Dadri, A Lawless State and Lots of Blame for Modi Sarkar

You must have seen the manner in which opposition parties, media and some award winning writers have accused Modi govt of all the wrong things happening in different states. For example, Modi govt was accused of Dadri incident which happened due to lawlessness in UP. Ink attack on some organizers of events involving Pakistanis happened due to obvious reasons. And so on. Now why do you think that the community of writers who are supposed to be intellectuals can be so foolish? If they returned awards when writers like Taslima Nasrin were threatened, or VS Naipaul was insulted, or Salman Rushdie’s book was banned – for these attacks could be seen as attack on writers’ freedom of expression – then I could understand their tirade. But a villager was killed in a state like UP and writers went nuts – is too difficult to comprehend. 

Some people say that it is because these writers were supporters of Congress. But I have a different opinion. Remember that this trend of accusing central govt for wrongs of state government is a wider phenomenon. E.g. when Delhi’s state govt raises VAT on some items due to which prices rise, people end up blaming Modi govt again.

I think what we are witnessing is people’s failure to differentiate between central govt. and state govt. And the reason why we fail is because of our history and our habit. For decades, we got used to seeing Congress party both in center and in the states. Delhi, where most Media houses are located and Maharashtra, where most financial houses are located, have very strong history of a ‘Congress legacy’. You may have states with strong non-Congress history, but such history is too recent and these states are comparatively not so important, to prevent this trend. Therefore, when something wrong happened in Delhi, whether we blamed Sheila Dixit or Manmohan Singh – made little difference because ultimately people were blaming the ‘ruling party’.

But 2014 General elections are called historic in the sense that for the first time ever, we had “real change”. Still, it seems we have not gotten ‘used to’ it. And who are the guys who are not able to adjust to the change? Media houses and writers – because these guys were so much exposed to political events – and hence ‘conditioned’ by the power equations that they find it too difficult to accept the change. Due to their mental block, they are still living in an old world where single party could be blamed no matter if something wrong happened in a state or at center.

I think the only alternative theory which is strong is that the media and writers know the difference very well but are trying to put up a face to cheat people. Media houses feed on viewers/subscribers and writers feed on readers/buyers – and if this theory is true, they are on a dangerous path.