Modi's Facts Sting UPA, Rattle Media

The first one was shot dead, the second was beaten to death and the third was stabbed to death…. Relax, that’s not from some silly movie, just our real life CPM (Communist Party – Marxist). Says Firstpost: "His speech was surprisingly vivid in details of the murders that he said the party had planned and executed. He said, the party had made a list of 13 people and killed four of them – all Congress functionaries. “One, two, three, four…” he said narrating the sequence of murders. The star of the foolish street-corner spectacle that plunged the CPM into a fresh crisis is MM Mani, secretary of the party in Idukki in Kerala". Funny part is, why is the CPM killing Congressmen? The CPM is a natural ally of the Congress in ideology. They have been friends and even allies at the centre. What has been revealed is that the butchering of opponents by Communists in Bengal and other places has been a long historical process. Well, shoot, beat or stab to death even criminal parties are friends as long as they keep certain forces out. Um... You can usually tell such forces by the colour: Saffron. In this quest all crimes, murders, corruption, looting of the state or nation, everything can be forgiven.

And when those claiming to be ideological descendants of secular figures like Aurangzeb or Stalin have to fight such forces they won’t fight on “performance’. They will tag them with names: Communal, fascists, extremists and for their biggest performer; they like Hitler or Joseph Goebbels even better. Even members of the rattled, secular media join the chorus. People like Sanjiv Srivastav of Headlines Today or Kumar Ketkar of nowhere. And yes, it gets harder each time to figure which one to name from NDTV and CNN-IBN. Once their leader, Guttermouth Manish Tiwari of Congress, sets the tone, the paid mice in the media happily follow. All this because Narendra Modi not only attended the BJP national meet in Mumbai but also delivered a stinging speech against the UPA. Unable to respond to anything that Modi said, Guttermouth came up with this: "Gujarat CM is a frustrated man. It seems the soul of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister during the Nazi regime of Hitler in Germany, has gone inside him. He has crossed all limits”. Oh! Haven’t we heard this before? Modi frustrated because Gujarat is failing, farmers are dying in Gujarat, corruption is at an all-time high and he is going to lose the next elections. I can understand that part. The good part for Manish Tiwari is that he’s only caught with his mouth open so far unlike his former media colleague, Abhishek Singhvi, who was caught with a lot more open. So let’s summarise what Modi said on May 24 in Mumbai: (These are excerpts of the essence and not a full translation)

 

On droughts: If the River-linking dream of NDA as conceived by Atal Behari Vajpayee was pursued there would be no drought in Maharashtra. Farmers wouldn’t be killing themselves in Maharashtra. But since UPA came to power in 2004 that dream was killed.

There’s no Neta, Neeti aur Saaf Neeyat (No Leader, Principle/Policy or good Intention). In the absence of these one can see the current state of the nation. Nirmal Baba is in the news these days. The Delhi’s central govt is no different from a Nirmal Baba durbar. UPA promised inflation will be controlled in 100 days if they came to power. They make promises like Nirmal Baba and get their own agenda accomplished.

PM has stated many times over that Naxalism is the biggest threat to the country. Yet, in the report card for 3 years of UPA2, there is not one single mention of naxalism or what actions or measures are being taken to tackle it.  PM has stated Malnutrition is a “National Shame”. That it’s a shame for all Indians. However, in the 3-year report there is no mention of reason or remedial action.

PM often talks of coalition compulsions. Our Foreign Minister (S.M. Krishna) who represents the pride of the country all over the world stands up in UN and reads the speech of Portugal. What coalition compulsions cause such a goof-up? PM is from Congress, Defence Minister is from Congress. Yet, never in our history since independence has the Centre been in consistent conflict and dispute with the Army. What coalition compulsions have created such conflicts?

Madam Soniaji says: “Promises will not do, performance must happen”. This only means all these years they (UPA) were making empty promises and she accepts there has been no performance. From Indiraji’s promise of “Garibi Hatao” there have been only promises and no performances. They merely made promises while practiced vote-bank politics.

There’s a 20-point programme since 1975 for the poor and every govt since then has followed this programme. A govt cell monitors this programme. If one sees the reports of the last 10 years the top 5 performers under this programme are BJP or non-Congress states. I raised this issue with the PM. But instead of asking Congress states to perform, the PM has stopped the ranking of states itself under the programme so the world won’t come to know.

In his 3-year report card the PM mentions national agriculture growth rose from around 2.0-2.25% to 3.0-3.25% - 1%? Is that change? In Gujarat, where 7 out 10 years there are droughts, agricultural growth is 11%. And the PM is claiming a national growth of 1% as a great achievement in his report card. If this 1% national growth continues the nation will sink and people will die. Whatever growth he claims is achieved from the performance of a very few states.

For the first time PM has accepted something in his report card. He has admitted that centre-state relations should improve, which clearly implies he has failed in maintaining these relations. Instead of treating states with respect and honour, the centre treats states like they were the centre’s municipal corporations. The UPA has caused more damage to our federal structure than any other govt. in the last 50 years. To misuse the constitution to constantly destroy states is the handiwork of this govt.

The centre proposed the NCTC which seeks to disarm the state from its law enforcing duties and encroach upon it. But in so many years the centre has not been able to extradite one single terrorist back to India. They are in charge of borders but they haven’t been able to stop the flow of arms to naxals. All money through hawala channels to terrorists are under Centre’s jurisdiction, including RBI. They have not been able to control this. State has no interference in that. Our borders are being infiltrated by terrorists and illegals but BSF is under the Centre but they are not able to stop this. Instead of stopping such infiltration they are playing politics with the states with NCTC.

In our population of 120 crores 50% are women. Yet, in his report card, the PM does not make a single mention of what the UPA has done for them. In a country of youth the PM’s report card has no mention of any skills programme for the youth. When asked, PM had once mentioned they are creating 500 skills programmes. I told him China is doing 50000 skills programmes. There is absolutely no mention of any such programme in his report.

Highly unfair of Narendra Modi! First he dares to read that UPA-3 year report and then he has the audacity to quote from the report and pin-point UPA failures. Even all Congress members, UPA members and God’s messengers in the media wouldn’t have read the whole report. I didn’t see one single program on any news channel discussing the report threadbare. Well, it’s not their job. But NDTV which reported the “Goebbels” tag gleefully has a summary of the report.  Read: Highlights:UPA II releases report card. Some opening lines from the achievement list: We need to…, Despite adverse…, Have to quicken…, Need to improve…, Public frustration and anger…, Difficult decisions…, Urge all parties…! Of course, these achievements are enough for media not to analyse if there are facts and what exactly was promised that is missing. I haven’t seen any thorough analysis.

Now, apart from highlighting Tiwari’s comments through the night and the next day and reporting on supposed infighting in BJP or Ram Jethmalani’s letter to Nitin Gadkari not one in the Congress or their alliance partners, Mainstream media, are yet to challenge the content of what Modi has said. Not one point made by him has been challenged, except an emotional “Crossing the Laxmanrekha on Army” by Tiwari. Ouch! That awful truth about the conflicts with the army must have hurt. Most TV channels blacked out Modi’s speech. Some like Zee TV carried it partly. To my knowledge only Aaj Tak carried the full speech. Rajdeep Sardesai simply couldn’t suffer more than 10 minutes of Modi so CNN-IBN quickly shifted to other stories. All the news channels and even print media were headlining “LKA, Sushma skip rally” as if that were some major calamity. And any discussion, if at all, was about what political moves Modi was plotting. He’s a politician, get used to it!

That Narendra Modi rattles the Congress party is understandable. Why is our hyper ventilating media so rattled? I guess someone speaking facts is at odds with their stated mission of propaganda and spreading lies. After all, didn’t Karan Thapar’s promo on CNN-IBN state: “I don’t want to go into the facts, the facts are disputable”. Yeah.. when it comes to Narendra Modi, facts and truth are unhealthy for the media as they learnt from the SIT report, especially when the ‘honest’ PM and Sonia Gandhi are targets.