How a socialist Budget will help BJP's nationalism
In the last nearly two years, the NDA government has managed to bring in a massive turnaround in various sectors, especially the energy, roads, shipping and railways. Riding on Modi's proactive, strategic engagement with numerous countries, India has emerged a stronger player in world politics.
The #StartUpIndia campaign has given a big boost to entrepreneurship. The #MakeInIndia initiative promises to facilitate India's journey into being a manufacturing hub. Despite the finance minister's conservatism, the Indian economy has been successfully shielded from the savage vagaries that have afflicted the global economy.
And yet the Indian government in the last few months has been on the defensive, negotiating ruthless, sustained attacks from the Opposition for being a "communal, totalitarian" regime.
It's interesting to note that the most belligerent of these attacks came from the "Communist-Socialist-Secular" intellectuals who have over the last 14 years thrashed Modi in every conceivable way and ad nauseam. So the inventive "intolerance" propaganda actually marked their resurgence in a re-packaged avatar.
It's also obvious that the whole intolerance propaganda, the national outcry over Rohith Vermula's suicide and the backing to a rogue group of JNU students was borne out of an intense and incurable pathological hatred for a single entity and timed to perfection to thwart the positive reports of #DigitalIndia and #MakeInIndia.
Moreover, this sustained propaganda against the government ensured that an unacceptably macabre episode in Malda where a crowd of 1.5 lakhs people belonging to a certain community went on rampage, got very little reporting or attention.
Sadly, the manufactured dissent against the dynamic and well performing government was plotted so well and played up with such tenacity that it had begun to play upon people's psyche. The government's achievements were being dwarfed by the venom of the propaganda against it.
This is where the government needed a masterstroke to turn things around for it. Inasmuch as it may surprise the core BJP supporters, the sharp "socialist" turn in this Budget was an extremely well strategised, astute move and one which will be a political game-changer.
Irrespective of the magnitude of dissent by the intolerance naysayers, politically, the BJP simply cannot afford to be apologetic about its aggressive nationalism. Sadly, proactive nationalism is also inextricably linked to a pro-rich perception.
After all, the poor are so entrenched in their individual battles for survival, that geographical boundaries are not their immediate concern. And hence by championing the time-tested and potent "poor-backward-secular" combo, the opposition parties clubbed together, were gearing up to pose a veritable threat to the government.
And this is where the Budget's socialist turn serves as a masterstroke: it carries the prospect of weaning away the poor and backward classes from the Opposition's armoury.
Now, the interesting thing here is that while the nationalism-socialism combination might seem like a promising gamble, at various points, one of these is bound to eat into the other and hence the experiment carries the risk of confusing the government's core constituency.
Moreover, from being an obvious "Right of Centre" establishment, it will make the government more "centrist". While this carries certain perils, my hunch is that it will do more good than harm. After all, infrastructure and urban development have seldom won elections; on the other hand "gareeb, kisan and pichda warg" have won umpteen elections, enabling non-performing Congress governments to stay in power term after term.
So, from a macro perspective, Budget 2016 marks an exciting political shift. It promises to make the BJP a more nuanced party with a wider menu for the public to choose from. Moreover, while governance has never been a problem with BJP governments; what they lacked was the manoeuvering skills of the Congress to stick to power and ensure a long haul.
A friend once told me the Congress' recipe of staying in power for more than 55 years was quite simple, "be a party of the poor by the day and one of the rich, by the night." This Budget gives an indication that BJP is learning the ropes belatedly but surely.
I am optimistic that from here the contrived intolerance propaganda will die a gradual death. The opposition parties will be forced to nail the government on real data and more credible issues, besides having to make the extra effort to retain the poor on their side.
Nationalist-socialism or socialist-nationalism might actually work well for the country, at least for now.