bareily (and not Amethi), a lot of them said: “walkover”.
When the I.N.D.I Alliance members contested against each other in Kerala, West Bengal and Punjab, they went: “What then remains of the alliance?”, with absolute ignorance of how these things play out locally.
When Prashant Kishore was induced by one of the best in the business to ‘call the elections’, they queued before him begging for a byte (now - June 6) they don’t even know where he is!).
Towards the end of the elections when Jairam Ramesh kept saying ‘outgoing prime minister’, they all said he’s a gas bag.
When ‘someone’ said: “kaun Rahul”, his namesake (apparently a journalist) included, happily bounced up and down on the chair with the excitement of a little child just given a lollypop!
The BJP only needed to move its little finger (or wag), and it was a masterstroke, high on strategic thinking. Any statement of the Opposition’s was dissected to the last layer, and was declared a grand disaster, bound to hit them hard.
2024 was a done deal for Modi 3.0. (An ace political commentator said on Twitter [whether Musk likes it or not, I like referring it like this], he was approached for a debate on tv but before 530pm… because a victory yatra for the prime minister was planned at 6pm!).
In hindsight, credit needs to be given to Rahul Gandhi (am not a big fan, nor do I prefer to see him as PM) who despite all the odds heavily stacked against him (and the names they called him) made two important decisions in the past three years: one - the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Absolutely no one could ignore it after the first few days. As Prem Panicker put it: “there’s no real substitute for foot-slogging”.
Everything started to look better from there.
Two - swallowing much pride, decided in favour of alliances.
While the former was outrightly mocked at (before beginning to carefully respond to), the latter was used to give lectures about “internal contradictions”.
As we stand today, most of these jeers, sneers and mockery have given way to a muted realisation that has hit on the head.
This doesn’t get any clearer than when Rajath Sethi (a one time advisor to the Tripura Chief Minister and continuing supporter of the BJP) tells Barkha Dutt that “you need to go back to morals based politics” (32:02)! Or when ace journalist Tavleen Singh without blinking an eye opines that the 2024 results have been a blow for Mr. Modi. It is bewildering that even as a BJP supporter lists the mistakes that were made en-route, and owned it up, a so called ‘journalist’ still defends every decision of the BJP!
An important third element this spectacular election results has thrown up, where credit needs where it is due is, “this election is about saving the constitution”. The alliance stuck to it. It became an obvious driver that caught on like a rhyme. Other things - farmers’ distress, inflation and JOBS simply tagged on.
So on June 4, ‘(women leaders) wearing large dark glasses’ didn’t matter. Internal contradictions didn’t matter. Age didn’t matter. But the “saving the Constitution” mattered. And PK was never in the picture!
Some people deserve a lot of mention in the way the unthinkable happened. Of course, apart from Rahul Gandhi, a number of other political leaders agreed to get together keeping aside differences for the sake of a larger goal.
But here’s a shoutout to Pawan Khera and Supriya Srinate. For over a year, they both took anchors and opponents from the BJP to the cleaners quite literally, aggressively, armed with data to challenge, and pointed questions that hardly received answers.
One cannot forget the gigantic figure of Yogendra Yadav. His article in the Indian Express took polity by storm. As Vir Sanghvi put it, “it takes a brave man to fly against the wind”! Just look at the way he dismantled Rahul Kunwal’s math!
The emergence of a robust civil society across pockets who rolled up their sleeves and marched to take on the politics of religion and hate. In some places, loners walked the streets, visited communities and impressed upon them to “talk to each other; don’t let them divide you”! This even caught the attention of the New York Times.
A host of journalists, YouTubers and good media organisations* hit the road - south to north, east to west, state to state, village to village, braving the intense heat of a wickedly long election process. Astutely they uncovered hypocrisy, double standards and dangers. Backed with first hand insights from voters they brought to us the emerging picture. Put all of them together, one thing was indeed certain: there were bigger issues than all the M words.
Kudos to all of them who strung together an invisible partnership to stave off, at least for now, what would have been an absolute assault on the ‘idea of India’.
The story of India in 2024 is:
India, is not two men. India is not newsrooms or cities. India is not just the ‘bhaktmandali’.
And oh, it was fun dekoding the elections!
*Not everyone got everything right, not everyone understood everything well, but together they weaved a story of a nation that voted on issues that matter to daily lives.
MojoStory - The NewsMinute - The Newslaundry - The Wire Karan Vs. PK - The Scroll - The Hindu/ Sobhana K Nair - The Rae Barely choice - Dhruv Rathee - Ravish - Parakala Prabhakar - Swati Chaturvedi - Nidhi Razdan - Ruhi Tewari - Srinivasan Jain - Vikram Chandra