With the economy falling drastically, we can see that the politics of viskas is gone to the dogs. It is difficult to see how PM Modi will recover his vikas purush image after this economic jolt. What is even more bewildering is that fact the economic disaster is being blamed on God. By placing the blame on God one cannot simply cover up basic in-competencies of people who man important positions in the Government. Will these failures continue to be ignored? Will we again see politics of vishwas winning against politics of vikas as we saw in 2019 general election? Things appear less likely for this time. The central policy of monopolizing policy and socializing and even historising ( Nehru) losses will come to catch up with it at some point. Vishwas is fragile and needs to be carefully cultivated and nurtured . The lockdown, the handling of the pandemic, the plight of the labour class, loss of jobs and the accumulated distress has already begun to erode the vishwas that people had in the leadership of PM Modi. The thumbs down that his man ki baat received most recently does point in this direction. Besides, PM Modi’s birthday was celebrated as national unemployment day with great enthusiasm on twitter and the social media showing again a slump in popularity of our PM Modi. Does this mean that democracy, dialogue and dissent have hope in these dark times? The Situation does appear hopeless in several ways as the centre says that it has no count of the poor people who died on the roads during the strict lockdown. Besides, it is astonishing to find that the centre is blaming fake news to have triggered the exodus of our workers during the lockdown. This raises the question: will Indians find courage in such dark hopeless condition? To me, it does not appear to be so.
The desperate courage and compassion showed by our health workers in the war against the pandemic seem to be unrewarded. It is being reported that the Government has no money to pay some of them. Besides, the states are denied their legitimate share of GST, thus, putting the fundamental battle space against the pandemic in greater distress. Despite the pandemic, everything has remained the same. The fuel prices have not come down. The essential items have shown no sign of strengthening our pockets. Life has not become easy for anyone. Even our students were forced by the Supreme Court to answer the competitive exams under the threat of acquiring the infections. But the Media continue to distract us and deflect real issues from our attention. The so-called justice for Sushant Singh Rajput seems to have settled down to justice for Kangana . The overall handling of our distressful condition seems to point out that somehow authorities are trading lives for money and exchanging pandemic for recession. The speech of our health minister in the parliament was anything but positive that invited us to pride in the fact that we were lesser losers than some others in the world. Such enjoyment of losses is crazy yet intoxicated by the virus of nationalism that prides even in losses as they make us feel better than others , we have come to enjoy our losses as gains. We have forgotten to access looses and gains dispassionately and are domesticated to remain losers without being aware of the same. Such a view hides reality from us and we get used to losing as long as we are less spectacular losers than several others. Unfortunately, we fail to understand that all failure is nothing other than sheer failure and nothing more.
‘How long will such manipulation of hope last?’ becomes an important question in this regard. Such a manipulated hope makes us feel good as long as we are less spectacular losers and we get trapped into a loser’s iron cage from where we have no escape. This is why it has to be said that we are living an absurdity. We seem to remain with a constant victim impulse. It is a victim impulse that lets us see our failures or losses as gains as long as our manipulated hope lets us believe that our victory is certain but until that time we have to put up with interim losses. Though it does sound absurd to think that we seem to be settling down for losses as long as we are made to feel that we are better off than other losers in the world, we stay royally ignorant of our enslavement. It is based on a belief that thinks without proof that PM Modi has put all systems in place and it is a matter of time that everything will find its true place and the bold new future will roll in for them. Thus, a manipulated hope becomes a way of buying time for one self and the Government that one blindly supports. It is absurd that a manipulated hope leads the citizens to defend as well as reward the Government for non-performance. This is why a nationalism that is perpetually based on the other as a point of self reference needs to be questioned. The relational manner in which it builds its view of the nation does forget other substantive dimensions.
The manipulated hope has forgotten that the fastest growing economy has become the fastest sinking economy. It is ironic that we are happy to let it sink than fix incompetence at the highest level. Things are not likely to improve quickly. The poor will still continue to suffer. Their access to health, education and jobs is not likely to improve. Corruption has not ceased. It has only become difficult to spot. Corruption was projected to be our first enemy when Congress was in power but with the BJP in power it simply became Muslims as are the first enemy. We just lost track when exactly corruption as enemy number one got replaced by Muslim as enemy number one and we all blindly accepted it under the narcissistic force of cultural and religious nationalism. So far what has been apparently unfreedom that we received from the ruling benches is tragically deemed as freedom . This is why manipulated hope needs to be addressed so that authentic hope guides our present and our common future.
