The other day at a Hindi news channel studio, one of its young correspondents informed me that Harish Khare’s book was out. “Have you read it?” he asked.
“What is it called?”
“I can’t remember the title exactly but it is something like ‘How India Won It’ … about the 2014 elections,” his voice tapered off. I had by then read a good portion of Khare’s book but granted the young man the joy of breaking the news. Of course, in so doing, he revealed more about himself than the book. For him, Modi and India seemed interchangeable, reminding me of the 1970s when India stood for Indira in the vocabulary of more than a few. “The book is called How Modi Won It ,” I added for his benefit.
A little later, I picked up my copy again. I found myself hooked to it. Admittedly, it took me some time to get into it, but once there, I was amply rewarded. Part of it appealed because of the journalistic approach Khare has taken; he uses many sources, but he keeps many of them close to his chest. They reveal nuggets; they remain concealed. Ah! The joy of journalistic training — and Khare is a weather-beaten one, never mind his dalliance with the much tamer world of media advisor to the Prime Minister.
The same training stands out all the way. Right at the beginning, he negates all possibility of cross- questioning by writing, “There is no inside information, no scoop, no breaking news.” No, it is not a defensive gesture; just that rare ability to say things as they are, no dash of salt and pepper added to make things spicier.
Pray, when there is “no inside information, no scoop, no breaking news”, why read the book? Simply because of Khare’s conversational style of narration. It flows effortlessly, almost like a friend relating a day’s happenings to another at the end of the day.
After initially dubbing the General Election as “the biggest mass ceremony we perform in India….bigger than …Kumbh Mela …Haj congregation”, Khare adopts a fly-on-the-wall approach. The first wall is of India International Centre where he picks on an expression of Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who in a talk showed a mirror to our times with three classifications — Awaam-e-Hind, Siyasat-e-Hind, and Hukumat-e-e-Hind. “All three — the people of India, India’s political life and the Indian State — are, like the three lions in our emblem, majestic alike. But each faces a different direction”. Until the awaam (public) comes face to face with the hukumat (government) at the time of General Election.
“The 1971 Lok Sabha election was the first ‘national’ election, being the first time that elections to Parliament were de-linked from Assembly elections.” This was the election Indira Gandhi used to win a vote for herself and her politics, just like Modi did in 2014. The entire campaign was driven around her, and her Garibi Hatao slogan. Her promise of ushering in an egalitarian social order won her a thumping mandate. A little over four decades later, Modi was to use a similar strategy with strikingly similar results. Unlike the past, this time the BJP sought votes not in the name of the “party with a difference” but in the name of the Gujarat Chief Minister, holding up the State as a role model, and Modi as an icon. “ Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar ” being the runaway hit slogan. Khare comes up with an interesting insight on the issue. Referring to Outlook magazine’s April 21, 2014, cover, he reproduces its say-it-all blurb: “‘Narendra Modi had turned a parliamentary election into a personal US-style presidential campaign where the party, the parivar and the people are instruments of its will’.”
Slowly, Khare brings his political acumen into play, particularly when analysing the now floundering Congress party. Following the victory in 2009 elections, Khare writes, “Rahul Gandhi inexplicably drew into a shell while the old guard began squabbling among itself.... Internal discord soon begot what came to be fashionably called, by the pink press mostly, ‘policy paralysis’. Corporate India wanted the new government to move fast in effecting ‘the next round of economic reforms’, never mind the fact that the global economic environment was yet to recover from the pains of the 2008 meltdown. Our businessmen were in an impatient mood. Once corporate unhappiness was aggravated, business tycoons resorted to writing an ‘open letter’ to the Prime Minister, demanding that he address what they called ‘governance deficit’.”
Interestingly, around the same time, civil society was mobilised to launch a fight against corruption. The movement was a political masterstroke, as it was able to “whittle away” the credibility of the Congress. The Congress was in a freefall. It was not helped a bit when Arvind Kejriwal accused Robert Vadra of amassing huge wealth in land deals and Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law mocked the Aam Aadmi Party as ‘mango people’, a phrase, which Khare says, “was seen as mocking the Congress’s own plank of aam aadmi . Then came the blunder over the formation of Telangana, a State that was Congress’s to lose, which it predictably did. Khare, contrary to common perceptions, takes the lid off when he refers to Congress’ core group of five senior ministers as “panchayat syndrome”, exposing them as men whose time was long since over. Faux pas after faux pas made Modi’s ascension not just inevitable but imparted him with an undeserved halo.
Pray, why such a long piece on the Congress? Well, simply because there would have been no Modi without Congress; the age-old party did its best to show its age. And Modi, he full of swagger and bravado, romped home. It was no cakewalk though. He prevailed on the basis of a well crafted strategy.
The proactive role of the RSS helped, as the lines between the BJP and the parent organisation first diminished; then vanished. The RSS had decided a year before the election that Modi would be the PM candidate. And he would contest from Uttar Pradesh. This exposes all claims of there being a difference between the RSS and the BJP. The fact that the Modi-Amit Shah team had no hesitation in speaking the Hindutva idiom enthused the RSS to ask its cadre to supplement the BJP’s efforts.
Modi was, powered along by corporate India and a pliant media. Khare notes, “I am somehow troubled that the media has abandoned any pretext of neutrality, objectivity and all other professional virtues in its coverage, especially in its reportage of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi,” adding, “If money could buy an election, then the Bharatiya Janata Party is home and dry. If Corporate India could help purchase a mandate, then Mr Narendra Modi has already been sworn in….And if the media’s professional gullibility could create a ‘lehar’, then India stands joyfully restored to the decisive leadership of decisive deshbhakts…”
Khare wrote it in March last year. His words came true on May 16. Need one say more? Really, “How Modi Won It” goes beyond Modi’s triumph; it is as much about the decimation of the Congress as also the crucial if questionable role of corporate India and our increasingly subservient media. Khare’s ‘fly on the wall’ travels the distance and comes back to relate the tale.
How Modi Won It: Notes From the 2014 Election;Harish Khare, Hachette, Rs.599.
