Entitled and how! Dear BJP, as you accuse Lutyens’ Delhi of entitlement, just know that you too suffer from the same disease
BJP can take a ‘holier than thou’ stance all it wants, but most of its politicians reek of entitlement, much like Lutyens’ Delhi.
The question I posed just after Narendra Modi took office as Prime Minister in May 2014 was whether Delhi would Lutyenise Modi or would Modi cleanse the entitled cobwebs in Lutyens’ calcified corridors? Now that the first term is over, the answer is complicated. Following the BJP’s landslide win in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, it’s clear though that the Lutyens’ virus of entitlement has infected several BJP leaders as well. The Congress malady Akash Vijayvargiya is a particularly distasteful example. After beating a civic official with a cricket bat in Indore, the first-time Madhya Pradesh MLA got bail from a local court.
He was unapologetic.
His father Kailash Vijayvargiya, the powerful national general secretary of the BJP who heads the party’s West Bengal campaign, too was unrepentant and defiant. Incensed at the young BJP MLA’s behaviour, Prime Minister Modi has issued a warning that there is no place for hooligans in the BJP. But it is a sign of the times that Akash, who has been served a show cause notice to explain his violent behaviour, may escape with a mere censure. He won’t be asked to resign or face suspension from the party as he should. BJP workers garlanded him when he emerged from jail, reflecting the arrogance and sense of entitlement they have effortlessly acquired from the Congress. So, is the BJP the new Congress?
Not yet, but it’s getting there.
Akash’s case is not an isolated one. Other BJP lawmakers too have taken the law into their own hands. The party has mostly looked the other way. Has Lutyens’ Delhi been colonised by a new set of entitled politicians? Especially telling is the snail-like progress of cases involving UPA-era scams. The 2G case remains in limbo. The former public prosecutor, Anand Grover, reportedly did little to advance the prosecution case against the DMK’s A Raja and Kanimozhi, daughter of the late M Karunanidhi. Raja and Kanimozhi’s acquittal, following the tardily argued case, came as no surprise. What does come as a surprise — but no longer should — is the slow pace of the appeal process in the 2G case with a new public prosecutor. The seductive lure of Lutyens on the parvenus of the BJP’s evolving ecosystem can never be underestimated.
Cravenly, they seek approval of members of the old ecosystem who may have lost their power but not their insouciance. In its second term, the BJP has no more excuses. Yes, the Congress-led UPA government left it a broken economy in 2014. But instead of fixing it, the new NDA government has repeated many of the UPA’s mistakes. It is no coincidence that the state of the economy and the government’s relationship with the higher judiciary has deteriorated over the past few years. The old Lutyens’ ecosystem was so confident in its own infallibility during the NDA government’s first term that it had the gumption to launch impeachment proceedings against the then Chief Justice of India, Justice Dipak Misra, because it saw him as sympathetic to the Ram Mandir cause.
In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress did not want the Supreme Court to deliver a verdict in favour of the Ram Mandir or even hold day-to-day hearings in the case which could have coalesced the Hindu vote. The impeachment proceedings against Justice (retd) Misra succeeded in their limited objective of delaying hearings beyond May 2019. The fabricated case alleging foul play in Judge BH Loya’s death was part of the Lutyens’ strategy to win the Lok Sabha polls at any cost. That case, too, had a limited objective: to discredit Justice (retd) Misra. The old ecosystem’s faithful journalists, lawyers and activists rallied to organise a press conference of four Collegium justices, including the current CJI Ranjan Gogoi, to add to the pressure on Justice (retd) Misra.
The old ecosystem feared that if Modi won a second term, he would finally use every prosecutorial legal resource to bring to book alleged economic offenders like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Robert Vadra. Prosecutions pending in various courts against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald and income-tax cases would also be pursued more actively by the Attorney General. Hence, the urgency to stop Modi from returning to power. Modi won the 2019 general election despite the concerted, frequently underhand tactics used by entitled Lutyenites to defeat him. But isn’t Lutyens’ Delhi, a metaphor for India’s power elite, now in the NDA government’s lap? No, it is not. The reason is cultural, not political. The BJP’s top leaders are from Bharat. Sadly though for the old Lutyens’ elite, who themselves were once social climbers, aspirational Indian voters don’t care anymore for the old Lutyens’ values. They regard Rahul Gandhi as an entitled dynast and look upon Congress leaders as undeserving sycophants. And yet, the BJP in its second term, must up its game. Evict the lumpens who lynch and rein in party cadre who obsess over religion. For Modi, hard work and not Harvard, to employ his first-tem aphorism, gave him a landslide win in May 2019. It’s time to continue the hard work and fix the Lutyens’ layabouts who have infiltrated the BJP. Start with Akash Vijayvargiya.
Courtesy of Mail Today